I am delighted to announce that Amanda Windom has joined my firm. She is a former manager of a day care center and a parent of child with special needs. She brings a great deal of energy to the firm and will be assisting me on cases, advocating at meetings and as can be seen above, writing wonderfully new blog posts.

As many parents with children with autism know, a case is currently pending before the U.S. Court of Claims to adjudicate the causality between mercury and autism. This case may go on for years. Here is a science blog that presents the counter point, that mercury does not cause autism. Warning this material may be hard to read but it is important to understand the science which opposes the linkage between mercury and autism.

New York City passed an ordinance that would offer legal protections to school staff if they whistle blow on illegal practices in schools. However, Mayor Bloomberg has indicated that he will veto this law claiming that it would give teachers and other staff a tool to hold over administrative staff.

It would seem a simple matter of legislative draftsmenship to either not allow any protections if the charges have no reasonable basis, or to build in other legal penalties if the law was abused. There are other whistle blower acts that could be used as a model. 

Under the mayor’s analysis, the best way to improve schools would be to keep everything in-house not subject to legal outside scrutiny. So much for transparency in governance and Justice Brandeis’ dicta that "Sunshine is the best disinfectant." Perhaps as one reader who commented on a earlier post on this topic, whistleblowing protection will become a matter of Federal law; it certainly is needed.

The City Council of New York is considering an ordinance which would protect teachers and other personnel from firing or harassment if they blow the whistle on illegal activities in school. The fact that such legal protections are needed is a sad comment in itself. The reality is that I have seen directly or indirectly school staff who were punished or fired for doing that which is right for a child but against the system. The legal protections for school staff can be very lacking so laws like this are in fact quite necessary. Maybe after this ordinance takes effect and other cities follow suit, it will be ok to "take a position against the family."

It has been readily apparent to me that special education has not been the drain on the school systems that administrators and the media claim. Finally there is a data-driven research paper from the conservative Hoover Institute that bears out the facts of the costs for special education.  The results are startling only in that the data finally drives a stake in the heart of the anecdotal and fantastic claims that special education and parents of children with special needs are ruining the education system for "the rest of us."  The bottom line conclusion that I draw from this report is that there is a core prejudice and bias against children with special needs that has not been overcome in the generation that IDEA has been in existence.  The media and lobby groups for schools tend to perpetuate ugly myths to the detriment of students with special needs. Well, here is the data to fight  the unfounded claims once and for all.

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The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill ("NAMI") has published a national survey ranking the funding of mental health systems in the 50 states.  The results are sobering:

"NAMI presents this first comprehensive state-by-state analysis of mental health care systems in 15 years. Every U.S. state has been scored on 39 specific criteria resulting in an overall grade and four sub-category grades for each state. The national average grade is D. Five states receive grades in the B range. Eight receive Fs. None received As. "

Each of the rankings includes urgent action statements needed in your state, My great state of Illinois received a grade of F and ranked 44th for suicides and near the bottom in per capita spending.  This kind of data should be used as a basis for a legislative agenda. In the special education arena, hearing officers should be made aware of this stark lack of services making it that much more urgent that students receive as much as possible through their IEPs to address mental health issues. No hearing officer or for that matter school personnel should have the false impression that "out there" services are well funded and available. This survey shows that is abundantly not the case.

There was a recent medical lecture in Alberta Canada on research which indicates that eating wholesome and nutritious foods can have profound effects on children and adults with ADHD. This link contains a video clip from the lecture.