NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Vanderbilt Kennedy Center has locked in three fresh Tennessee Department of Education awards totaling $19.6 million, the biggest TDOE package in the center’s history, to widen statewide help for students with disabilities, their families and school teams.
The deals fund intensive behavior support, family-school partnership work, and coaching on individualized education plans. Together they account for nearly 60% of Tennessee Technical Assistance Network money and half of the network’s awarded contracts, about $2 million above the center’s last five-year TDOE cycle.
The work continues a partnership that started in 1999, when TRIAD, the autism institute inside the Kennedy Center, launched statewide autism training for educators. Services have since grown to cover intellectual and developmental disabilities beyond autism alone.
Under the intensive-behavior award, Kennedy Center clinicians will coach school teams working with students whose behavior can be unsafe, help write functional behavior assessments and intervention plans, and build district training systems. Leaders say the aim is to keep those students in inclusive classrooms instead of more restrictive settings.
The family-partnership award is meant to help districts build lasting parent ties and deliver training on educational and developmental topics. The IEP coaching award adds another layer so schools can write and carry out stronger plans for students who need them.
For more than 25 years TRIAD has partnered with the Education Department on school supports, and it is now pairing that work with the Tennessee Department of Disability and Aging on a pilot that reaches youth with disabilities who are in state custody, adding home-based help alongside classroom coaching.
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