The Virginia Department of Education uses part of the Federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funds for a system that provides support to local educational agencies for professional development. The Training and Technical Assistance Centers (T/TACs) are located in the eight regions represented by school division superintendents throughout the state.

Mission Statement

The mission of Virginia's T/TAC system is to improve educational opportunities and contribute to the success of children and youth with disabilities (birth - 22 years). The T/TACs provide quality training and technical assistance in response to local, regional, and state needs. Their services increase the capacity of school personnel, service providers, and families to meet the needs of children and youth with disabilities by enhancing the knowledge, skills, abilities, and performance of all personnel who work with them.

The T/TAC at George Mason University is located within the Helen Kellar Institute for Human disAbilities(KIHD) and carries out its mission by:

• Consulting with school-based teams
• Providing information services, including periodic newsletters
• Linking and networking resources together
• Managing a lending library of multi-media resources and assistive technology
• Facilitating long-term technical assistance to schools
• Making referrals to other services
• Developing and conducting workshops
• Presenting information about T/TAC services
• Managing the T/TAC Online Web site http://www.ttaconline.org

T/TAC GMU Region 4 provides assistance to the following school systems:

Cities Alexandria Falls Church Manassas Manassas Park Winchester

Counties Arlington Clarke Culpeper Fairfax Fauquier

Frederick Loudoun Madison Orange Page

Prince William Rappahannock Shenandoah Warren Winchester

Virginia Department of Education State-Directed Projects

The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) formed state-directed priority projects to support goals within the Virginia Special Education Improvement Plan (VSEIP). Staff members from the Training and Technical Assistance Centers (T/TACs) from the eight Superintendent’s regions participate in each project. These priority projects were created to provide professional staff development that helps students with disabilities gain access to the general curriculum, to assist schools in meeting Virginia’s accreditation standards, and to assist local education agencies in meeting the qualified personnel requirements of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Acts (IDEA).

Projects include:

• Assistive Technology
• Autism Project
• Early Childhood
• Effective School-Wide Discipline Project
• Instructional Consultation Teams (ICT)
• Instructional Project for Students with Intellectual Disabilities
• Parent Involvement Project
• Reading and Math Instruction Networks
• Secondary Transition Project
• Standards of Learning (SOL) Enhanced Scope and Sequence Plus (ESS+)
• Strategic Instruction Model^® (SIM)^®
• Virginia Technical Assistance Centers