Special Education Law Blog
A special education legal resource discussing case law, news, practical advocacy advice, and developments in state and federal laws, statutes and regulations. Postings include insight and sometimes humor from Charles P. Fox, a Chicago, Illinois attorney who is also a parent of child with special needs, and other guest authors.
Preparing for your child’s IEP can be stressful enough, but the morning before your meeting, can drive you crazy. You talk to your friends, you talk to your family; worries and fears run through your mind. Some things are said, some are unsaid. Here are just a few of the many things wives say to their husbands before their child’s IEP meeting.
At first there was much hype and expectation the new special education regulations were on the fast track. It now appears according to one group that the U.S. Department of Education may take until next Fall or later to promulgate the new regulations.
The propaganda that school district’s effectively convey in the media, in legislatures, and at hearings is that parents are somehow victimizing poor hapless school districts. To me it is like Goliath complaining about his back hurting because he has to bend over so far to smote his opponents. The advantage is on one side; it is real chutzpah to assert that parents are the ones doing the victimizing. It is an amazing assertion that deserves to be called propaganda since it is a Big Lie ! Schools viciously fight parents sometimes over very small and obvious issues to "make a point" and to "set an example." The Deal case in Tennessee is a perfect illustration. [Download deal_case.pdf ]. The school district’s attorney spent well over a million dollars in attorney’s fees to oppose the parents’ request for an aide for their child with autism, when the need for this service was obvious. The parents prevailed in that case after years of litigation. While such hard ball tactics may have a place in the private legal arena they are not appropriate in the "warm and fuzzy" settings of school that are supposed to be about the student’s educational needs.
In this posting, my colleague Deborah Pergament will detail the factors to allow parents to determine if a placement is indeed an aural/oral setting for a child with a cochlear implant, and the necessary criteria to determine the appropriateness of a placement.
The following is the first of a two part posting from a colleague of mine. Deborah Pergament is an attorney in Chicago, Illinois who has dedicated her professional life to serving the needs of children in the area of special education, family law and juvenile justice. She has successfully tried and won a recent case on behalf of a child with a cochlear implant and has several more pending. This posting should enable parents to make more informed decisions in determining the appropriateness of a school placement for their son or daughter who has a cochlear implant ("CI").
A Maryland School District filed for a restraining order in court against a young child with Downs Syndrome seeking to have him placed in a totally self contained school for children aged 3-21. While it is hard to discern the total facts of this case from the news story, it appears that the child has communication issues and was restrained in school. If his communication issues were not appropriately addressed, and staff did not have proper training or applied restraint when it was not needed, these factors certainly could have lead to the child’s behavioral escalation.
I will be presenting on changes in IDEA on March 8, 2006 see details below:
Schools refuse to accept the fact that "education" as used in an I’E’P is not just grades. This issue comes up in the context of arguments over whether FAPE has been provided, and whether a child should be eligible for an IEP. The argument frequently turns on whether a child who earns good or even exceptional grades can be eligible, and whether good grades insulate a district from charges that FAPE has been denied. Schools view the scope of their responsibility narrowly to include only academics, frequently to the exclusion of equally important issues such as emotional and social well being. Two new cases have squarely addressed the issue of eligibility, and an old case that I successfully tried answered the question as to FAPE.
A colleague of mine recently advocated for a child with autism to be able to bring his service dog to school. Predictably the school reacted negatively. The school staff’s response did not even consider the potential educational benefits for the child.
Parent input statements are one of the cornerstones of parental advocacy, but too often parents fail to bring one to an IEP meeting or do not include necessary information. The following will provide some guidance based upon my experiences as a parent and an attorney for developing parent input statements that will drive your advocacy efforts. Remember in real estate the three main principles are location, location, and location, and in the realm of special education advocacy it is– documentation, documentation and documentation of which the parent input statement is the centerpiece.