Candidates running for Oklahoma State Superintendent



Hello,

My name is Alicia Murie and I am a 20 yr survivor of a Left-Right Traumatic Brain Injury/TBI Advocate.  I started asking questions about what I had literally as soon as I could talk after I came out of my coma.  I’ve been on a mission to help others like me in the state that live with a Traumatic Brain Injury. If you were to go look on the okhouse.gov website and search under the 2016 Spring session for HB1612, I wrote the draft for that.  I wrote that bill to help TBI survivors. It’s what I’ve been asked to go overseas and present on. If you go to http://www.gofundme.com/alondon18 you will see what I plan on doing with everything I learn once I come back.

Now I have some questions for you that I would like for you to answer.  I have a page on a site I have created, http://s-2-v.yolasite.com/2016.php.  I will be creating a page for this letter to go on then to find your responses, all you will need to do is click your party then go find your name.  

  1. Do you know anybody who lives with a Traumatic Brain Injury?
  2. How aware are you of the issues that students face in school once they return with a Traumatic Brain Injury?
  3. If you are not that aware, what would you to become more aware of the issues?
  4. In the Document State of the State Meeting the Educational needs of children with TBI (the following questions deal with the document),which I received from a contact in Colorado, it suggest schools face a daunting set of challenges of their own which include:
    1. Finding millions of children with relatively mild injuries that may or may not affect their educational progress & tracking them over time to see if symptoms abate or emerge later in the developmental process
    2. With more severe injuries & for those with mild injuries who remain symptomatic, schools need to ensure that the child is identified as soon as educational challenges are evidenced
    3. Identification must set in motion a timely assessment of functioning and provision of services and accommodations that are responsive to the educational needs so identified
    4. In sum the educational system’s “failure to identify” is of two types: (1) not identifying in the child’s school record every injury that has occurred & establishing procedures to track the child’s progress, and (2) not identifying when a child post TBI evidences problems triggered by injury & then responding appropriately.
    5. With all of the information given above, WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT FUNDING FIRST, what could you propose needs to be done?  FYI, I will be getting information from a state, forget which, that has done their program free the last couple of years.
    6. It was stated in the document that under-identification can be minimized through:
      1. Education of staff in charge of screening & assessment
      2. Use of a structured screening interview
      3. Use of psycho-educational evaluations to determine the functional impact of brain injury
      4. Systematic communications between medical and educational systems n Educators need to be well trained to address the needs of children with TBI:
      5. Use of evidence-based practices to improve outcomes
      6. Hands-on training of educators
      7. In-classroom consultation by experts
      8. Reading the above what do you think you could implement in the schools to get better identification of students with TBI started?
      9. Ongoing educational support n Progress of children with TBI needs to be carefully documented with meaningful outcome measure, e.g., grades, attendance, satisfaction of parent and child, dropout rates, graduation rates, and the like.
      10. How would you propose better documentation be implemented?
      11. Alternatively, problems that are affecting learning are recognized, but schools do not implement appropriate assessment and programming because of misdiagnosis/misclassification or for a variety of other reasons.
      12. Do you commit to changing this to where there is better assessment and programming in schools for students with TBI?
  5. Four key elements of infrastructure are recommended:
    1.  Leadership on TBI initiatives within the state’s department of education
    2. Identified processes for referral & collaboration between medical, rehabilitation, and school systems
    3. Policies in place that allow for identification & eligibility for educational supports in the absence of medical documentation
    4. Funding & administrative support for personnel training
    5. What if not all of these do you see yourself putting in place in the schools?

Besides being a survivor, I’m also Director of TBI Raiders and an Advisory Board Member for Project Career,https://www.kent.edu/ehhs/ldes/rhab/project-career, that I’ve been involved with for like four or five years now among other committees but these are the two that focus on Traumatic Brain Injury.  If you don’t mind I would like to put your answers up on the site I have but instead of just creating a page, I will be making the page a blog for you all.  If you would like, send me blogs that address TBI and I will post them up on your page. You can talk to those who know me in politics and I don’t care your party, I just want to make sure you are going to do your job.  I’ve lived with this for 20 years and my is severe to the point that if I am anything other happy content laughing, etc. and get mad, sad, depressed, etc for long periods...my brain is going to shut down on me and put me back on life support. So please my community not only needs representation, we need more done to help us once we return to school.  If you are elected, I promise to be your biggest ally to helping you hear our voices and finding ways to help the TBI Community.  But out of curiosity would you hire me if you are elected?

Sincerely,

Alicia Murie

Assoc. In Science

Rose State College ‘03


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