Comment from Heather Musinski

I strongly feel that unifying technical assistance and disability inclusion programming will be a tremendous detriment to CNCS sub grantees. My experience with training resources from the Resource Center and with CNCS guidance is that it is entirely too general in scope and it is not timely. What that means to me as a program director is that I am left trying to puzzle out the meaning of new regulations and provisions that are given a cursory explanation. Often, TTA or DI topics are presented in one format, perhaps a letter among the flood of letters from CNCS or a powerpoint, and those presentations are missed by individuals who do not retain visual information as readily as auditory info. Additionally, the presentations offered by CNCS are often presented in a formal register and with federal program jargon. New program directors and others with a casual register are at a unfair disadvantage and will get very little from this style of presentation. A national or even regional resource for TTA and DI will mean that many more sub grantees will be disconnected from those resources, either because of the cost to use them, or the lack of relationship with the provider. I feel this change will result in a loss of good programs that are innovative and directly meet the needs of communities because they may not have the academic or professional resources to clearly decipher CNCS requirements.