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Highlands Ranch woman helps craft dyslexia bill

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Contributed by: Joseph Kirchmer/YourHub.com on 2/26/2008

A Highlands Ranch parent is helping move forward a bill in the State Legislature that would benefit students in the state diagnosed with dyslexia.

Sally Pistilli heads up the Douglas County Dyslexia Resource Group, which is largely made up of local parents with dyslexic children. This summer, she helped a field of experts in the dyslexia and education fields craft HB 1223, a bill that would make dyslexia training available to school districts across the state.

The bill, sponsored by State Rep. Michael Merrifield, D-Manitou Springs, passed unanimously out of the House Education Committee on Feb. 21. It now heads to the Appropriations Committee.

During an emotional testimony, several people diagnosed with dyslexia related to committee members the frustration and low self-esteem that has plagued their lives.

Tasia Williams, 16, of Mountain Vista High School, said she received help early on from her third-grade teacher, but the teacher transferred to another school, leaving her "in the dark."

"It still hurts when a teacher looks at me like I'm not smart enough or can't do it," she said.

Pistilli said her children can relate to Williams' problems at school. Both her 12-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter were diagnosed with dyslexia.

"It's a very serious issue," she said. "It affects self-esteem, creates dropouts and sometimes leads to drug issues. That's why we think this is so important."

The most important issue with dyslexia, she said, is to catch the symptoms early on, which include difficulty in pronunciation, reading errors that show no connection to the sounds of letters, slow progress in reading skills and poor spelling.

For more information on the resource group, e-mail dyslexiaresourcegroup@
comcast.net.

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