Charles P Fox Law Offices

Special Education Law and Guardianship

Law Offices of Charles P. Fox
355 W. Dundee, Suite 209
Buffalo Grove, IL 60089
Phone: 847-205-9897

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Special Education Law and Advocacy

Experienced Special Education Attorneys

Actionable Gossip

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Student records are confidential!  Unfortunately, school people do not appreciate the importance of this protection. Many freely gossip without any consideration for a student’s privacy and right to confidentiality. Students with special needs have a loss of control generally and when their information is not even held as sacred this is one more insult to their personhood.

Take what happened to my son recently. Beginnings of the school year are always fraught with stress, anxiety, miscommunications and many dropped balls.  I recognize that school people are not perfect and try to keep mistakes in the perspective of the beginning of the year.  Even at the beginning of the year though, I can not sit idle while staff dwells on everything negative, unable to see any positive developments.

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Guidelines for Working With A Special Education Attorney

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The simple truth is that parents on balance achieve better results when they are working with an attorney. Of course, there are notable exceptions such as the very able and courageous parents in the Winkleman case.  Nevertheless, especially in the current environment which seems more charged and polarized attorney help can be critical.  The following is my distilled wisdom on how to make the most out of attorney representation and strategic approaches to working with an attorney:

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School Supply Lists For Kids With Special Needs Can Be Full of Sheets by Lori Miller Fox

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It’s that time of year again.  Back to school. When parents all over the country, list in hand, ambush the stores in search of the perfect school supplies. Red, plastic, 8×12 pronged folder with pockets, green wide-ruled five-subject spiral notebook.  Every subject has a specific pencil, every class a unique pen. But somehow those itemized  lists never seem to apply to my son. Just seeing the word “Elmers” used to get me unglued, the word “ball point” would start me balling, and the word “scissors” would cut me to my very  core. The only thing that seemed remotely useful was the mandatory box of Kleenex tissues to wipe away the tears, so I always bought an extra for my own supply closet.

After years of suffering in silence, I’ve put together my own, more functional list for kids with special needs, their families and the staff who “just don’t get them”.

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New Federal Regulations Expected Soon

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Any day now the new IDEA 2004 Federal Regulations are expected to be released from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The regulations are then set to go back to the Department of Education. If the regulations are then finally approved, they will be released in time for the start of the school year. Past experience suggests that nothing works exactly as expected but realistically the new regulations will be available in the first part of the school year.

The more interesting part will come with the mad flurry of analysis and quarrels over the meaning of the regulations. A lot of the "definitional" meaning of the statute may be fleshed out in the regulations. However, many parts of IDEIA left very little room for agency discretion so the regulations should track closely with the statute. Stay tuned for more analysis once the regulations are made public.

Winkleman Case To Determine Whether Parents Can Represent Claims In Court

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The U.S. Supreme Court has another case relating to IDEA pending on its docket, Winkelman v. Parma School District from Ohio.  The underlying case from the Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit is reported at Download Winkelman_v. Parma School District.pdf
. In this very brief decision, the Federal Appeals Court held that IDEA does not permit parents to represent their children’s rights in court. Parents apparently are smart  and capable enough to handle the rigors of representation at IEP meetings, mediation, resolution sessions and even at due process, but court is out of bounds according to the Winkleman court.  The Supreme Court is considering the parents petition to appeal the case to resolve a split in the Federal Courts of Appeal, as the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals based in Maine ruled the opposite way to Winkleman.  If the appeal is granted the case would be argued during the next term of the court.

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Autism-Mercury Case On Track for Federal Court Trial

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There has been much debate with charges and counter-charges over the linkage between autism and mercury (thimerosal) that was used as a preservative in various vaccines given to children.  Up until now the cases have been routed to the special Federal Court of Claims under the 1986  National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. This court has been dubbed the "vaccine court" and it issues decisions without a jury on a no-fault basis, and many believe that the awards are lower than would be awarded in court in a case tried before a jury. 

In March 2006, the Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit based in New Orleans issued a ground-breaking decision in the case Holder v. Abbott Labs. [ Download Holder_v. Abbott Labs.pdf
]. This case for the first time opens the doors of federal court to jury trials to hear parents’ cases alleging that mercury/thimerosal caused their child’s autism.

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