Advocacy

I am a parent with a special needs child in public schools. It seems everyday there is some sort of issue. In fact, I am not only a parent, but I am also a teacher of special education. I went to my son's open house and his regular ed teacher made the statement to me. "I know you have been getting unfinished work home and work without grades, but don't worry about it. He gets all he needs in resource class." Wow, I thought, and they told me this was one of the better regular ed teachers in the school. She had even taught special ed before. He principal had earlier put a time limit on when IEP meetings could be held. My wife and I worked different hours and made it impossible for us to both get to the meetings. We asked them to extend the hours only one hour to 3pm. I knew this was wrong but caved in finally after much protest and went to a meeting without my wife. Actually the law (IDEA)says that the IEP meeting times have to be mutually agreed. It is nice that IDEA has safeguards and a process to protest what you feel is not in the spirit or the letter of the law, but it is time consuming and the Local Education doesn't really care if you do. So what in fact, becomes true is that anything they want to do is legal unless you call them to the table on it and that gets old.
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