Podcasts about disabilities education act

In this episode, Jethro Jones interviews Dr. Kate Anderson Foley, founder and CEO of the Education Policy and Practice Group. They discuss the integral role of special education in school improvement, the double helix approach to support systems, and the importance of tailoring instruction to student needs. Dr. Foley shares insights on the necessity of breaking down silos in education and promoting a student-centered approach that prepares learners for adult life.Tight instruction specifically for special education students. Double HelixDesigning lessons that are comprehensively situating the adults and students.Almost half a million students are identified as special education. Ban the Tiers! Nimble and responsive instruction. Not working in isolation anymore. Double Helix as a replacement for the RTI/MTSSStrength-based system - foundation of school improvement process. High expectations of staff. Accountability is measured by evidence of impact. Data that is used to inform and adjust. Shared accountability. Collaboratively working on improvement. Discussion about explicit instruction vs. non-explicit instruction. Blooms and scaffolding. The scaffolding needs to be doneHow do we scaffold that skill so they demonstrate it in novel ways? Explicit instruction is 15 minutes and then you transfer that skill. Understand the concept of AM & PM. About Dr. Foley:Kate Anderson Foley, Ph.D.Founder & CEO of the Education Policy & Practice Group, International Keynote, McLean Affiliate of Harvard Medical School Institute of Coaching Fellow, Thought Partner, Author. Kate Anderson Foley is a transformational leader with significant experience leading public school districts and states toward equitable and integrated services for all learners. Her work has been grounded in social justice and breaking down barriers for children who have historically been marginalized. She has led organizational change utilizing a strategic framework that ensured guaranteed and rigorous learning leading to college and career readiness for all students.Kate began her career as a special education teacher pioneering inclusive practices for students at risk and with disabilities. Her work focused on creating conditions that fostered high expectations of adults for students and innovation which catalyzed equitable opportunities for each learner. Kate's deep commitment to creating nimble and responsive systems that supported the whole child led her into administration where she advocated for local, state, and federal reform. That experience with large-scale reform led to improved academic and social-emotional outcomes for students, fair funding models, innovative healthcare models, and efficient operations. As a senior educational leader for the State of Illinois, Kate's vision of fulfilling the promise of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was nested within the Every Student Succeeds Act. She was an expert contributor to the State Plan where the deficit-based system was interrupted and a preventative and nimble system was created that intentionally addressed opportunity gaps of all learners, regardless of background or circumstance. Her deep understanding of equity-based school funding also contributed to a legislative reform model for the state of Illinois. As the founder and CEO of The Education Policy & Practice Group, Kate partners with local, state, national, and international organizations, education agencies, and various industries providing her expertise with the improvement process, professional learning communities, strategic planning, asset-based education policies and practices, special education, coaching, and consulting. Kate is a Roslyn Wolf Lecturer with the Levin College of Public Affairs in Urban Education. Kate teaches a graduate-level Special Education Law course to aspiring superintendents and principals. Kate works closely with senior leadership across various sectors providing executive coaching aimed at creating growth-minded organizational cultures (www.edpolicyconsulting.com). Kate is the author of numerous articles and books including Ida Finds Her Voice and Fearless Coaching. Kate's new book, Radically Excellent School Improvement: Keeping Students at the Center of it All presents a model for ambitious improvement and tireless focus that ensures every student grows, thrives, and achieves to their fullest potential. It provides district and school leaders with a bold blueprint for designing,implementing, and monitoring a comprehensive school improvement process for radical excellence (https://us.corwin.com/books/radical-excellence-289045).

Is your teen struggling in school, but you're hitting roadblocks trying to get them the support they need? The IEP (Individualized Education Program) process can be overwhelming—especially for minority parents facing additional challenges. In this episode, I sit down with Maria Davis-Pierre, a licensed mental health counselor, autism advocate, and founder of Autism in Black. Maria shares her personal journey navigating the special education system for her neurodivergent children and exposes the hidden biases that often prevent Black and minority children from getting the right diagnosis and accommodations. She also provides practical strategies for parents to advocate effectively, empower their teens, and navigate the IEP process with confidence.   WHAT YOU'LL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE The biggest mistakes parents make when advocating for their child's IEP—and how to avoid them Why Black and minority children are often mislabeled as behavioral problems instead of receiving proper support How to involve your teen in their IEP process and teach them self-advocacy skills The hidden biases in school support systems that every parent should know about 5 KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR PARENTS OF TEENS Know Your Rights – Understanding the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) is crucial for effective advocacy. Cultural Bias Exists – Many minority children are misdiagnosed or overlooked, making advocacy even more critical. Empower Your Teen – Teens who participate in their own IEP process develop stronger self-advocacy skills for the future. Leverage Their Strengths – Connecting accommodations to your teen's interests can make learning more engaging. Give Yourself Grace – The IEP process is challenging, but you are your child's best advocate.  

On this episode, we're celebrating the legacy of The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the first iteration of which was signed into law in 1975. We're joined by educators, advocates and a student to learn more about how IDEA serves students and families across the nation. Guests: Dr. Tiece Ruffin, Chair, UNC Asheville Department of Education Dr. Carol Ann Hudgens, Sr. Director of the Office of Exceptional Children, NC Department of Public Instruction Glynnis Hagins, Attorney, Disability Rights North Carolina Susan Book, parent and public school advocate Lindy Southern, student, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools

Event Objectives:Discuss basic knowledge regarding children's rights under federal and state law to necessary services.Discuss legal entitlements including: Medicaid Americans with Disabilities Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.Discuss common barriers to services faced by children and families and advocacy strategies to remedy these barriers.Claim CME Credit Here!

As I delved into the intricacies of Project 2025, a comprehensive policy blueprint crafted by the Heritage Foundation, I was struck by the sheer scope and ambition of its proposals. This 900-page document, released in April 2022, outlines a radical vision for American governance, should a conservative administration take office in January 2025.At its core, Project 2025 is a call to action, designed to reshape the federal government and its agencies in line with conservative principles. The project envisions a future where the Department of Education is abolished, with its responsibilities devolved to the states. This move is part of a broader strategy to enhance school choice and parental control over education, reflecting the project's belief that education is a private rather than a public good. For instance, federal funds for low-income students, such as those under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, would be allowed to expire, and public funds would be redirected as school vouchers for private or religious schools[1][2][3].The project's education reforms are just the tip of the iceberg. It proposes dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and significantly altering the roles of other key agencies. The Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Commerce, Federal Communications Commission, and Federal Trade Commission would all come under tighter partisan control. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would be abolished, and the National Labor Relations Board's role in protecting employees' rights to organize would be significantly curtailed[1][2][3].One of the most contentious aspects of Project 2025 is its stance on environmental and climate change policies. The blueprint advocates for reducing environmental regulations to favor fossil fuels, stopping the National Institutes of Health from funding research with embryonic stem cells, and rolling back climate science initiatives. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, the Heritage Foundation's energy and climate director, suggests that the EPA should support the consumption of more natural gas, despite concerns from climatologists about the potential increase in methane leaks[1][4].The project also outlines sweeping changes to healthcare and social welfare programs. Medicare and Medicaid would face significant cuts, and the government would be urged to reject abortion as a form of healthcare. Emergency contraception coverage would be eliminated, and the Comstock Act would be used to prosecute those who send and receive contraceptives and abortion pills. Additionally, work requirements would be instituted for those reliant on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and overtime protections for workers could be weakened[1][2].In the realm of technology and media, Project 2025 proposes several drastic measures. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) would be brought under presidential authority, and regulations on media ownership would be relaxed. The project also calls for investigations into Big Tech companies and the FBI for alleged censorship, and it suggests revising Section 230 to limit social media's ability to moderate content and ban individuals from their platforms[3].The project's authors argue that these changes are necessary to streamline decision-making and ensure a more efficient government. They advocate for the "unitary executive theory," which would place the entire federal bureaucracy under the direct control of the president, eliminating civil service protections for thousands of government employees. This move would allow for the replacement of these employees with political appointees beholden to the executive[2][3].Critics, however, see Project 2025 as a blueprint for an autocratic takeover, aiming to destroy the system of checks and balances that underpins American democracy. "Project 2025 would give presidents almost unlimited power to implement policies that will shatter democracy's guardrails," warns a critique from the American Progress organization[5].As I navigated through the detailed policy proposals, it became clear that Project 2025 is not just a set of recommendations but a vision for a fundamentally different America. The project's emphasis on conservative principles and its rejection of what it terms "woke propaganda" in public schools and "totalitarian cult" of the "Great Awokening" reflect a deep-seated ideological shift[1][3].The implications of these proposals are far-reaching. For instance, the elimination of the Head Start program, which serves over 833,000 children living in poverty, would likely drive up childcare costs and exacerbate existing social inequalities. Similarly, the reduction in funding for free school meals and the elimination of programs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act would have profound effects on vulnerable populations[1][2].As the 2024 presidential election approaches, Project 2025 stands as a significant milestone in the conservative movement's quest for power. While Donald Trump has publicly distanced himself from the project, many of its authors are closely connected to his administration, and the policy proposals echo those outlined in his own campaign agenda[3].Looking ahead, the implementation of Project 2025's policies would depend on the outcome of the election and the willingness of a future administration to adopt these radical changes. As the nation prepares for this potential shift, it is crucial to understand the depth and breadth of these proposals and their potential impact on American governance.In the words of Darrell West, who has analyzed the inconsistencies in the plan, "the inconsistencies are designed for fund-raising from certain industries or donors that would benefit." This insight highlights the complex interplay between policy, politics, and funding that underpins Project 2025[1].As we move closer to 2025, the fate of Project 2025 remains uncertain, but its influence on the political discourse is already palpable. Whether these proposals become the blueprint for a new era in American governance or serve as a rallying cry for opposition, one thing is clear: Project 2025 represents a pivotal moment in the ongoing debate about the future of American democracy.

In this episode, Shannon explains the top ten things that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act provides.

As the 2024 Presidential Election approaches, Blonde & Blind is amplifying the voices of a group often overlooked—students with disabilities. Olivia O'Connell, a dedicated disability rights activist, joins Marissa to talk about how the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Department of Education ensure that students get the accommodations they need. Magnifiers, extended time, and teachers of the visually-impaired (TVIs) don't come from the kindness of a school district's heart; they are federally-mandated tools and services that are critical for student success. Olivia shares how her Individualized Education Plan (IEP) supported her and why funding IDEA ensures students have access to a free appropriate public education. With Donald Trump proposing to close the Department of Education, Marissa and Olivia highlight how dissolving the agency responsible for ensuring equal access to education would negatively impact students across the country. Olivia O'Connell is a senior at the University of Michigan studying Political Science and History. She is currently an At-Large Presidential Fellow with the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, where she is conducting research on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, its funding, and its impacts on students with disabilities at the local level. She also has experience working on Capitol Hill, at nonprofit organizations, with government relations firms, and in community-based advocacy groups. She is dedicated to protecting democracy and championing the rights of historically marginalized communities, especially students and young adults with disabilities. Connect with Blonde & Blind! Website  - https://www.blondeblind.com/  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/blondeblindgirl/  Facebook - https://m.facebook.com/legallybb/?locale=sq_AL  LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/blonde-blind  YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJz_ng0bHVm0s33plEl5Kpg  X - https://twitter.com/marissa_nissley  Connect with Olivia!  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/oliviaelizao/  LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliviaelizabeth  Key Points: 00:00 - Introduction and Background 05:25 - What sparked your interest in politics and disability advocacy? 06:49 - What is IDEA? 08:15 - How has IDEA impacted your life? 11:15 - What is the concept of "Least Restrictive Environment" and why is it important for students with disabilities? 12:52 - Why does IDEA need funding? Where does that money go? 16:03 - What does "full funding" for IDEA mean and why is it important? 19:21 - Many Republican politicians, including Donald Trump, have explicitly proposed eliminating the Department of Education and redirecting all IDEA funding to states with no strings attached. How do you think this could impact students with disabilities? 23:19 - What should people do if they want to take action? Resources & Transcript - https://www.blondeblind.com/post/34-your-iep-didn-t-fall-out-of-a-coconut-tree-feat-olivia-o-connell

Series: Kicking off the School Year “Transition IEPs” with Crystal Sanford Hey guys, as we continue on in our School Year Kick Off Series, today's episode is going to be a huge help to those of us facing IEP Transition Planning. If your child has an IEP, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or IDEA requires that students have an Individual Transition Plan or ITP in their IEP by the time they turn 16 years old. The Transition Plan should be based on the student's strengths, preferences, and needs and all IEP goals must be tied into the 3 areas of continuing education or training, employment, and independent living. On today's episode we are happy to have Crystal Sanford of Sanford Autism Advocacy Group back on to explain all of this and more to help parents understand and feel more confident with the Transition planning process. So let's get started. Crystal Sanford, M.Ed., M.A. CCC-SLP is an Educational Consultant, IEP Advocate and Speech Pathologist. She is also a podcast, author, and mother to an autistic tween. Crystal's passion is advocating alongside fellow neurodiverse families, helping them to persistently pursue what their children deserve at school. In her free time, she enjoys gardening and spending time with her husband and two children in San Diego, CA.   www.sdautismhelp.com www.facebook.com/sdautismhelp; www.instagram.com/sanford_autism_advocacy   Connect with Us: If you enjoy this podcast please share us with others and be sure to follow us so won't miss an episode.  We'd love to hear from you so please leave us a comment or rating and connect with us on social media or on our website.  Email us Website: Instagram Facebook: Facebook Group Free Youtube Resource Library 

In this focused episode of 'Love is a Classroom: Stories of Inclusion,' Vicky Brett and Amanda Selogie, special education attorneys and founders of the Inclusive Education Project, join me to discuss events in Series 2 and the importance of inclusive education for children with disabilities. We talk about Brooke's circumstances with Navee. My guests address the legal obligations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) of 2004, the challenges families face in securing appropriate support, and the powerful role teachers and parents play in advocating for inclusive environments. The episode highlights a real-world events, practical solutions, collaboration, and the societal impact of true inclusion in schools.   00:00 Introduction to Inclusion and Legal Rights 00:48 Meet the Experts: Vicky and Amanda 01:47 Challenges in Inclusive Education 02:28 Legal Framework and Parental Advocacy 03:00 Personal Journeys into Special Education Law 06:34 Navigating the IDEA and Legal Obligations 11:01 Funding and Resource Allocation Issues 14:19 Empowering Parents and Teachers 21:29 Rethinking Educational Models 31:19 Final Thoughts and Contact Information   Contact Inclusive Education Project: https://www.inclusiveeducationproject.org/ admin@IEPCalifornia.Org Listen to the Inclusive Education Project podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.   Contact me on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram or email me at loveisaclassroom.com for more information on my work. Thank you for listening! Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to the show to receive every new episode If you enjoyed this episode and believe in our message, then please help us get the word out about this podcast. Rate and Review this show. It helps other listeners find this show.  

Mark Daley is a social activist, entrepreneur, and foster-turned-adoptive father. He is the founder of One Iowa, the state's largest LGBTQ+ equality organization, and TheFosterParent.com, a national platform connecting families with foster organizations. He is also the author of Safe: A Memoir of Fatherhood, Foster Care, and the Risks We Take for Family. In addition to his advocacy work, Mark has collaborated with over thirty members of Congress, numerous governors, and other elected officials and served as the communications director and spokesperson for then-Senator Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. In today's episode, host Shay Beider welcomes Mark to discuss his personal story of being a foster parent. The two discuss many of the challenges that can occur within the foster care system that are highlighted in Mark's newest book, Safe: A Memoir of Fatherhood, Foster Care, and the Risks we Take for Family. Mark shares his experience of becoming a foster parent and talks about the complex dynamics at play, including grieving someone who is still alive. He talks with Shay about the reality that several states do not allow LGBTQ+ parents to foster, which can add additional difficulties for fostering children who identify as being LGBTQ+. Finally, the duo discusses ways the community can advocate for important changes and get involved in the foster care system.   Transcripts for this episode are available at: https://www.integrativetouch.org/conversations-on-healing    Show Notes: Look into Mark's website: TheFosterParent.com Read the book: Safe: A Memoir of Fatherhood, Foster Care, and the Risks We Take for Family Check out an LGBTQ+ resource, The Trevor Project, here Learn about the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act here   This podcast was created by Integrative Touch (InTouch), which is changing healthcare through human connectivity. A leader in the field of integrative medicine, InTouch exists to alleviate pain and isolation for anyone affected by illness, disability or trauma. This includes kids and adults with cancers, genetic conditions, autism, cerebral palsy, traumatic stress, and other serious health issues. The founder, Shay Beider, pioneered a new therapy called Integrative Touch™Therapy that supports healing from trauma and serious illness. The organization provides proven integrative medicine therapies, education and support that fill critical healthcare gaps. Their success is driven by deep compassion, community and integrity.  Each year, InTouch reaches thousands of people at the Integrative Touch Healing Center, both in person and through Telehealth. Thanks to the incredible support of volunteers and contributors, InTouch created a unique scholarship model called Heal it Forward that brings services to people in need at little or no cost to them. To learn more or donate to Heal it Forward, please visit IntegrativeTouch.org  

There are 13 disability categories listed in a federal law called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. And to get an IEP, or Individualized Education Program, your child will need to fit into at least one disability category.These categories can have some hard-to-understand names, like “specific learning disabilities” or “other health impairments.” But on this episode of Understood Explains, host Juliana Urtubey will share what these categories mean and why they relate to IEPs. She'll also share what to do if your child doesn't qualify for any disability category, or if they qualify for more than one.  For more resources, including a transcript formatted for easy skimming, visit the episode page on Understood.org.Timestamps:(00:43) Why do IEPs have disability categories?(02:42) What are the 13 disability categories in IDEA?(07:21) Are disability categories the same in every state?(09:28) Can my child's IEP include more than one disability?(10:32) What if my child doesn't qualify for any disability category?(11:43) Key takeawaysUnderstood.org is a nonprofit resource dedicated to shaping the world so the millions of people with learning and thinking differences can thrive. Learn more about Understood Explains and all our podcasts at u.org/podcasts.Copyright © 2024 Understood for All, Inc. All rights reserved. 

Two Virginia lawmakers are proposing sweeping measures to improve the state's provision of special education services as criticisms from parents and the federal government over Virginia's compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act continue. Sponsored by Del. Carrie Coyner, R-Chesterfield, and Sen. Barbara Favola, D-Arlington, the proposals would create a statewide system to oversee the development and use of individualized education programs (IEPs) for students with special needs, require more training for educators about how to provide inclusive special education instruction, set up eight regional “special education parent support centers” and provide additional specialists to divisions. “It's no secret...Article LinkSupport the show

A TRANSCRIPT of this episode will be added to the show notes on the podcast website: https://SpecialEd.fm shortly after publication.   Life skills are the biggest predictor of adult success for individuals with Autism. Yet, many parents and school teams misunderstand the full breadth of life skills, and they often take a back seat in special education planning.  We discuss the 3 domains and 10 categories of life skills and their importance to increasing quality of life, how to incorporate life skills into the IEP early, and how to navigate transition and the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act).   My guest for this episode is Julie Swanson, a.k.a. The Life Skills Lady. She is the parent of an adult with an autism spectrum disorder and a non-attorney special education advocate.  Her career as an advocate grew out of her own advocacy efforts for her son.     Julie is the founder of lifeskillslady.com, a website devoted to increasing quality of life and independence for students on the autism spectrum.  You can follow her @lifeskillslady on all social media platforms. Julie is also the co-author of Your Special Education Rights: What Your School District Isn't Telling You.   You can find the Life Skills Cheat Sheet Julie discusses here: https://lifeskillslady.com/resources/life-skills-cheat-sheet/   You can find the IEP Discussion Guide for Life Skills here: https://lifeskillslady.com/resources/iep-discussion-guide-for-life-skills/   You can reach out to Julie here: https://lifeskillslady.com/contact   If you liked this episode, share it with a friend and on social and leave a review here: https://podcastsconnect.apple.com/my-podcasts/show/special-ed-on-special-ed/aaf5305a-7592-403f-950a-7a60dc4914be/ratings-and-reviews   FLASHBACK Go back and listent to the episode, Should they stay or should they go?, where I discuss transition skills with transition specialist, Muncie Kardos, Ph.D., OTR/L, ATP: https://specialed.fm/?p=1187   A TRANSCRIPT of this episode will be added to the show notes on the podcast website: https://SpecialEd.fm shortly after publication.

As we continue with our series on the eligibility categories of the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), we present another brief episode on the second of the four categories that can be summarized within the law as “low incidence disabilities.” Join us for a closer look at low-incidence deafness in today's episode.To clarify, the deafness category includes a severe hearing impairment affecting the child in processing linguistic information through hearing (with or without amplification) that adversely affects the child's educational performance. This category is not to be confused with the less severe hearing impairment category, which we will tackle in next week's episode. Show Highlights:How this category differs from being “hard of hearing” or having an auditory processing disorderWhy IEP services for a deaf child should encompass the entire school experience of both academic AND socialization supportHow accommodations and services should begin as early as preschool so the child can become fluent in ASLWhy the partnership between parents and the school district must begin earlyHow school districts bear the responsibility to have the appropriate experts on the IEP teamLinks/Resources:Contact us on social media or through our website for more information on the IEP Learning Center, and send us your questions for Nadia Bennett for a future episode: www.inclusiveeducationproject.org Thank you for listening! Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to the show to receive every new episode delivered straight to your podcast player every Tuesday.If you enjoyed this episode and believe in our message, then please help us get the word out about this podcast. Rate and Review this show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, or Google Play. It helps other listeners find this show.Be sure to connect with us and reach out with any questions/concerns:FacebookInstagram–We are doing videos on Instagram, so connect with us there and send us your questions!TwitterIEP websiteEmail us: admin@iepcalifornia.org

We are returning to our series on the eligibility categories with four brief episodes on the categories that can be summarized within the law as “low incidence disabilities.” This section of the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) is an umbrella of four sub-categories, so let's take a closer look at low incidence deaf-blindness in today's episode.Show Highlights:Why the deaf-blindness category is for students with both severe hearing and vision loss who need additional services other than standard IEP servicesWhy these impairments require highly specialized training, services, and IEP personnelWhy individual education programs are necessary to meet the unique needs of each childWhy there is no excuse and no exceptions for schools not to have access to the personnel to provide these highly specialized servicesLinks/Resources:Learn more about Peggy and Tamara's book and get your copy! www.navigatingspecialeducation.com Connect with Peggy: WebsiteConnect with Tamara: WebsiteContact us on social media or through our website for more information on the IEP Learning Center, and send us your questions for Nadia Bennett for a future episode: www.inclusiveeducationproject.org Thank you for listening! Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to the show to receive every new episode delivered straight to your podcast player every Tuesday.If you enjoyed this episode and believe in our message, then please help us get the word out about this podcast. Rate and Review this show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, or Google Play. It helps other listeners find this show.Be sure to connect with us and reach out with any questions/concerns:FacebookInstagram–We are doing videos on Instagram, so connect with us there and send us your questions!TwitterIEP websiteEmail us: admin@iepcalifornia.org

For nearly three decades, Jack Jennings was the foremost expert on education policy in the U.S. House of Representatives. His legacy spans some of the most significant legislative initiatives, including the Elementary and Secondary Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the Higher Education Act. After leaving Congress, Jack founded and led the Center on Education Policy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank focused on the improvement of public schools. In this fascinating conversation, Jack shares his reflections on bipartisanship, the effects of our Federalist system, and a blueprint for cultivating a pipeline of exceptional teachers. Learn more about Jack Jennings: JackJenningsDC.com [Transcript for Episode 37 is available at edfixpodcast.com]

Today's episode discusses a timely issue on fully funding IDEA or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Heather Zellers and Jamie Green rejoin us to discuss this very important legislation. IDEA is a law that provides free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities nationwide and ensures special education and related services to those children. The IDEA governs how states and public agencies provide early intervention, special education, and related services to almost 8 million children and youth with disabilities. Congress promised 40% of funding when it was approved but has not met that need. In other words, this is 55.5 Billion Dollars to fund IDEA fully. This money would help students with (dis)abilities and potentially free additional funds for innovation in the classroom and support other students. These funds would help educators provide early interventions to ensure all kids have an equal opportunity in education regardless of their condition. This would translate into services such as speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and mental health services. This translates into increased gains in strategic resource allocation, improved performance in the classroom, and giving students opportunities earlier to help them actualize their potential. Fully funding the 40% federal contribution to IDEA will help all students and even teachers. It has Republican and Democratic support from New York to California. Listen to this episode as we discuss the bill's details and how it will benefit local schools in rural and urban areas, including topics of local control. This is a call to action for all our listeners, educators, administrators, and parents. Please get in touch with your senators and members of Congress to support this bill. We have a huge opportunity to make a real difference, and we invite you to join the call. About our Guests. Heather Zellers is the Director of Information and Advocacy for the Rural Schools Association of New York (RSA). Heather also serves as the Chair of the National Rural Education Advocacy Consortium (NREAC), President of the National Rural Education Association (NREA) Foundation, and is a member of the NREA Executive Committee. If you are interested in reaching out to Superintendent Jaime Green at jgreen@tausd.org https://www.tausd.org/index.html

Ben Mattlin is one of my favourite writers to read about disability, disability policy and life with disability. His latest book, Disability Pride, describes how the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has changed disability advocacy in the United States and provides snapshots of what disability advocacy and culture looks like today. I was so humbled and grateful when he agreed to be on our show and I hope you enjoy this conversation. Learn more about Ben at www.benmattlin.com Ben references some different pieces of American legislation. You can read more about the history of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act here: https://sites.ed.gov/idea/IDEA-History. The lawsuit Ben refers to where a Florida woman is suing a Maine resort over its lack of ADA compliance is called the Acheson Hotels, LLC, v. Deborah Laufer. Read the New York Times reporting on it here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/27/us/supreme-court-maine-disability.html.

On March 4th, 2023, the world was shaken by the passing of the legendary disability rights activist and leader Judith (Judy) Heumann. She is considered “The Mother of the Disability Rights Movement” and is frankly a badass. Judy was essential to disability rights advocacy and progress. It is because of her advocacy that our organization can do the work we do today. We are indebted to her and her work, and we will continue her fight for disability rights in her honor. To honor her, we wanted to record a special tribute about Judy, her advocacy, and the long-lasting impact that her presence will have on the disability community and the world. Relevant links and topics mentioned in the episode: Crip Camp & Camp Jened Heumann v Board of Ed of the City of New York Disabled in Action Rehabilitation Act Protests in NYC Berkeley Center for Independent Living The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act 504 Sit in World Institute on Disability Judy's memoir “Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist” Rolling Warrior: The Incredible, Sometimes Awkward, True Story of a Rebel Girl on Wheels Who Helped Spark a Revolution Movie adaption of "Being Heumann" is under development, with Ali Stroker Heumann Perspective podcast Recording of her services  

Welcome! Our eligibility series continues in today's show as we take a look at one of the most misunderstood eligibility categories: Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD). Although the federal law (IDEA: Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) trumps state laws, state laws can go further but not limit the IDEA provisions. In California, most state laws are similar to the IDEA, but this may not be the case in your state. It's worth checking how your state laws compare with the IDEA provisions. Let's take a closer look!Show Highlights:How a Specific Learning Disability is defined under the IDEA (with the double requirement of having a diagnosis AND that it adversely affects educational process)Why a qualifying SLD has to be a specific learning deficit in a particular area of learning and not a broad diagnosis, like dyslexia or autismWhy most failures occur in the analysis of the broad language of the IDEA by school districtsHow the term “significant discrepancy” can be interpreted in different waysHow the California education code splits the qualifications into A, B, and C sections of the clarificationsHow the California code addresses the discrepancy model with specific language that demands more than one source to indicate a learning deficitWhy it's clear that school districts should be doing more when they analyze the categories of eligibilityWhy parents have the right to ask what is meant by the language used by the school district in analyzing their student–and demand that they support their conclusion with dataLinks/Resources:Contact us on social media or through our website for more information on the IEP Learning Center: www.inclusiveeducationproject.org Thank you for listening! Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to the show to receive every new episode delivered straight to your podcast player every Tuesday.If you enjoyed this episode and believe in our message, then please help us get the word out about this podcast. Rate and Review this show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, or Google Play. It helps other listeners find this show.Be sure to connect with us and reach out with any questions/concerns:FacebookInstagram–We are doing videos on Instagram, so connect with us there and send us your questions!TwitterIEP websiteEmail us: admin@iepcalifornia.org

Issue(s): (1) Whether, and in what circumstances, courts should excuse further exhaustion of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act's administrative proceedings under Section 1415(l) when such proceedings would be futile; and (2) whether Section 1415(l) requires exhaustion of a non-IDEA claim seeking money damages that are not available under the IDEA. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

A case in which the Court held that an Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuit seeking compensatory damages for the denial of a free and appropriate education may proceed without exhausting the administrative processes of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act because the remedy sought is not one IDEA provides.

Civil Procedure: Must plaintiffs suing under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act exhaust for remedies that are futile or not available administratively? - Argued: Wed, 18 Jan 2023 14:4:59 EDT

This month, we're excited to share a fireside chat with lifelong disability rights advocate Judy Heumann.Judy has been instrumental in the development and implementation of legislation such as Section 504, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.Judy has 20 years of non-profit experience working with various disability organizations, including being a founding member of the Berkeley Center for Independent Living and serving on a number of non-profit boards. Judy has also written a memoir, been featured in an Oscar-nominated documentary, and produces a podcast called “The Heumann Perspective.” In this conversation, which was recorded live in August 2022, Judy discusses her personal story, key issues taking place in today's accessibility landscape, and where the future of accessibility advocacy is headed.Thank you for listening to Allied! For transcripts, show information, and updates, visit our website.Follow us on social media! We can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Now WITH sound!   see video version:  https://www.yourparenthelp.com/podcast_0239    “Specific Learning Disability” versus “Dyslexia” I've heard so many parents question the school's report of a “Specific Learning Disability” and ask how they can get their child diagnosed with dyslexia.  In some states, a school can actually give a diagnosis, but this is outside of the scope of schools in many states.     A diagnosis is a medical function, while determining eligibility for an IEP or 504 is a school function.   Assessing for an IEP or 504 A school assessment is done to determine if your child qualifies for an IEP or a 504.  A 504 evaluation is often more simplified and has less regulations than an IEP.    When you are writing a request for assessment from a school district, you are writing a request that the school determine if your child is eligible for either a 504 or an IEP.  The schools are required to provide all children with a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE).  FAPE is not the same for all children.  It is not appropriate to have a wheel-chair bound child run laps around the field.  It is not appropriate for a child with a significant reading impairment to be required to read a text far above their ability level simply because it is a grade-level text.  Determining what specific accommodations, modifications, and services a child needs is an important step in ensuring FAPE is being offered.   Schools in most states are not able to officially diagnose, but will perform a lot of the same assessments as a private evaluator who is able to diagnose.  Asking the evaluator if your child has dyslexia will often give you the unofficial diagnosis.  Alternatively, you can seek out an education specialist or a similar professional to help you make sense of the school's testing.   Do I need a diagnosis? You do not need a diagnosis to receive special education services on an IEP or to develop a 504 plan for your child.  However, some people feel more comfortable having that official label.   Keep in mind that dyslexia can be defined in different ways and in the broadest sense, any child with a reading impairment caused by a processing disorder/Specific Learning Disability can be considered to have dyslexia.  So if your child understands the stories read to them, has had reasonable reading instruction, and is not learning how to read, your child can be considered dyslexic.   Some people define dyslexia far more specifically, but because it is sometimes defined broadly, it is not always helpful to have the label.  It doesn't tell us WHY your child is struggling, other than telling us that there is some kind of brain structure impacting their learning.   “Specific Learning Disability sounds vague” Yes!  Specific Learning Disability is a qualifying disability for an IEP under IDEA (The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act).  There are a wide range of processing disorders that can be identified with SLD including: Cognitive, Auditory, Phonological, Visual, Visual-Motor, Sensory Motor, Language, Attention. (Although Language Processing disorder is often considered part of a Speech and Language Impairment rather than SLD.)  Each of those processing disorders gives the teachers and professionals working with your child a clue as to how your child's brain operates a bit differently and how your child is likely to learn best.   So, while “Specific Learning Disability in Reading” is vague, it has as much meaning as “dyslexia” and with an identified processing disorder, is actually more specific.

Hi, Y'all! This week, I celebrated my two-year anniversary at MCIE.  That's right. I left my job at a public school district in the Atlanta Metro area to work in the nonprofit sector, and it's been a huge learning curve.  You see, I used to be a special education teacher. That was my role for 16 years. 13 of those were in the classroom, and 3 were in a district support specialist role. And the whole time I was in the special education department of the districts I worked for, there was something that bothered me. Segregated special education classrooms. You probably already know about this, but just in case you don't know, here is a simplified explanation. Public education is split into two systems. General education and special education. They are supposed to work together to meet the needs of all learners but to be honest it rarely happens. Real talk...it is hard to change a system that is set up to separate learners in the first place. There was a law passed in 1975, which had a funny name (PL 94-142) and then after a few years it was called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. That law made it so that learners with disabilities had a legally protected right to be educated in public schools. Before that law, they were often educated in separate schools or institutions, or if they did go to a regular school, they were not treated that great. But then as learners started attending their neighborhood schools, school leaders didn't necessarily want them there because they thought it would be a distraction or that they were too disabled to learn with everyone else. So, they were put in separate classrooms. And a lot of people thought this was a good idea. But not everyone. As time passed, organizations like MCIE started helping school districts make changes in how they taught all learners. Specifically, how they supported learners with significant disabilities in general education classrooms. And when I mean significant disabilities, I mean learners on the autism spectrum, those with presumed intellectual disabilities, and challenging behavior among others who have been historically excluded. Researchers, school administrators, and teachers all were learning that when school met the needs of all learners in a systematic way rather than by segregating students by disability everyone benefitted. When I entered the field of special education in 2004, the inclusive education movement had already gone through its biggest push in the 1990s. But in my teacher education program, they taught me all about how learners should be together, how general and special education teachers could collaborate to plan for every child in the classroom, and by distributing students with high support needs across a grade level it kept certain classrooms from having more learners with disabilities than other ones. But then when I entered the school system, I realized this is not how schools are run. Cal State Fullerton ruined me! Not really... I love all of you. But they did ruin me in the best way. Because I spent essentially my whole career as an educator trying to change the system from within.  Why are you telling us this Tim? Well, we have some new people who have subscribed to The Weeklyish, and since I'm reflecting on the last two years, I wanted to share my story again. And give you my why. Why is this important to me? You know I've been asked this question a number of times, and the best answer I can give is that I saw a need and something compelled me to devote myself to it. I suppose some people say it is a calling, and I can't disagree. But for whatever reason, the fact that the vast majority of school districts segregate students by disability is to me a grand injustice. And I want to work toward righting that wrong because I do believe it is wrong. And it is not just a belief; we have evidence that it is not the best for kids. And you know what I keep hearing out of the mouths of school leaders that segregate kids? “We do what's best for kids.” Here is what I say. No. You are not doing what is best for kids. You are doing what is the most convenient to sustain an inequitable system. So, it is in that spirit that I wanted to share with you my favorite Weeklyish articles since I started writing this newsletter in January of 2020.  This first one is from February 2020, called On Separate Spaces, and Why They Are and Are Not Needed. Here is the key takeaway. The goal is always 100% inclusive placement with support. But there are very rare instances where a learner may need something else, and though inclusionists don't like to talk about it, it is a reality that I think hurts our credibility when we want to stick our head in the sand and pretend this scenario doesn't exist.  Recently, I had a short Facebook exchange with a former colleague that addressed this.  Generally, if a learner truly needs to be removed, it should only be temporary. There should always be a plan to bring a learner back into the community where they belong. The problem with special education classrooms, as most districts have set them up, is these separate and segregated environments are the settings where they say students with extensive support needs belong. So, on the rare occasion that families (or educators) push for an inclusive placement, the minute things do not go perfectly, skeptics will point to that as an example of inclusion not working. But it can't just be one learner (or even a handful) for it to work. There has to be a commitment by the district to operate differently and have the expectations that all learners belong in a general education classroom. And then...and only then...if a learner needs an alternate setting, it is for a specific reason and only temporary because the classroom where they belong is waiting for them to return. The next one, from January 2021, is called Let's Stop Pretending That We Can't Do Better Than Segregated Special Education Classrooms. Here is an excerpt: Educational research that has been around for decades has shown that inclusive education benefits students with and without disabilities. So why aren't we doing it? It was easy to try to rationalize why things were not changing fast enough when I worked in a system that wasn't inclusive. But now that I am out, and working and talking with educators in school districts that are implementing inclusion the way that it was intended, there is simply no excuse for me not to state the obvious. Let's stop pretending that segregated special education classrooms are the best we can do. I get that some may not be able to wrap their head around what this looks like. But fortunately, there are some excellent examples. All it takes is for a state or district administrator to investigate it for themselves. And finally, from June 2021, my piece called, How to Include Students with Disabilities in General Education in 4 Easy Steps. What you probably don't know is that when I was first getting my blog and podcast Think Inclusive off the ground, I wrote a blog post called, Quit Using the R-Word in 3 Easy Steps (now only available on the Wayback Machine). So, the title is a bit of a throwback.  I like this one because it lays out the steps of moving toward a fully inclusive system. There is more to it of course, and it certainly isn't easy, but it is a start and if there is anything that I want you to do after finishing this edition of The Weeklyish is start. Start anyway you can! I know I'm not the only educator that sees the inherent problem with special education classrooms. This is your sign to do something about it. The first thing you can do is share this message with a friend, colleague, or family member. That's your homework assignment. I still love to give homework.  That's all the recommendations for past articles I have today.  As always, if you ever have questions or comments email me at tvillegas@mcie.org or go to mcie.org to learn more about how we can partner with you and your school or district. Thanks for your time, everyone. I'll be back in a couple of weeks with another edition of The Weeklyish.  Have a great week! ICYMI What Does Truly Meaningful Inclusion Mean to You? Dr. Mona Delahooke | Beyond Behavior Charts and Positive Reinforcement 5 Ways to Get Inclusion Started at Your School Mazey Eddings | Neurodiverse Representation in Books Around the Web How my school gets students to “behave” Rethinking The 3 D's... Rethinking Guardianship: Emma's Story Airlines May Be Required To Accommodate Travelers In Their Wheelchairs Schools Nationwide Expect Special Ed Teacher Shortages This Fall What I'm Reading Underestimated by J. B. Handley and Jamison HandleyWhat I'm Watching Reservation Dogs (FX on Hulu) Trailer HD - Taika Waititi comedy series What's in my Pod Feed467: Plot Twists (The Popcast With Knox and Jamie)  Evan Phillips: Founder Of Pod Peak Studios | From Mountain Climber to Podcast Producer (Clipped)  Podcasts about Work and Work Culture (Feedback with EarBuds)  All Means ALL – A Welcome from Sarolyn (All Means ALL Inclusive Education)  What I'm Listening To Death Cab for Cutie - Here To Forever (Official Music Video) What's in my Timeline Cultures don't change because they're ready. Cultures change because brave people make them ready.  Natalie Vardabasso (@natabasso)  From the Wayback Machine 9 Resources for Creating an Inclusive Classroom This School Year Just Because If my girlfriend actually turned into a worm J.R. Youngblut (@JRYoungblut)  ... The Weeklyish is written, edited, and sound designed by Tim Villegas and is a production of MCIE. Our intro stinger is by Miles Kredich. And our outro is by REDProductions. For information about inclusive education visit mcie.org and check out our flagship podcast, Think Inclusive, on your favorite podcast app. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit weeklyish.substack.com

Did you know that there are 3 domains & TEN categories of life skills? Julie Swanson visits with Shawn Francis to discuss these life skills and more. Julie Swanson is a parent to a thriving child with Autism. She's a special education advocate, & the founder of https://lifeskillslady.com/ which was created to serve as the link between life skills & increased quality of life for those with autism. She is also the author of Your Special Education Rights: What Your School District Isn't Telling You as well as the companion website, https://yourspecialeducationrights.com/, a video-based website that simplifies parent's rights under IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). — Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/just_two_dads/ Podcast: https://anchor.fm/justtwodads LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justtwodads Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearejusttwodads YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-GN4T9fkHEVR5R_16w_7bw #JulieSwanson #LifeSkillsLady #AutismSpectrumLifeSkillsCoach

During the summer months, parents have an opportunity to review some things to get ready for the next academic year. This is especially true for parents of a child who learns and thinks differently. Whether your child is attending summer school or taking a mental health break over the summer, there are things that you can do to ensure that your child's IEP, 504 Plan, or your child's need for an evaluation are ready to go. To help us understand this topic and our rights, powerhouses Vickie Brett and Amanda Selogie join the podcast today. Vickie and Amanda are both attorneys and founders of the Inclusive Education Project, which includes support groups, an IEP Learning Center, and a podcast. Ultimately, they are committed to strengthening and empowering clients who come to them beaten and broken down by their experience in the education system.   Show Notes: [2:34] - Right now in the summer, Vickie and Amanda are feeling the need to recharge. [4:01] - There is a collective trauma as a result of the pandemic that we continue to be impacted by. [6:37] - Schools don't know if gaps in learning are due to Covid or if there are underlying issues that a student needs support for. [8:36] - The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act does not look at a student as compared to their peers. It looks at their needs and circumstances. [10:11] - If their experience is impacting them in the educational environment, a student may be eligible for an IEP. [12:52] - The majority of people working at schools do not have legal knowledge. [14:13] - If there is a suspicion of a disability, an assessment must be done, even if they don't believe they'll qualify. [15:53] - Include several people in an email when requesting assessments or IEP evaluations. [17:44] - If requested over the summer, the time frame begins on the first day of school. In California, schools have 15 days to complete an assessment. [19:41] - At the beginning of Covid-19 lockdowns, many parents experienced seeing their child learn for the first time. [21:14] - What do you get with an IEP that you don't get with a 504? [22:39] - Even if your child does not qualify for an IEP, the information gathered from the evaluation is valuable. [24:00] - You should not be getting pushback regarding an assessment. [27:07] - It is important to know that you can request an IEP meeting at any time. Vickie and Amanda share when to request one. [29:14] - Sending an email to all teachers is important to keep in contact about their IEP. [31:47] - IEP goals should be written concisely. Take a look at those goals and see what you can work on over the summer as well to see what they're able to do. [33:47] - Take every opportunity to ask questions. [35:08] - It is completely okay, however, to take the summer off for mental health breaks. [36:41] - Another valuable tip is to bring a friend to an IEP meeting to take notes. [38:14] - When should you reach out for legal help? [40:33] - Each school year brings increased academic demands. Bring concerns up to the school and request an IEP meeting. [41:57] - If you send an email over the summer, be aware that administrators may not prioritize this until the school year starts.   About Our Guests: Vickie Brett was born and raised in Southern California and through the Inclusive Education Project she focuses on advocating and educating families about their legal rights. Vickie is committed to strengthening her clients who come to her disheartened and beaten down by the current education system. Because Vickie is bilingual, she represents and empowers many monolingual Spanish-speaking families. She is a dedicated pro-bono attorney for the Superior Court of Los Angeles's Juvenile and Dependency 317(e) Panel and, in the past, was a supervising attorney for the UCI Law School's Special Education Law Project.   Amanda Selogie received a bachelor's degree in Child and Adolescent Development, specializing in Education from California State University, Northridge and a Juris Doctorate from Whittier Law School where she served as a Fellow in the prestigious Center for Children's Rights Fellowship Program and served in the school's pro-bono Special Education Legal Clinic. Amanda immersed herself in the world of civil rights and educational advocacy through her work in education, empowerment, and advocacy with the Inclusive Education project, supporting inclusion in early education through her appointment to the Orange County Child Care and Development Planning Council and their Inclusion Collaborative Committee, previous work serving as a supervising attorney for UCI Law School's Education Rights Pro-bono project and coaching of AYSO's VIP (Very Important Player) program coaching players living with disabilities and creating an inclusive soccer program.    Connect with Vickie and Amanda: Inclusive Education Project Website Contact Inclusive Education Project   Links and Related Resources: Episode 32: Advocating for Children with Special Needs with Heather Zakson Episode 2: Demystifying the Assessment Process What is a Comprehensive Evaluation and How Can It Help Support My Child's Learning? How to Initiate a Special Education Assessment   Join our email list so that you can receive information about upcoming webinars - ChildNEXUS.com The Diverse Thinking Different Learning podcast is intended for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical or legal advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Additionally, the views and opinions expressed by the host and guests are not considered treatment and do not necessarily reflect those of ChildNEXUS, Inc or the host, Dr. Karen Wilson.

Mark Claypool, co-author of How Autism is Reshaping Special Education. Topic: The Unbundling of IDEA and more. Issues: What is IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), what it did right and where it went wrong; becoming an advocate for your child and getting the most appropriate services; who pays for services for children with autism […] The post Unbundling of IDEA + Mentally Strong Parents appeared first on Mr. Dad.

The Alice Cogswell and Anne Sullivan Macy Act is a Bill that aims to strengthen the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to improve results for deaf, hard of hearing, blind, visually impaired, and deaf-blind children. On this episode of Voices of Vision Leaders, we are joined by the architect of the Bill, Mark Richert, as well as Dr. Bernadette Kappen and Libby Murphy to explain the importance of the Bill in the blind and visually impaired communities and what you can do to support it. To learn more about the Bill, visit cogswellmacyact.org. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/visionserve-alliance/message

In this podcast, we talk with Fabiana Perla, Chair of the Department of Blindness and Low Vision Studies (BLVS) at Salus University, Katherine Alstrin, EdD SPED| TVI/COMS, Adjunct Faculty in the Department of BLVS, and Staci Wills, MS, Ed, COMS, a teacher of students with visual impairments. They talk to us about the Neurological Visual Impairment in Children course and its uniqueness to Salus and the BLVS field. To learn more about this course and BLVS at Salus, you can visit salus.edu/blvsTo learn more about our podcast series, visit salus.edu/podcastsReferencesChang, M. Y., & Borchert, M. S. (2020). Advances in the evaluation and management of cortical/cerebral visual impairment in children. Survey of ophthalmology, 65(6), 708-724. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0039625720300497IDEA. Definition of a Child with a Disability: https://sites.ed.gov/idea/regs/b/a/300.8 IDEA. Determination of Eligibility for Special Education: https://sites.ed.gov/idea/regs/b/d/300.306IDEA. Eligibility Determinations for Children Suspected of Having a Visual Impairment Including Blindness under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act: https://sites.ed.gov/idea/files/letter-on-visual-impairment-5-22-17.pdfMcDowell, N. (2021). A review of the literature to inform the development of a practice framework for supporting children with cerebral visual impairment (CVI). International Journal of Inclusive Education, 1-21. https://www-tandfonline-com.libsalus.idm.oclc.org/doi/full/10.1080/13603116.2020.1867381?scr oll=top&needAccess=trueSalus NVI LiveBinder: https://www.livebinders.com/play/play/2360226?tabid=dc33f40a-f9bf-3fe3-bb2c-5214654c979f

Residents in two of the three towns making up the Pentucket Regional School District are being asked to consider overriding the state's tax limiting law to pay for the school district's nearly $50 million spending plan for next yearGroveland and Merrimac voters will consider what's called an “operational budget override,” while West Newbury officials believe the added amount can be accommodated in the town's planned budget. School Superintendent Justin Bartholomew told WHAV this week this is the district's first Proposition 2 ½ override request in 10 years, and it mostly centers around transportation costs. “As we negotiate our transportation contracts for our both our regular buses and special education buses, and we did not get full funding for regional transportation, which we were supposed to get. So, those three items alone put us back $583,000.”Bartholomew added the spending plan includes six special education teaching positions and several other support positions. The posts are in keeping with guidelines recommended by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act “desperately needed” to meet student needs.While the school district's budget tends to rise annually by $1-1.4 million, he blamed the state for an education formula that provides only $69,000 more this year.“So that $69,000 is not helping much. This has just been one of those disturbing trends that the state is focusing their money on more urban districts which certainly we agree that they need, but really pulling away from communities like ours,” he said.He added the state approach is “severely burdening out taxpayers.”Budget increases are not related to construction of the new middle and high schools which were approved under separate override votes.Merrimac residents consider the issue at their Town Meeting Monday, April 25, while Groveland voters have the override question on their Town Meeting warrant scheduled for Monday, May 23. Two of the three towns must approve the override for the school budget to take effect.If approved, Groveland residents with a home valued at $400,000 would pay $139.30 more annually and Merrimac residents with a home valued at the same amount would pay $186.92 more.Support the show (https://whav.net/become-a-whav-member/)

In this episode I talk with Shae Spears, a Special Education teacher who has personally walked the journey of life with a disability.  With Dyslexia, an auditory processing disorder and ADHD,  Shae struggled all through school, never really learning to read or even comprehend what she was supposed to be reading.Shae was part of the first group of students to receive services under IDEA (The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) of 1975.  IDEA is a law that makes available a free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities throughout the nation and ensures special education and related services to those children.She was in special education with an IEP until 8th grade.  Despite her learning challenges, Shae went on to earn an undergraduate degree in Early Childhood Education, a Masters degree in Special Education and a Master Certificate as an IEP coach.She has been teaching Special Education for 26 years, keeping her disabilities silent most of her professional life.   Shae is also a Special Ed Consultant and Master IEP Coach, supporting the neurodiverse community.Shae helps parents and students navigate special education and the IEP process or anything else they may be struggling with.  As a life coach she supports teens and young adults with disabilities to feel accepted, empowered and encouraged.Though she resides in Texas, Shae is available to help no matter where you live in whatever way you may need her support.Connect with Shae Spearshttps://ww.shaespears.comEmail: Shaespears4u@gmail.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shae_spears4u/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shae4uConnect with SandyIG: https://www.instagram.com/sandydeppischEmbrace the Blessing Facebook Group: http://bit.ly/ETB4MEWebsite: http://www.embracetheblessing.com/

The IEP process can be confusing overwhelming and emotionally draining welcome to the Down Right Capable podcast. Even for those of us who have been down this road, many times we all feel a bit nervous or even frustrated when it comes time for our child's IEP. But there are some good news, the whole process is governed by rules and regulations that are designed to protect you and your child. Did you know that there are 6 principles found with IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). Today on the podcast we want to talk to you about; Zero Reject Nondiscriminatory Evaluation On our next episode we will be discussing: Individualized and Appropriate Least Restrictive Environment Please stay tuned for that next episode. Please share this episode with others, so that we can educate as many people on special education and inclusion advocacy. If you like what you hear, please consider making a small donation. Brian and I do not get paid to do this podcast, we just love what we do, but it does take time. Your small donation will help us keep the lights on and help as many families as we can. #downsyndrome #downsyndromeawareness #specialeducation #IEP #IDEA #downrightcapable #inclusionmatters --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/down-right-capable/support

Today we bring you the first segment of a very special two-part episode in which we get to speak with three guests representing all three of the focus areas that we've been working to bridge in this podcast: Joel Boehner, Assistant Director of Exceptional Learners at South Bend Community School Corporation, Dr. Sarah Hurwitz, associate professor in special education at Indiana University - Bloomington, and Dr. Jennifer Meller, Associate Manager for Special Education Consulting Services at PCG (Public Consulting Group), the vendor providing the statewide Indiana IEP (IIEP) software for managing data and documents related to the education of students with disabilities. In the first segment of this episode, we discuss how the connections among these individuals' work came about, as well as several relatively recent trends in the federal requirements for educating students with disabilities, such as the move from a focus on compliance to results-driven accountability (RDA) and the challenges and opportunities for utilizing a data standard with very individualized education goals and progress data. We hope you enjoy listening to this as much as we enjoyed recording it! Stay tuned for Part II next week. Show notes & abbreviations Joel Boehner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelboehner/ Dr. Sarah Hurwitz: https://education.indiana.edu/about/directory/profiles/hurwitz-sarah.html Dr. Jennifer Meller: https://www.publicconsultinggroup.com/leadership/education/dr-jennifer-meller/ Equity in Action: https://education.indiana.edu/community/aac-in-action/index.html Autism Research Collaborative: https://www.iidc.indiana.edu/what-we-offer/autism/ INSOURCE: https://insource.org/ PCG (Public Consulting Group): https://www.publicconsultinggroup.com/ Indiana graduation pathways: https://www.in.gov/doe/students/graduation-pathways/ RDA: results-driven accountability NWEA (MAP - Measures of Academic Progress test from the Northwest Evaluation Association) https://www.nwea.org/the-map-suite/ LEA: local education agency (school district/school corporation) IDEA: Individuals with Disabilities Education Act: https://sites.ed.gov/idea/ IEP: Individualized Education Program (a requirement of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) IIEP (Indiana IEP): software program to manage IEP data in Indiana (statewide) FAPE: Free, appropriate, public education (a requirement of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Act) FBA: Functional Behavioral Assessment (part of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; https://www.pacer.org/parent/php/php-c215a.pdf) LRE: Least restrictive environment (a requirement of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Act) Music: Music: Exploring The World by Vlad Gluschenko is licensed under a Creative Commons License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... https://soundcloud.com/vgl9 Support by RFM - NCM

Full Transcript Shannon Austin, Executive Director of Vocational Rehabilitation at the Pennsylvania (PA) Department of Labor and Industry and Carole Clancy, Bureau Director of Special Education at the Commonwealth of PADepartment of Education join Carol Pankow and Missy Diehl in the VRTAC-QM Studio to talk about the important partnership between Vocational Rehabilitation and Education and how collaboration and commitment helped create and implement a strong partnership in Pennsylvania.   Check out and subscribe to the PA Transition Resources and Transition Tidbits on the web at https://www.pasecondarytransition.com.   Listen Here   You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at: https://www.vrtac-qm.org/   Please stay up to date by following VRTAC-QM on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @VRTAC_QM   About VRTAC-QM Partnering with State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (SVRAs) to enhance service delivery and maximize outcomes through quality program and resource management. The purpose of the VRTAC-QM is to provide training and technical assistance that will enable State VR agency personnel to manage available resources, improve effective service delivery, and increase the number and quality of employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. The VRTAC-QM provides TA and training in VR program and performance quality management, fiscal and resource quality management of the VR program, and general quality management of organizations. You can request technical assistance from the VRTAC-QM by contacting your TA Liaison directly, contacting any member of the Center you wish, or by filling out the information on our main websiteand clicking on submit. While on the main website, join our mailing list to receive updates on training and new activities occurring within the Center.     Full Transcript   VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: Education and VR - Let's Talk Collaboration     {Music} Speaker1: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.   Carol: Well, welcome to the manager minute, I am so fortunate to have representatives from both VR and education to join me in the studio in an extra special bonus as having my colleague Missy deal helping me facilitate this conversation. Today we have Shannon Austin, Executive Director of Vocational Rehabilitation at the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. And Carol Clancy, Bureau Director of Special Education at the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Education. So welcome to you all.     Carol Clancy: Thank You.   Shannon: Thank you. Glad to be here.   Carol: Today, we're going to dig into the very important topic of the partnership between VR and education that was brought to the forefront through the passage of W Iowa. When Missy talked with me about tackling this topic, you two were at the top of the list for people to connect with. we're now seven and a half years post WIOA passage, and states are at varying degrees when it comes to collaboration and cooperation between VR and education. We know that there are so many linkages between IDEA and WIOA in terms of transition and collaboration, and it's critical for a state as large as Pennsylvania. With well over one hundred and fifty thousand students with disabilities. We're really excited to hear from our Special ED and VR directors in Pennsylvania and how they've been able to not only talk about collaboration but create and implement a strong partnership. So let's dig in. So, Carol, I'm going to kick this to you first. Can you tell us a little bit about your role and your agency and kind of the whole landscape in Pennsylvania around the students with disabilities?   Carol Clancy: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having us here today. It's a pleasure to talk about this topic that we are super passionate about. I'm the director of Special Education for the Pennsylvania Department of Education. I am one of many bureaus at the Pennsylvania Department of Education that works collaboratively to support K through 12 plus students as part of the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. The role of the Bureau Special Education is to ensure that students eligible under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act receive the educational services they're entitled to, to ensure that LEAs maintain compliance with IDEA and to provide the technical assistance to the local education agencies to ensure they have the knowledge base and the skill set, as well as the best practices to meet those expectations. There are about 300,000 students that receive special education services across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and 500 local education agencies. Each one of those local education agencies are ultimately responsible to ensure providing free and appropriate public education. Pennsylvania is also divided up into 29 regions. Each one of those regions has an intermediate unit that provides regional support and services to those local educational agencies in a variety of capacities. These intermediate units have training consultants that are able to go into the schools, into classrooms and to provide the necessary coaching and training that teachers may need. They are a central support system for that region and a liaison between the local education agencies and the Bureau of Special Education. Finally, the Bureau Special Education also has our technical assistance arm, the Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance System Network. This technical assistance provides an array of trainings, resources, asynchronous synchronous coaching supports to intermediate units, as well as local education agencies based on needs that are surfaced through monitoring or need service from the field that is also divided up into three different regions a west, central and eastern region.   Carol: Holy smokes. That is a bunch. Thank you, Carol. So, Shannon, I'm going to kick it over to you. Can you tell us a little bit about your role and about your agency? And kind of like, how many offices do you have, how many students are you serving and all of that good stuff?   Shannon: Yeah. Pleasure to be here with you guys today and just really talk about our partnership with the Department of Education and working very closely with Carol over the last two and a half years. Currently within OVR. I am the executive director of OVR. We have about eight hundred and fifty staff or at full capacity. We are considered a combined agency, so we have the Bureau of Vocational Rehab Services and the Bureau of Blindness and Visual Services. We're serving every disability population. We also are one of the few states that have a comprehensive rehab training center, HTC Commonwealth Technical Institute, where we are also doing training and Pre-ETS and working with young people in this space. We have 21 offices, of which six are co-located in various locations throughout the state. Structurally, when we're looking at doing transition and pre-employment transition services, we have a division that is dedicated to transition services and pre-employment transition services, and they really focus on the policy development training and they're doing training with the VR staff. CRRP community rehab facilities providers that we may on board to do services in this space, employers at times to develop different work based learning experiences and may be key stakeholders that we may have to engage with. And then the crucial part that we're here to really talk about is implementing of programs and services.   We currently have vocational rehab counselors and early reach coordinators that are assigned to all the school districts that we have, and that includes the public, the private and those cyber schools. We have a referral system that is in place where they are working with the school districts, whether they are going in. We have a resource schedule for the cyber schools where we're working with them. We also have designated days where we're going in there monthly, weekly, biweekly into school districts based on just the referrals that we have throughout within a certain school district to meet the needs of those students to implement pre-employment transition services. And with that, some of the structural things that we have that we are really doing with the school districts or the LEAs within the Commonwealth, we have a lot of interagency transition, continual meetings that we're doing. So we really take a team approach. And as we go in a little bit further and talk about some of our MOU work, it's really going to highlight some of the things how we look at transition services and pre-employment transition services within the Commonwealth. Another thing that may make us slightly different than some states, we also have Act. 26, what is a state mandate for over in collaboration with the Department of Education to really collect and report data related to high school students with disabilities and with facilitating the process of job and career development between the local education agencies and employers. And according to the outline of Act 26 in coordination with LEAs, OVR, provides information in developing individual education plans for high school students with disabilities to ensure that job skills training is included in their plans when appropriate and when possible. Overall, our staff will attend education planning meetings, so IEPs, in person or alternative format, whether it's video conferencing conference calls when invited by the LEA's. So that's the basic structure of what we have in over and kind of where we're at. We currently in a year, we're serving anywhere. When we begin to look at the numbers, we have a data sharing agreement between us and VSC where we share data. And with that, in any year, we are serving anywhere from 165,000to 180,000 students that meet that criteria of 14 to 21 years of age in the state that fall under pre-employment transition services.   Carol: Wow, that's a bunch, great.   Missy: Are we ready to dive into the next question, Carol?   Carol: You bet. Missy.   Missy: All right. So can we talk a little bit? Maybe we'll start with Carol again. We'll just kind of yin and yang. You two describe a little bit about your relationship between the two entities, Education and VR in Pennsylvania and what it looked like before what it looks like now. How it's evolved?   Carol Clancy: Sure. Shannon and I started in our positions about the same time, and we are both really motivated to cause a positive change, particularly in this partnership between OVR and education. We actually met three Decembers ago, which is amazing, but I know that we both walked into that room knowing what we both wanted out of that meeting and not sure we were going to attain it. But it was very quick into that conversation. We realized we were on the exact same page and it created a strong synergy not just between Shannon and myself, but our teams. It was really an enlightening moment when we were like, we are in the right place at the right time. So it was that December meeting that we started to really have the conversation about what are the issues in the field and how we wanted to work together to fix them for the better outcomes of students with disabilities and our shared passions. And it was from that time that we set the mission, the vision and the agreement that we were going to have a stronger collaboration. I think what helps this work tremendously is that Shannon and I are direct from the field. We came from the field and we experienced the complexity of implementing and partnering on this work, and we experience what happens when there isn't a strong collaboration.  So bringing that lens and keeping that at the forefront of our minds as we are developing the implementation of the MOU, I think is what is keeping it strong. We certainly are just the run of the work, but we are not the ones doing the work. We have a very strong team beneath both of us that are worker bees that are very passionate, that really are bringing the work together in creating the moment you in a way that can be implemented. I think communication is the key. We have had structure team meetings that have happened regularly, either on a monthly or a twice a month meeting. But Shannon and I communicate regularly. I can commit that we communicate weekly. It may be a. Well, meeting, it may be a conversation between the two of us. It may be a quick meeting. Phone calls for driving somewhere. It could be an email or it could simply be a text. What we communicate minimally on a weekly basis just to make sure the work is moving.   Shannon: I don't want to duplicate what Carol has said because it's all accurate and true. I just want to put it in, probably in a historical perspective of really our relationship. Prior to us coming together and working and doing a lot of the collaborative work over ourselves had found ourselves, and we had an RSA monitoring and we had some corrective actions that we had to deal with and one of them which was updating our MOU with education. With that being said, our MOU had I think it was back in 2011, so it was very outdated and that was our starting point. And prior to that, there really was limited communication between OVR and education. And I think us stepping into our roles, as Carol said, coming from the field brought a real fresh perspective and a commitment on both of our parts, really to come together to make it work. We brought our field perspective, we brought commitment and leadership to our conversations and as we knew that we had to do some compliance stuff, which was the beginning of our relationship and working on the menu and working with the tax center and really coming into a comprehensive agreement with you guys. It was our starting point. And with that commitment of time of bimonthly meetings to really work on the MOU, you start to learn that one. We were speaking different languages, but we have the same intent and collaborating and coming together to really make sure that we were ensuring that we were having a seamless transition of services for the students that both of us were working with coming through our system. And we wanted them to go from school to work and working with both of us as Carroll does her part and we transition them, whether it's to the post-secondary education or to work and through that process. It has been just a growing. At first, I want to say it probably wasn't easy, but it became very organic and it just grew with time and just really our commitment to coming together to implement a very seamless service between both of us and our teams as we developed MOU for the Commonwealth.   Missy: One of the things that I noticed was you too have been so successful in bridging that language barrier between the language and the way that VR works and the language and the way that education works and presented that united front looking at that best way to serve students. How would you say what's that key ingredient, so to speak, in making that happen for Pennsylvania?   Carol Clancy: Sure. So I think that when we brought the teams together, we were able to speak about what are the barriers, what is not working in the field, and they surfaced really quickly on the very most basic level. The fact that sending our students with disabilities or our families with students with disabilities kind of through a gauntlet of fabulousness between the school and adult life was something we didn't want to do anymore. And knowing that this happened because the people that are the front line, the teachers most often who are at the front line are the ones communicating with the families didn't have the information that they need to start. A successful path is where we wanted to start to make sure at the ground level in the trench, the ones doing the work closest to the people needing the support had the information that they need. We wanted to remove those barriers and knowing that if we remove those barriers provided support through the process, we would be able to improve the work that we do. So how did we get to that? I think we really went down to the very granular level. What needs to happen to have this be successful and our building up from that point with the end in mind. It is really important that we are providing tangible supports that can be implemented. So we've developed a series of resources that are accompanied by webinars and training and coaching. Things can't be implemented if you just say this is how it needs to happen, you need to lead the people that direction. So we created the resources and the training and the support, and we want to have the whole group. So with every resource we create, we are creating a parent or a student companion document in the language that they understand and a visual that they can understand. We're also partnering with all of our groups, so I have worked with our PTI and we all have Shannon and myself have done webinars with them, so we're communicating to our families. Any time we have face time providing updates to my special ED Advisory Panel, to all of our advisory groups, to the local education agencies, to the intermediate regional meetings, every time I meet with them, I'm providing an update about where we are in the work, where we're heading. What they can expect, where they need to look for the information so that we are all on the same page and I'll stop there and let Shannon add in as long as she includes the joint website.   Shannon: So just to add on to what Carol talked about, one of the things it truly has been, Melissa, I think you have seen because you've been here kind of from the very start. It is really, truly been a journey for both of us, and we have been expanded by this partnership professionally, but also agency wide in this partnership that we've had. And the thing that we started out from the very beginning is that we said that we want it to be intentional what we were rolling out. But the thing that I think is key is the really the menu was really the glue that brought all of us together and really gave the building blocks and the fundamental pieces that we needed to be clear on what we wanted to do because we were very specific in our planning and the policy and the procedures and coordinating these services for students. So it gave us an opportunity to outline what services look like between the two agencies. It talked about how OVR was going to work with the local education agencies and planning the transition of these students. It really went into great detail on how we were committed to continuous communication. What was planning going to look like, what was the implementation going to look like was the procedures and policies and trying to coordinate these services for students. We're committed to the commitment of our partnership and making sure that we are implementing the services defining real clear expectations between over BSE, the lawyers and families, to the point that on the very onset, when we started to plan and put together and formulate our workgroup, it included various pieces. It was me and Carol and our teams. But it also included advocacy groups, parent groups, a consumer. There was providers that were part of that planning because we really wanted to make sure that we were looking through the lens of whoever was touching the MOU so that there was clear understanding of what we were doing. Roles were defined. We drill down on a toolkit that would make it very implementable for the field because I think our full background coming from the field. We did not want it to just be a document in black and white format. We really wanted to be tangible, something that they could put their hands on and really utilize it as a tool in their toolkit in order to bridge the gap of the services between both of our agencies. And I know we'll probably get more into this, but there were several collaborative areas as we talk about the website appointment connection positions that we've had an opportunity and more things are going to come out of this to really shepherd the view and our partnership and how it's going to increase and expand with time.   Carol: You're teeing us up nicely for the next question. I really get that good sense of that commitment and that collaboration that you all are having. Can you describe the work, now you've given some little nuggets that you all have been doing in Pennsylvania for students and your specific collaboration activities? And Shannon, I'll kick that to you first.   Shannon: So with our 2 years of work, that was the hard part and making sure that we had a planning or strategic MOU in place between the agencies and being clear in our expectations and what we were doing with that, we had a huge rollout here in Pennsylvania and we were able to kind of launch our MOU to the public March 2021. With that being said, me and Carol did a series of ATAND webinars where we introduced the MOU to the public and all stakeholders involved in second transition in Pennsylvania. So the first one had to do with unpacking Demo Q, and the next one had to do with engaging stakeholders and strategic alignment of our efforts. A lot of these were like panel discussions and just laying of information with both our agencies on that. We also launched a new secondary transition website that had various key stakeholders with that, the resources and it really, when you look at the website, it's through the lens. So it's not only done collaboratively, it's through a lens, no matter who the stakeholder is, whether it's the parent, the student, the provider or the school district or individuals from our agency, they really have a sense of the resources that are there and the toolkits that have been built out for them so that they have full understanding of that. We also have some initiatives that I know me and Carol. I'm going to I'm going to leave some of that for you, Carol, to talk about maybe the Navigate Team Navigator position and the youth ambassador position. Those are forthcoming that are really going to support the MOU that we rolled out. But there's been several opportunities where we have collaborated over the last year. We have presented at the transition conference this year to really talk about the MOU. We have a huge presence that was virtually we have worked with. Various agencies like Peel, Hispanic agencies to connect to Hispanic students and parents to really talk about them and the resources that are in place so that it can really highlight all the good work that's going on in Pennsylvania.   Carol: And Shannon, can you share that website address?   Shannon: Yes, I can.   Carol: That'd be great.   Missy: I think it's  PASecondaryTransition.com, right?   Shannon: Yes.   Carol: Excellent. I'm sure our listeners are definitely going to want to check into that. So Carol, Shannon gave you a little leeway there to talk about a couple of things. So please share.   Carol Clancy: Absolutely. I'll comment on 3 joint initiatives. I wanted to say that everything that Shannon is speaking about and that I'm going to speak about is a joint effort. And what I mean is you can't draw a line between what VR did and what education did. It's really just meshed together and collaboration so that the outcomes reflect this joint effort. 3 things I'll talk about is the Employment Navigator, the student ambassador and the Collaboration for Employment initiative we have upcoming this year. So the Student Ambassador Initiative is an effort to create paid work experiences for students with disabilities supported by over to become just that student ambassadors. What their roles would be is to be mentors, role models for other students with disabilities and during the transition world to help guide them along the way. From the student's perspective, these positions would be doing speaking engagements, mentoring, engagement and work experience while they're at the local regional intermediate units or any other approved service provider by OVR. We're really looking forward to this because it speaks volumes to the efforts that we're putting into people with disabilities, meaning that they are the consumers. So what better way to have them be the spokesperson for the services that they are entitled to? So we're looking forward to that beginning. It's in the process of hiring right now. Another initiative that is coming out in the near future are employment navigator positions. Again, these are positions that will be funded by OVR, hired by our regional intermediate units. And the purposes of these positions is to fill that void that occurs between school age services and adult services. We often lose our families or our students in this gauntlet of uncertainty between that path, between school age and adult services. So this employment navigators role will be just that fill that void, for example, benefits counseling. It can be extremely complex for anybody to understand. You really need to be an expert in that area, and it can become a barrier to some people with disabilities seeking employment. So we're going to have the employment navigator become an expert in that area to help support our students or our young adults with disabilities, to navigate that, to lead to continued competitive integrative employment in the future. And the last thing to speak to, which is important, is our collaboration for employment initiative. So this initiative is an adding to the work that's happening by bringing in the Office of Developmental Programs because we know that this support system is a 3 pronged support. How does education, how does employment and how does potential support services work collaboratively to support all students with disabilities to transition to competitive integrated employment? We each have our own languages, our own functions, our own case managers, but our case managers at the field level need to work together.  Education, the case manager and support coordinators need to work collaboratively to support these families, but we all speak a different language. It's difficult for all three to sit at the table at the same time. So through the state initiative between all three agencies, we will build that condition to happen. We are going to build conditions where the last series of trainings and webinars and intentional time to bring those three parties together at the regional level, to have a conversation, to understand the work that each other does, so they can strengthen the work they do together and to look at their regional needs and develop strategic plans based on their region on how to move this work forward for equity of all students. Because if you look across Pennsylvania, what's available in regions is not equitable and the need may not be the same based on the region. So we're going to have these parties come together, learn about each other, learn about the work that we do understand how they intersect just as similarly as we have between OVR and education, and then work to enhance what's available at the regional level across the state. So there's a lot more to come, but those are three of the top level things that will be coming in the next year.   Carol: So I just want to follow up on that for a minute. So for our listeners who are saying, Oh my gosh, I mean, this all sounds super exciting and they want to get a little more information, would you say Shannon is the best to go to the website? Is there a particular person they could reach out to? What would be the best way for other folks to get a little more information if they want to try to mirror something in their state?   Shannon: I think me and Carol have really kind of kept an open door, so. There's other states that may want to do this, we'd be open for that, to talk to them on some of our things that we have done, but the biggest thing is probably to look at the website, a lot of the resources that were developed. Everything from our menu to the toolkit. A lot of the resources are on our website for them to access.   Carol: Perfect. Thank you. I appreciate that.   Carol Clancy: If I could just comment on that on the transition website, there is something called transition tidbits that you can subscribe to. So whoever is interested, they can subscribe to transition tidbits and it'll give you everything updated that we're doing in Pennsylvania regarding transition. And we've already had hits across the world. So we have hits all over the country, but we've also had hits in Europe and other countries based on the work that's happening.   Carol: Good to know. That's awesome. So Missy, I'm over to you now.   Missy: Yeah. And I think you all kind of touched on what we were going to get too next because, you know, I think what we get so impressed by with what's happening in Pennsylvania is not just what you've wanted to do, but the actual implementation of it. So when it comes to the professional development or creating those sustainability pieces with regard to the tools or the positions, what's coming next for you guys? What's next?   Carol Clancy: Well, I think that both Shannon and I operate with the perspective that there really isn't any limit. So we have the 3 things we want to implement over the next year. But we already brainstorming what is the following year. But the priorities are these 3 initiatives coming forward. But we would anticipate as much as we can developing tools for the fields targeting deeper and deeper to our area of needs, such as focusing on particular populations. What students that have blind and visual impairments need is very different than what students with autism may need, or students with very complex abilities that may need some customized employment options. We certainly want to work and focused on developing them and developing the community. There is a lot of work at Pennsylvania, at the state level directed toward employment of people with disabilities. So we're aligning our work with the governor's initiative, which include initiative around preparing model employers. And Shannon, I'll let you talk about that because you've been much more involved in that, but we are going to ensure that the work that we're doing is lined up with the overall work at the state level to support employers.   Shannon: So as Carol said, we have so much going on here in Pennsylvania beyond just the agency. When you're talking about employment and individuals with disabilities like we are probably at the center of our purpose when it comes to WioA, IDEA,, we are employment first state, we have that twenty six. We're also very active, as Carol said, in a grant to really focus on employer engagement and over our course as a dual customer system, and that we work with customers with disabilities, but we also engage with employers to make sure and become that bridge for them. And here in Pennsylvania, we're at any year working with anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 employers. When you look at all the placements that we do here in Pennsylvania, so the commitment that we have in trying to bring it to the next level is always something that we're trying to expand current relationships that we have with employers to see where we can do more, especially with high school students, because I think WIO was really a turning point for the VR system, and some will say that it was earthshaking because we was not working with students 14 to 21 years of age prior to this. So with the implementation of WIO, it really was a key changer for the VR system and the workforce system in itself that we would establish ourselves as part of the 6 core programs in the workforce development system to do more collaboration.   With that being said, we should be strategic planning together. We should be cutting down supplanting of services, duplication of services and there needs to be more coordination, collaboration. And with this during the MOA, it has allowed us over and education to do exactly some of the things that WIO intended in the workforce system. So what are we going to do? We're going to continue to do a lot of professional development. We're committed to that. You're no stronger than your workforce, me and Carol. We're doing the policy. The policy has to become alive and implementable and practical for the field. So we're committed to make sure that they have the toolkit that the tools that they need in order to implement the services and they need to understand the services. My hope is that we are cheerleaders for the staff that we're going to encourage. We're going to uplift them and give them the support that they need and understand what it is to implement the service and work with students and families here in the Commonwealth to make sure that the service is implemented seamlessly.   Carol: Well, what you two Are doing is so exciting, like this is unbelievable, and I'm thrilled and I'm sure our listeners are like going, Oh my gosh, but how do I start? So I want to ask both of you and I'm going to ask Carol first. The advice that you might have for states who are struggling because we still have that, I know we're seven and a half years in, but we still have states like we're not talking the Education Bureau, not talking or there's disagreements. Or maybe there's talking, but they're really not getting anything going. Do you have any advice for those states that are struggling?   Carol Clancy: Yes, I can. I think the number one thing to keep in mind is the students in which we serve. Keep them at the front of every conversation and the mission. Because if you get siloed in your own agency and the rules you need to follow or the missions behind your agency, you really can lose what your focus is supposed to be. So stay focused on the students and the outcomes that you are responsible for together. So that's a mission. Enough to work together is that there are outcomes that need to happen and that you both need to work toward that you're both accountable for. But I think most important and we've said this numerous times, but I'm just going to emphasize that enough. You can't forget the field and how it's implemented. Often at the state. We can create best practice in an ideal scenario, but it loses its translation in the implementation if you don't know what it looks like to be implemented in the field. So if they are on a place where I would say they need to start talking to the field, they need to start talking to the people doing the work right now. What are the barriers? Why isn't it working and working from that point forward to know what should be happening and their language should be? What do you need? Here are some options. What can I do to help? How can we support you and blah blah blah? Not this is how it's supposed to happen and do it. It has to be. What do you need to make this happen? And we're here to help you. And what's the best way we can help you to make this happen?   Carol: Well said, sage advice. So Shannon, I'm going to leave the last words of wisdom to you.   Shannon: So just a couple of things in agreement with everything that Carroll said. My background is business services, so I'm going to start right here. Relationships are key. Unless you have a relationship, you don't do business with people you don't trust. That is the same thing that we have been talking about through this whole process is about relationships. There has to be a starting point. If there is none, begin to get one. If you have one, strengthen it. I think that's our starting point because me and Carol prior to this do not have a working relationship whatsoever. So it was from the very beginning, but the MOU was our starting point. The second thing that made it successful or has made it successful is our commitment to this partnership and collaboration. Commitment has to start from the top. And when I tell you that it filters down through the layers, it becomes a very intentional document when working through and trying to create one, the MOU.. But just a partnership that we have because of the MOU. It created the environment where we were really strategically planning on what our partnership was going to look like. We were very clear on that expectation. Who was going to do what we wanted to make sure that we had supporting documentation for our staff. So we were very intentional in how we were going to roll out the MOU with our staff. We committed to communication, continuous communication. We don't know what we don't know and what we don't understand. We need to clarify, especially at this level, because if it's cloudy and unclear at the top, it's going to filter down through the agencies and implementing a policy. I'm in strong agreement with Carol saying that we did not want this employee to just be a document where it was just a policy. We met the requirement. We met the compliance piece of the obligation. We wanted to make sure that it was implementable, that it was a live living document that we were constantly put in our eyes on because we were committed to the mission of transitioning students that we were working with in both our systems and that we were working together to do that and that we were on the same page. And literally through this process, it continues to grow. And really, the sky is the limit for anyone that's willing to put in the time the work and the effort and the commitment to doing something as we have in Pennsylvania.   Carol: Well, I'm adding an exclamation point to that word commitment that you said over and over this morning. I just think that it's incredible and it's coming through loud and clear. So thanks to you both for taking the time today to discuss this really super important topic, and we wish you the best in all of your endeavors. Thanks much.   Missy: Thank you, guys.   Shannon: Thank you.   Carol Clancy: Thank you.   {Music} Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR one manager at a time, one minute at a time brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Hey everyone! We're BACK! New year, new season! In season 3, we're exploring topics about the education system for students with disabilities. Join us today as we learn about the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). We keep things simple by giving you a breakdown of the principles of this law. We also share how this law has impacted our lives.  We are excited for all the new things coming this year and we hope you continue following us on this podcasting journey! Thank you so much for your support. We really appreciate it.  Transcripts are available for this episode!Our Sources: Law, Regulations, and Polcies. California Department of Education. (2022). Retrieve from https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/se/lr/About IDEA. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. (2022) Retrieved from https://sites.ed.gov/idea/about-idea/Follow us on social media: @dudedonttouchmycane on TikTok@dude.dont.touch.my.cane on Instagram@DudeDontTouchMyCane on FacebookContact us at dude.dont.touch.my.cane@gmail.comMusic Mentions: Shirley - "Dreamland" by Glass AnimalsCarolina - "The Wizard and I" by Ariana Grande (from the Broadway Musical 'Wicked')

With an admitted lack of knowledge on dyslexia, host Jessica Kidwell has a beginner's lesson on this disability with Lorraine Hightower, Certified Dyslexia Advocate and Consultant.  In this episode we discuss:The definition of dyslexia and its prevalenceThe signs and indicators of dyslexia in preschool aged and older childrenSteps parents should take if they suspect their child has dyslexiaGold standards for treatment and remediationHow the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) and State criteria can lead to inequity in treatment as well as an adversarial relationship with public schoolsHow to best partner with your school team to advocate for your childThe use and need for accomodationsHow dyslexia impacts adults and our societyAbout Lorraine Hightower:Lorraine is a certified Dyslexia Advocate & Consultant who helps parents of children with dyslexia navigate the special education process. Working collaboratively with schools, she creates appropriate educational plans that allow children to learn and thrive. Lorraine also informs and influences education leaders, legislators, and community members on best practices for educating children with dyslexia. In 2016, she was awarded “Child Advocate of the Year'' by the Virginia Parent and Teacher Association. Lorraine holds a certificate in Special Education Advocacy from the William and Mary Law School and is a member of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA). Lorraine's advocacy at the state level resulted in mandated teacher training on dyslexia as well as improved reading interventions in local school districts. https://www.lorrainehightower.com/Resources Mentioned:International Dyslexia Association https://dyslexiaida.org/Sally Shaywitz, MDYale Center for Dyslexiahttps://dyslexia.yale.edu/National Center for Learning Disabilitieshttps://www.ncld.org/Support the podcast:https://www.patreon.com/neuroversity

Pick One's with Derek.  The Three Guys interview Erik Voigt Autism Blogger, Head of Dual Spectrum Dad, Operations Manager, and Special Education Advocate Melanie Nazarian.Melanie Nazarian is a Special Education Advocate specializing in special education and assists parents and their children with accessing their educational rights.  She also supports students in Southern New Hampshire up through the age of 21.Autism:  What is Autism? - Autism Society (autism-society.org)Erik Voigt is a dad of two autistic children, heads Dual Spectrum Dad on Facebook, and has his own personal Autism Blog.  Erik discusses how he educated himself and became more knowledgeable of Autism, his children's diagnosis, difficulty to get information on autism years ago, ways that he is sharing information and advocating for Autism, difficulties of parenting and navigating the many agencies, States with the best resources, and his plans for furthering his education of Autism.  Melanie dives into the many agencies/programs available to parents and ways to navigate the application process including enrollment and timing.  She discusses the diagnosis process and having to be seen by highly specialized doctors.   She breaks down a special needs trust and how it differs from a traditional trust.  Melanie and Erik talk accessing services, costs of schooling for autistic children, how diagnosis of autism has evolved over time, options for parents once their child turns 22 years of age and services available to them.  Erik & Melanie breakdown the many agencies available to parents including:- ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) | Autism Speaks- BCBA (is a company that provides ABA therapy) BCBA Services for Autism | Autism Speaks- DDS (Department of Developmental Services) Department of Developmental Services | Mass.gov- IEP (Individualized Education Program)  Individualized Education Plan (IEP) - Autism Society (autism-society.org)- Mass Health Erik VoigtBlog:  dualspectrumdad | Stories From The Autism World (wordpress.com)Facebook: (6) Dual Spectrum Dad | FacebookLinkedIn: (3) Erik Voigt | LinkedIn Melanie Nazarian Facebook:  (6) Melanie Nazarian | FacebookLinkedIn:  (3) Melanie Nazarian | LinkedInEmail:  NazarianAdvocate@gmail.comContact Number:  978-476-7336The Three Guys Podcast:Instagram:  The Three Guys Podcast (@the_three_guys_podcast_) • Instagram photos and videosTwitter:  The Three Guys Podcast (@TheThreeGuysPo1) / TwitterYouTube:   (2) Three Guys Podcast - YouTubeDerek:  Derek DePetrillo (@derekd0518) • Instagram photos and videosBrian:  Brian Nazarian (@the_real_brian_nazarian) • Instagram photos and videos

Pick One's with Derek.  The Three Guys interview Erik Voigt Autism Blogger, Head of Dual Spectrum Dad, Operations Manager, and Special Education Advocate Melanie Nazarian.Melanie Nazarian is a Special Education Advocate specializing in special education and assists parents and their children with accessing their educational rights.  She also supports students in Southern New Hampshire up through the age of 21.Autism:  What is Autism? - Autism Society (autism-society.org)Erik Voigt is a dad of two autistic children, heads Dual Spectrum Dad on Facebook, and has his own personal Autism Blog.  Erik discusses how he educated himself and became more knowledgeable of Autism, his children's diagnosis, difficulty to get information on autism years ago, ways that he is sharing information and advocating for Autism, difficulties of parenting and navigating the many agencies, States with the best resources, and his plans for furthering his education of Autism.  Melanie dives into the many agencies/programs available to parents and ways to navigate the application process including enrollment and timing.  She discusses the diagnosis process and having to be seen by highly specialized doctors.   She breaks down a special needs trust and how it differs from a traditional trust.  Melanie and Erik talk accessing services, costs of schooling for autistic children, how diagnosis of autism has evolved over time, options for parents once their child turns 22 years of age and services available to them.  Erik & Melanie breakdown the many agencies available to parents including:- ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) | Autism Speaks- BCBA (is a company that provides ABA therapy) BCBA Services for Autism | Autism Speaks- DDS (Department of Developmental Services) Department of Developmental Services | Mass.gov- IEP (Individualized Education Program)  Individualized Education Plan (IEP) - Autism Society (autism-society.org)- Mass Health Erik VoigtBlog:  dualspectrumdad | Stories From The Autism World (wordpress.com)Facebook: (6) Dual Spectrum Dad | FacebookLinkedIn: (3) Erik Voigt | LinkedIn Melanie Nazarian Facebook:  (6) Melanie Nazarian | FacebookLinkedIn:  (3) Melanie Nazarian | LinkedInEmail:  NazarianAdvocate@gmail.comContact Number:  978-476-7336The Three Guys Podcast:Instagram:  The Three Guys Podcast (@the_three_guys_podcast_) • Instagram photos and videosTwitter:  The Three Guys Podcast (@TheThreeGuysPo1) / TwitterYouTube:   (2) Three Guys Podcast - YouTubeDerek:  Derek DePetrillo (@derekd0518) • Instagram photos and videosBrian:  Brian Nazarian (@the_real_brian_nazarian) • Instagram photos and videos

FASD Hope is a podcast about Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), through the lens of parent advocates with over eighteen years of lived experience.    Episode 70 highlights Tara Murphy of "The Parenting Frontier". Tara Murphy is the mother of two children diagnosed with developmental disabilities. She has successfully secured effective therapies for them from medical insurance and appropriate educations from her school district. This included multiple, due process hearings. Six years of experience in advocating for her own children has made Tara want to fight for other children as well.  Tara believes that advocating for children with disabilities should begin as early as possible in order to maximize their outcomes. Based in New Jersey, Tara is knowledgeable about state practices and the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), which applies to children in every state. Tara is a SPAN Resource Parent, a Volunteer Advocacy Ambassador for Autism Speaks member of the Somerset County, NJ Advisory Council on Disability Issues and member of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA).   In this resourceful episode, Tara discusses the following topics: her family's journey and what led her to become a parent advocate, her current work through "The Parenting Frontier", services and supports offered through "The Parenting Frontier" and words of encouragement and hope for parents and caregivers of children / teens with developmental disabilities / neurodiversity.   Episode Resources - The Parenting Frontier - https://theparentingfrontier.com/ Tara Murphy - advocate@theparentingfrontier.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/parentingfrontier/   FASD Hope - https://www.fasdhope.com/ natalie@fasdhope.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/fasdhope/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/fasdhope1 Twitter - https://twitter.com/fasdhope LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-vecchione-17212160/ Clubhouse - @natalievecc   Check out our new book “Blazing New Homeschool Trails: Educating and Launching Teens with Developmental Disabilities” by Natalie Vecchione & Cindy LaJoy  BUY IT NOW!

Discover what's possible when the student's interests lead the team.  This week's episode is a recording of a roundtable discussion during one of our Global Autism Community exclusive events. The topic is Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs.  The panelists include Brian Middleton, an autistic Board Certified Behavior Analyst; Colleen Dorsey, a special education teacher; and Michael Gilberg, an autistic special education and disability rights attorney.  Other community members present at the event and part of the discussion are Jeff Snyder, Mary Johnston, Ryan Litchfield, Jessie Sheahan, and Morgan Ferguson.  In today's conversation, we discuss:  The different roles on an IEP team How to reduce combativeness between professionals at IEP meetings Finding the sweet spot when writing goals and encouraging independence How to best support families throughout the IEP process Helpful accommodations suggested by self-advocates in the audience  Some acronyms mentioned in the conversation are IDEA, BCBA, and ABA. IDEA is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which is an American piece of legislation that ensures eligible students with a disability are provided with Free Appropriate Public Education that is tailored to their individual needs. BCBA stands for Board Certified Behavior Analyst, and ABA is Applied Behavior Analysis.  These monthly roundtable discussions are open exclusively to members of our Global Autism Community. A new topic is selected based on each month's theme. If you'd like to attend and participate in any of our future events, you can sign up today at community.globalautismproject.org.  To learn more about the panelists in this discussion, you can visit: Brian Middleton: https://beardedbehaviorist.com/ Colleen Dorsey: @autismausome Michael Gilberg: https://www.michaelgilbergesq.com/  ----more---- We appreciate your time. If you enjoy this podcast and you'd like to support our mission, please take just a few seconds to share it with one person who you think will find value in it too. Follow us on Instagram: @autismpodcast Join our community on Mighty Networks: Global Autism Community Subscribe to our YouTube channel: Global Autism Project  ----more---- We would love to hear your feedback about the show. Please fill out this short survey to let us know your thoughts: Listener Survey. 

In this episode, we are speaking again with one of our most frequent guests – Attorney Larry Altman. Larry currently works as a consultant for schools helping them develop legally compliant policies, protocols and procedures for Title IX, Anti-bullying, student suicide prevention, Section 504, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. He is also a distinguished member of the American…Read more

Are you looking for a bundle of Coach K’s Top MSK Cheatsheets? Look no further: www.nptecheatsheets.com Adisa is working with a child with cerebral palsy in the school system. The therapist would like to ensure that the child is being provided all necessary care according to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Which of the following is NOT covered under IDEA? A. Therapist directed interventions to be performed by the child's teacher B. Monthly reassessments to monitor the child's progress C. A standing frame to facilitate learning in the classroom D. A position in any given extracurricular activity or sport Did you get this question wrong?! If you were stuck between two answers and selected the wrong one, then you need to visit www.NPTEPASS.com, to learn about the #1 solution to STOP getting stuck. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thepthustle/support

It’s been a little more than a year since the start of this pandemic, so we thought we’d take a look back at California-specific senate bills to revisit how we saw them played out. We’ll also be discussing how you can be preparing for the summer and the upcoming school year. We hope you join us! Show Highlights: California Senate Bills: an overview of the highs and lows. It’s important to note that state senate bills do not trump federal law’s IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). Taking a look at IEPs. How the courts see violations. The problems with aide support. Thoughts on individual educational evaluations during this time. Dealing with compensatory education. As the parent, you are the holder of the data and the most important component of the IEP team. Encouraging tips for feeling empowered to speak up during this upcoming school year.   Links/Resources: Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to the show to receive every new episode delivered straight to your podcast player every Tuesday. If you enjoyed this episode and believe in our message, then please help us get the word out about this podcast. Rate and Review this show in Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, or Google Play. It helps other listeners find this show. Be sure to connect with us and reach out with any questions/concerns: Facebook Instagram Twitter IEP website This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not to be construed as legal advice specific to your circumstances. If you need help with any legal matters, be sure to consult with an attorney regarding your specific needs.

A May 6th subcommittees meeting:Committee on Education & LaborTwitter @EdLaborCmteSource link - Event ID=112581https://youtu.be/v6IAmKnNdlMToday, we meet to discuss how the pandemic has affected students with disabilities and our responsibility toensure they have access to free and appropriate education.As this subcommittee has established, the pandemic has disrupted the education and lives of tens of millions ofstudents across the country. But no group of students has lost more access to education during these lifesavingclassroom closures than students with disabilities.To understand why, we must examine the long-standing barriers to quality education for students with disabilitiesand how the pandemic has exacerbated these barriers.For students with disabilities, the promise of equal educational opportunity in federal law is grounded in a basicguarantee: access to free and appropriate public education—in the least restrictive environment—that meets theirneeds.Under the Rehabilitation Act and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA, this means that children withdisabilities have the right to an individualized education plan that meets their unique needs and prepares them forlifelong learning and independent living—their right.Unfortunately, even before the pandemic, far too many students with disabilities did not receive the qualityeducation guaranteed by law. While graduation rates for students with disabilities have improved in recent years,students with disabilities still graduate from high school at disproportionally lower rates, and many receivecertificates that are not equivalent to a diploma.In many cases, this is not because students with disabilities are less capable of reaching their educational goals—it is because we have held back on our commitment to meeting their needs.For far too long, the federal government has underfunded the I-D-E-A and state governments have failed theirresponsibility to better support students with disabilities. These disparities have fallen hardest on students ofcolor, who are often identified as disabled and then subject to harsher discipline and worse educational settings.Unfortunately, the barriers to quality education for students with disabilities have only become steeper during thepandemic.Schools initially struggled to maintain education services for students with disabilities. And—without clearguidance from the Department of Education during the Trump Administration—some schools determined theysimply could not comply with I-D-E-A. 2However, even with the full support of schools, students with disabilities still face an array of challenges,reflecting the broad diversity of the disabled community. Some students struggle with remote learning withoutadditional materials or parents who can stay home. Many students also cannot receive critical services, likephysical therapy, through remote platforms. Schools face challenges to safely reopening classrooms for studentswith disabilities, who may be more vulnerable to the virus or have difficulty following public health mandates,such as mask-wearing.But the transition to remote learning has also revealed helpful lessons. Remote communication has allowed someparents to more actively engage with school staff and, for the first time, remotely access support services for theirchildren. Additionally, some students with disabilities have reported being able to focus better in remoteenvironments.Over the last year, Congress has taken significant steps to meet the needs of students with disabilities. Last year,we enacted several relief packages that secured more than $65 billion for K-12 education, including funding tosupport students with disabilities. And, most recently, we enacted the American Rescue Plan, which providedmore than $130 billion to help schools reopen classrooms safely, including relief for IDEA programs.We were disappointed that, despite the widespread popularity of this package, not a single House or SenateRepublican voted for the bill, which provided critical resources for students, schools, and educators.Nonetheless, while the decision whether or not to open schools is made on the state and local level, the resourcesin the American Rescue Plan will help schools reopen.As of the end of February, over 80 percent of K-8 schools were offering some in-person instruction and abouthalf of schools were open full time for in-person instruction for all students. This data comes from before theCDC updated their guidance and before most educators were able to get vaccinated. Schools have continued tore-open to more students in the past several weeks. As vaccines become available to students, re-opening schoolsfor full-time, in-person instruction will no longer pose an imminent threat to students and staff.However, our work is far from over.So, we continue today. With the help of our witnesses, we will discuss how we can learn from the lessons of thispandemic to ensure equal access to education for all students with disabilities.We may disagree on the means, but I know each of us agrees that, now more than ever, we must uphold ourpromise to give all students with disabilities the opportunity to reach their full potential. That is their right.Source linkhttps://edlabor.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Sablan%20OS%20050621.pdfSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/public-access-america/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode, we’re speaking again with one of our most frequent guests – Larry Altman. Larry currently works as a consultant for schools helping them develop legally compliant policies, protocols and procedures for Title IX, Anti-bullying, student suicide prevention, Section 504, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. He is also a distinguished member of the American Law Society…Read more

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a law that makes available a free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities throughout the nation and ensures special education and related services to those children.

Approximately 14 percent of American public school students receive special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Relatively few studies, however, have examined the academic impacts of special education on students with learning disabilities. A new study coauthored by Syracuse University Professor Amy Ellen Schwartz attempts to fill that gap, offering evidence from America's largest public school district in New York City. Schwartz discusses her team's findings - including new evidence on student outcomes, special education classification and impacts for various student groups - and some potential national implications for special education policy, practice and future research.

Special Ed 101 mp3 Thu, 11/19 9:46PM • 40:50 SUMMARY KEYWORDS child, special education, student, school district, parents, evaluations, education, iep, disability, attorney, iep meeting, mediation, state, due process hearing, least restrictive environment, timelines, hearing, school, procedural safeguards, decision Transcript:Today, I want to talk to you a little bit about special education, I realized that I haven't done a brief overview of special education, I did start off my podcast by going over the differences between special education and section 504, which are very important distinctions for parents to understand. But I thought at this point, especially with the current state of semi-virtual, something education, a lot of parents are identifying different struggles that their students are having, because of the programs that are being offered right now. And so children who got used to attending to school in person coming home and being virtual, or having their schedules disrupted or not receiving their services, or classes in a regular scheduled manner, the way that they had been before with that level of consistency, parents are starting to see a lot of struggles come up with students who maybe didn't struggle with certain aspects of school before. So I think it's really important for everyone to understand what special education is. Now, if you're one of my regular listeners, you are going to notice that the date on this is a Thursday, not a Wednesday. And that would be because in my very human life, I somehow managed to delete this entire podcast when I was publishing it yesterday. So today, I'm going to redo it and hope that it comes across smoothly and good for you guys. And hopefully, I will learn from my mistakes. And this won't happen again. But I think we can all agree it probably will. Anyhow, let's jump into what special education is. So let's start with what special education is not if you grew up when I did, which was quite some time ago, special education had very negative connotations attached to it, it was often very impaired students who were kept substantially separate from everybody else. Oftentimes they might be not only in a different classroom, but possibly in a different building, or, in our case, a trailer or temporary structure outback. So it certainly physically was not given any level of priority. And then there of course, all the jokes about the short bus kids and special education right on this short bus. And so that can be a very hard stereotype to get over in your head as a parent. And I know for me, my children have disabilities, and I advocate for children all of the time. Sometimes those thoughts creep back into my head, so I get it. And so I think it's important to clarify that that is not what special education is. Our school system is designed to provide education on mass. So we provide education to a large group of students and expect them all to learn at the same time. And on the exact same track years ago, that education was provided in a very limited manner. There was no differentiated instruction, there was no understanding of kinetic learners versus auditory learners versus visual learners, there really wasn't that discussion going on yet. So now we know better. So we do better as the saying goes, but we still don't necessarily address every child. So if you have one of those students who does not learn the way the vast majority of other students do, then you need something different and you need something special. And that is called special education. So for students who cannot access the education, which is not just academics, by the way, it includes social emotional issues. It includes daily living skills, if it's something that your student needs to be successful and independent in life, then it is something that they need to learn. And that falls under the category of education and for students who have a disability and for whom that disability impacts their   05:00 Education. And for those students who also require specialized instruction, they may qualify for special education. The first thing as a parent that you need to learn is that it is up to you to know your child, you now have to become the expert, you will have to be the expert on their disability, you will have to be the expert on the strategies to work with children with those disabilities. And you're going to have to become an expert in special education because you are the best advocate for your child. And that does not mean that your school district does not have your child's best interest in hand. But every professional that works with your child, whether it's their teacher, a service provider, a T ball coach, whoever it is, their interaction and their responsibility with your child is very limited in scope. And so it is up to you to make those connections. And this is not an easy job. So you're going to have to work at it. And you're going to have to learn and I have complete faith that you will, because for one, you're listening to this, which tells me that you are already down the path of educating yourself. I always like to talk about the history of special education. And I'll point out right now that this is not intended to be legal advice for anybody and certainly not specific to your child. If you have specific questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. Or if you go to coppa.org Corp a.org, you will find a directory of attorneys advocates and providers in your area. But this I'm really just giving to you so you understand where we came from and where we're going. So the brief brief history a special education that I would like to give you a special education laws is in 1975. And for some of you might you might think that's a long time ago, but it's really not. It's less than 50 years ago, education of All Handicapped Children Act was enacted that provided students with disabilities with a free appropriate public education if you are in the ages between three and 21. It also provided for due process rights for parents for when they disagree with their school district. It provided for an IEP the individualized education program, it provided for LRE the least restrictive environment, and it agreed to assist states and localities financially through federal funding, which just for the record has never been fully funded. In 1986. The amendments to the education of All Handicapped Children Act came around and those amendments saw the need for an early intervention and mandated the development of a comprehensive system for early intervention for infants. And many of you know that as Birth to Three and that is a different section of the IDA than special education in 1990. The eha was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act the IDA that's when eligibility categories were expanded to include autism and traumatic brain injuries. And we are now to date up to 13 primary disability categories which we'll discuss in a minute and also defined assistive technology devices and services which had not previously been in the act. In 1997. The ID EA was reauthorized and then again, it was reauthorized in 2004. But it was supposed to be reauthorized in 2010. It's not necessary to reauthorize it. There are definitely more protections that parents need at this point as our world changes. And as our education changes, so does the way in which we provide special education services and the rights the parents may need in order to advocate for their child. The parent side advocacy world is not itching to get that reauthorized right now, again, as I said, it doesn't need to be. And we need to be very strategic and cautious on how we move forward with that. So that is your little legislative lesson. So when is a student eligible for special education? There's a great question. And I hear this all the time. My child has ADHD and they will not give them an IEP I brought them a doctor's note. He's all over the place, and they will not give him an IEP. Well, having disability is not the only thing that you require. In order to obtain special education services, there actually have to be three things at play at the exact same time. Your student does have to have one or more disabilities that are covered under the IDA and as I said, we have 13 the student is not making effective progress in school because of the disability. So due to their disability, they are not making effective progress, what is effective progress, and that has been played out a lot in the courts. And that is usually the argument that we have is that parents and school districts disagree on the level of progress a student is making and whether it is or is not appropriate. And then finally, they have to look at whether the student requires special education in order to make effective progress.   10:00 So will specialized instruction help this student work through their disability, remediate the disability and help them make effective progress in school. That is another area in which we often disagree. If you want to go back to my podcast on section 504 versus the IEP, you can get a whole episode on why that is. So let's say your student does have a disability, and they are not making effective progress. And they do require specialized instruction, what is the process? And how quickly can you get services for your child? Well, you can't just walk into the building and ask for an IEP meeting and say, my child has a disability, they're not successful in school, and they required specialized instruction and boom, it happens. First, you have to discuss the referral to special education, there needs to be a referral. And there's an IEP meeting to discuss that referral and whether evaluations will take place, assuming evaluations are agreed to and the parent signed consent for them. The school has 30 working days to evaluate the student and then 15 working days to hold the IEP meeting to discuss eligibility. So generally, we talk about that as 45 working school days timelines are a very hot topic right now. Because as I am recording this, we are on the brink of closing down gear in Connecticut for our second wave of school closures due to the COVID virus. And there have been a lot of questions about what the timelines mean under COVID closures. So when the government closes down all schools, we do have a few questions about timelines, it's a little hard to hold schools accountable for conducting in person evaluations when the state has shut down all schools. So there are a lot of questions around that and around what transpired last spring when schools closed unexpectedly and without proper planning. Now, however, they're going to close again, and it is certainly our hope that they learned quite a bit from the last closures. Although from what I have observed, it appears that schools spent their resources in trying to stay open as late as they could, rather than investing in good training and tech to provide good virtual instruction. That's just my little piddly opinion over here is I don't have high expectations. But one thing about timelines is that if the schools are open, the timelines are running. And that is whether they are in hybrid or distance or not. Further, I believe there's a very strong argument that if the school chooses to close, but it is not mandated by the state or the government, then those timelines should continue. And your school district should still be held accountable to those timelines. There is a different situation when the Gov shuts everything down, and it's out of everyone's control. But if your school district has made the individual decision to shut down, then your timelines still remain. Now if your child is then at the end of that 45 days, you have your IEP meeting and you determine that your child is eligible for special education, then you're going to have to develop an IEP an individual education program. And what that IP will consist of is your child's strengths and weaknesses. The parents concerns long term goals for the entire year. And that's a 12 month year, not just the school year, as well as short term objectives to meet within that year, your IP will outline any accommodations or modifications that your child requires in the regular education classroom all the way through standardized state testing. So in any location where they require that that should be identified in their IEP what related services they may be getting. So if your child qualifies for Occupational Therapy, or speech and language therapy or counseling, those items will be in the IEP as well as how often your child receives them and where your child receives them. Is your child receiving those services in the regular education classroom? Are they receiving it in a substantially separate classroom, all of those pieces need to be outlined. And then the parents signed consent to implement special education for your child that starts the timeline for when they can begin special education services. And typically, that is around five days, but you can agree with your team to implement it sooner if everyone is in agreement, and the team is prepared to implement sooner. So I mentioned the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, otherwise known as the ID, EA. And there are six main principles of the ID EA. I'm going to list them here and then go into them in a little more detail. So first, we have the free appropriate public education or what you may know as fate. There's also an appropriate evaluation, the Individualized Education Program or the IEP, a least restrictive environment, or LRE, parent involvement and procedural safeguards. These are all principles of the IDA that have been outlined to protect parents and students with disabilities. So let's talk about parent and student participation. What does that look like? Well, parents have the right to participate   15:00 In all special education, planning and decision making activities that have to do with their student, they must be included in IEP meetings. And any other meeting that makes decisions around your student. Students are always the focus of the special education program. And as they grow older, we expect them to be a part of their planning. At a certain point, schools are obligated to start inviting students to their IEP meetings, and in some states, it's 14 in some states at 16. Definitely look up your state regs and determine that However, you can decide that your students should come to the IEP meeting at any age. So if you would like your child to start attending at an early age to understand the process, and you believe that something that they are capable of, and that they would benefit from, then you may absolutely invite them. But that is your choice. So if you do not believe that it would be appropriate for your child to attend a meeting, say you know that there's going to be an argument, you just don't think your child should observe it, it is up to you whether they are invited or not, though, do not let a school district tell you that they have to have them there, you are still holding the rights for your child until they turn 18. So you get to make that decision. It's also really important for school districts to make sure that they have made every effort to get parents to the meeting. I've heard parents say, Well, I work until five. And it's absolutely unrealistic and unreasonable that they want me to attend a meeting during the day, I understand that I'm also a working parent, and I have four children with IPS and I do get it. But schools are open generally, from about seven to four, we don't really have a right to ask them to hold all of their IP meetings at 7pm, at night or on weekends. And in general, given that most students have one IP meeting a year, sometimes two, but generally most have one when there's no dispute, it's not an unreasonable request for parents to carve that time out to attend the meeting during the school day. That being said, many times parents get a notice a letter in the mail that says this is the date and time of your IP meeting. And if you missed that piece of mail, or if it's not on a date that works for you, and you only got five days in advance, which is acceptable, because they do have to get it to five days in advance. But that's it. And you might not be able to clear your schedule that quickly, then you need to reach out to your school district to reschedule and they need to make every effort to make sure that happens. I've had school districts say well, we only hold IEP meetings on a Wednesday and that's it that is too restrictive, expecting them to hold their IEP meetings on the weekend is also not reasonable. So there definitely needs to be a meeting in the middle. In addition, once your child turns 18, the rights that you held for them now pass on to them. So they now hold all of the participation and decision making rights and authorities under the IDI many students at the age of 18. Whether they have been involved in their IEP meetings or not are not interested in taking on that responsibility. And in my practice, what I have found works is very often if the student writes a letter stating that they would like their parents to remain the decision makers for the purpose of the IDA and their special education needs. school districts will honor that that is at least here in Connecticut with districts that I have worked with. If that is not acceptable to your district, then again, I would call an attorney or advocate in your area and find out what parents do in your area. I'm not going to talk about conservatorship at all here. But I would like to say that it is a lot more complicated than most people know. And so while it may seem like a very easy fix, if you are the parent who wants to be able to continue to make these decisions for your child until they are 21, or 22, but they're not going to need your conservatorship. After that, then please do really seriously look into it, because there are some pitfalls to conservatorship that could seriously impact you and your rights with your child. So make sure if you choose to do that you are going through the proper process and that you know all of the pros and cons of what you are doing. So that is parent participation. Next we'll move on to the free appropriate public education free I'd like to think is a little obvious. It means that no cost to the parent that means that you should not be paying for it. That means that if your child requires per their IP, say an iPad in the classroom, then the school district needs to be providing that iPad in the classroom. Whether the school needs to provide that iPad to go home with your student to work at home will depend very much on your child's disability and on their IEP. But if they do require it in school, the school district must provide it the services must be appropriate. So what is appropriate appropriate services Our services are sufficient to enable the student to progress in education and work towards meeting their IEP goals and objectives. This has been litigated many, many times and will continue to be and the definition of appropriate will continue to grow. But right now what it means is that your child needs to be made   20:00 Making progress and that their IEP is appropriately challenging for them. So not just making progress. But if you have a child who's making progress on goals and objectives that are way below their skill level, that is not sufficient, your child needs to also be challenged. school needs to be public, which means it needs to be provided by the public school district or under the direction of your public school district. And definitely, as I said earlier, paid for by your public school district, and education under the ID EA is preschool, elementary and secondary school, including extracurriculars, and non academic school activities. It also includes social emotional concerns, as well as activities of daily living, any areas in which your child needs to learn in order to be an independent contributing member of society needs to be in their IEP. So how do we get to all of these pieces? Well, we start with the evaluation, and the evaluation and appropriate evaluation is one of the principles of the ID EA. And what that allows you is an initial evaluation. So when your child is referred to special education, and we're making that determination, is this child eligible? Do they have a disability do they require a specialized instruction, you are entitled to that initial evaluation, and then that evaluation has to be redone every three years, and that is called the triennial evaluation where you reassess the child see what progress they have made and make a determination as to whether they are still eligible for special education. Because if your child has made significant progress on all of their goals and objectives, they may no longer qualify for special education. So special education is not something that you automatically have for your entire educational career. It is what you have for the time that you are eligible for these evaluations have to be individualized assessments, they have to be non discriminatory assessments, they have to include a variety of tools and strategies, including information provided by the parent, any other providers who work with a student who might have insight into the student's needs as it pertains to education and any staff in the school. So for example, if your child spends an inordinate amount of time with the school nurse, you're going to want to make sure that the school nurse is in that discussion over what evaluations need to be provided, because every area of suspected disability needs to be investigated. And when I say every area of disability, I mean every area of disability as they are defined under the idea we need to assess a school has the right to conduct those evaluations themselves, first with their staff. And that also has been well litigated I have parents call me all the time with wonderful reasons as to why the school staff should not be evaluating their child first, and many of those reasons are completely valid, but the law is very clear school districts get to do their evaluations first. Now, this does not mean you have to if you feel that this would be detrimental to your child. Of course, you can refuse the evaluation however, and please don't stop listening right there. If you say no to evaluations, you are impacting your rights, and you may be impacting what you're entitled to later down the road. So before you say no to any evaluation of any kind, no matter how ridiculous that sounds, please, please please consult with an attorney or advocate and find out whether it makes sense to refuse that evaluation or not. So after we get the evaluation, and we determined that the child is eligible, another principle of the ID EA is the IEP, the individualized education program. The IEP is basically a roadmap for your child's education, it's going to encompass your child's strengths and weaknesses, parents concerns an explanation of how the disability impacts your student and their ability to learn. It's going to identify long term goals, which are measurable, as well as short term objectives that are also measurable under those goals to be worked on across the year. Again, that's a 12 month year, not just the nine months of school, that doesn't mean your child automatically gets 12 months of services, but that is the how long the IEP runs. So if you have a student who also requires 12 months of services, that is a different conversation that you would have in your IEP meeting. And that would be called an extended school year, which I'm not going to get into right now. But I want you to understand that the dates of the IEP is for 12 months, but that does not necessarily mean you are getting services for those full 12 months. And your IEP is also going to list all of the accommodations and modifications that your child requires, as well as any of the related services your child receives and where they receive them. So speaking of where they receive them, that brings me to the next principle of the I DEA, which is the least restrictive environment or LRE. What LRE means is that your child should be in the least restrictive environment that is appropriate to them. So not every child is going to benefit through us Moses by being in close proximity to non disabled peers. That's just not how   25:00 Works period. So for some students, in order to get to that least restrictive environment, they do need a very restrictive environment to start. Because remember, the ultimate goal of your child's IEP is to teach them how to be as independent as possible not to keep them in the least restrictive environment period. It's just not, it says appropriate and they mean appropriate. So if your child regular education classroom is the least restrictive environment, but there are not sufficient supports and services in that classroom for your child to make meaningful progress, then they need to be pulled from that until they can. On the other hand, just because it is easier to educate your child in a more restrictive environment does not mean that the school district gets to do that children should be provided the supports and services they need in the classroom. And there are a number of things that can be done in the classroom to help support a child everything from priority seating to having another adult individual in that classroom helping your child. So there are a lot of possibilities for how your child can be serviced in the classroom without being removed. Again, this piece comes down to every individual child and what those evaluations say your child requires in order to make effective progress. So this brings me to the final principle, the ID EA, and that is procedural safeguards. procedural safeguards include the right to written notice the right for parents to consent or refuse services, evaluations, etc. The right to stay put, which I will address in a minute, the right to a resolution system, or what they now have is the resolution sessions, mediation and due process hearings. There are also timelines that the school district needs to stay within and those are considered part of your procedural safeguards. The fact that your child's records must be kept confidential is also a procedural safeguard and the right to receive the evaluations in advance of the IEP meetings if requested. So please, please, please, whenever you have an IEP meeting, if you're going to be discussing reports, evaluations, assessments updates, please ask your team in advance to provide that documentation to you that you are not sitting in the meeting blindsided by all this information that you now have to process at the same time you're listening to people discuss it. So I want to talk a little bit about some of the individual procedural safeguards to which you are entitled, and I'm going to start with mediation. Mediation is a voluntary process that you can enter into with the school district, I always recommend that parents confer with an attorney before attending a mediation. If the school district is attending a mediation, you can be certain that their attorney is involved in some way, shape or form. So for you to show up without an attorney will put you at a disadvantage. So please consult with someone before deciding to attend a mediation without counsel. That being said, it is a voluntary process. And it's available not only when a due process hearing has been requested, but it is available even if you have not filed for due process. So if you leave your IEP meeting, and you have a dispute with your school district, you can file for mediation and see if they will go now you can file and wait and see what their responses. But better practice would be requesting at that IEP meeting, how do I file for a mediation? Or would the school district be willing to go to mediation, mediation has a mediator assigned by the state and the state trains and appoints the mediator they are trained in the area of special education as well as mediation, or at least hopefully they are some are more versed than others. So be prepared to have to explain your situation as well as your disabilities and possibly the law behind it to your mediator. It depends on your state and how they were trained, and whether you have good ones or not. So you have to look into that yourself. mediations are also confidential. And that is critical to remember, if a school district tells you something in the mediation, you may not use that later. You may not sit in an IEP meeting and say, well, you said in mediation that and you may not sit in a due process hearing and testify to what the school district said in mediation. Mediation is confidential, there's a good reason for it. Your information is confidential as well. And without that confidentiality, it would not be possible to come to the number of agreements that we are able to come to to help families, please take that confidentiality component seriously. And if you come to an agreement in a mediation, you will get a written mediation agreement and that agreement is enforceable in a court of law. So if your school district does not follow the mediation agreement, it is a legally binding agreement and you can enforce it in state or federal court. It will be signed by you and the district and it will have that covered   30:00 Confidentiality clauses we discussed. Now if mediation is not successful, the next step would be due process. And in due process hearings, we address issues of valuation identification, educational placement and faith, there is a 45 day time frame for due process hearing. Again, in COVID times these timeframes can be a little bit off. But generally, the timeframe from filing to a decision should be 45 days, do not expect a decision in 45 days, I've never heard of a due process hearing that did not have multiple, multiple extensions. It depends on your state and how they do them. But in our state, hearing dates are not sequential. So we could have four hearing dates over four months. if everyone's schedules don't allow for a sooner gathering. It's very important to keep track of that it's important because the statute does not want students lingering in programs that they are not benefiting from while the adults are fighting out the issues. So these timelines are there for a reason. And they are important, you are assigned an impartial hearing officer also provided by the state and trained by the state, again, depends on your state and how they're trained and who they are. But if you were in a due process hearing, first of all, I hope you have an attorney. I know some states allow advocates to do it. And in any state parents are allowed to do it themselves. But parents do not prevail the majority of the time. In fact, the school district prevails nationally significantly more often than parents. And so if you look at just that statistic, it is critical that you have an attorney who understands the process and what needs to get done. No school district goes to due process hearing without an attorney, or at least I'm not familiar with them. So again, you would be putting yourself at a huge disadvantage. If you attend a due process hearing without an attorney. Now how your due process system works and whether and how you appeal. It depends on whether your state has a one or two tiered system. I am in Connecticut, where we have a one tier system but in the state next to us New York, they have a two tier system. And that means that there is a way to appeal it within the state before going to federal or state court. So how you appeal it within your department of education. in general. In hearings, you have the right to be represented by an attorney or in some states assisted by a lay advocate, you'll present evidence to the hearing officer and you'll put on witnesses and you'll direct question them and cross examine the board's witnesses at the end of that you then write a significant brief that goes to the hearing officer, and then they after reviewing all of the evidence and all of the testimony and both sides briefs will issue a decision, parents can choose whether they want their hearings to be open or closed. And what that means is that the hearing if it's open, that means anyone from the public can come. Some parents like that idea. And some attorneys like that idea because it makes or it can make a matter more high profile if need be. So if making the situation known to the community will be helpful in some way, whether to the matter itself or to address systemic issues that may be going on within the school system, that might be a good way to go. But when you have an open hearing, you are losing a significant amount of confidentiality for your child, and all of that information, anyone can show up and listen to the testimony. So you have to really weigh that against whatever benefits you believe there would be for having an open hearing. Personally, I love it when people have open hearings because I love to go and watch and see how different attorneys do it how different hearing officers respond. It's just I'm kind of a dork. So I like to do that. But it may not be the right thing for you. You also have the right to have your student present at the hearing. I am not familiar with many hearings, where a student is present, it is often not appropriate for variety of reasons to have the student at the hearing. And then you are entitled to a written decision. I'm going a little out of order, but I'm going to talk about resolution sessions. After you file for a due process hearing the school district is obligated to hold a resolution session and that resolution session occurs unless both parties have waived the right to the resolution session and requested mediation. For us here in Connecticut. We always do that we waive the resolution session and we go to mediation. I have spoken with attorneys and other states who say that resolution sessions are highly successful in their state. So again, it depends on where you are and your district. So do your research and find out where you are and how your district handles resolution sessions and whether that is a productive means of resolution for you. Now resolution sessions. Resolution sessions do not necessarily have attorneys at them. If the parent chooses to attend a   35:00 resolution session without an attorney, even if due process is pending, the school district may not bring their attorney under no circumstances may they attend. If, however, you do bring an attorney with you to the resolution session, then the school district may bring their own attorney, if you come to an agreement in your resolution session, then that agreement is going to be in writing and it's going to be legally binding. Which means that if the school district does not hold up their end of the agreement, you can go straight to court and enforce the agreement. If you're unable to resolve the issues and you end up going to a hearing, then that decision is also going to be written and it is going to be in forcible in a state or federal court It is also appealable. So if you do not agree with the decision, or the school district does not agree with the decision, either side can appeal the decision within 90 days, winning at the hearing level is not necessarily the end of the journey. I know some attorneys who don't even expect to win at the hearing level, they their entire strategy is to go for an appeal. And then there are other people who don't ever need to get into a hearing. Because the matters resolved. Not every hearing decision is appealed because both sides have to give some serious thought as to whether they want to go into the time and money it will cost to appeal the decision and what ramifications there might be if they lose, because if you lose on an issue, then you've just created law on that issue that other people have to abide by. So it's not an automatic decision to appeal. Now, where is your child during all of this, you have a dispute with your school district and you are going to resolution sessions and mediations and maybe a hearing and maybe it takes six months. So where's your student during all of this? Well, that is what we refer to as stay put in some states they call it pendency. Basically, unless otherwise agreed to the student will remain in the last agreed upon placement. The last agreed upon placement is the last IP that both parties agreed to or a hearing officer decision. So if your student was placed in a private, Special Education School by your school district, they were placed there they were transported, it was paid for by your school district. And you end up in a due process hearing your child can remain in that program until they're finished. Similarly, if your student was in the public school, then they will remain in that program until the end of the hearing. Obviously, as a parent, you have choices, you can always choose to provide a private education to your child while you are going through this process. And there are a lot of legalities around that. So please do not do that without talking to an attorney. But the stay put rule is that whatever the school district was paying for before the hearing, they will pay for during the hearing so that your child's education does not have to get disrupted during that time. The exceptions for that are dangerousness if there is a serious danger issue for the child, then, under certain circumstances, the school district may be able to change their placement and if there's a final decision by a hearing officer. So when you get that final hearing officer decision that becomes the state placement. The last thing I want to talk about is attorneys fees. Long story short, the court can award attorneys fees and costs to the parent who prevailed. So if you won in a hearing, you can file in federal court to get your attorneys fees reimbursed.   38:31 Now, if the school district prevails, they do not have that same right unless they can demonstrate that the parent filed a complaint that is frivolous, unreasonable without foundation or simply to prolong litigation, then they may seek attorneys fees from the parent, but it is not easy to do. There was one matter, I believe in Connecticut actually, where the attorney had filed for due process to hold up an expulsion so that the student could graduate from high school without the expulsion on their record. And in doing so they were they were successful. But the school district attorneys then prevailed and sought the attorneys fees from the attorney and the parents because both can be found liable for those because the purpose of it was completely frivolous and solely to prolong litigation to delay an expulsion so the child could graduate so that was clearly done as a strategic tactic and not because the child had any special education issues at all. So that is my very general overview of special education from beginning to end. I hope that you found it helpful. And I look forward to talking to you next week when I'm actually going to have on the two co-chairs of the conference committee for the council parent attorneys and advocates and we are going to talk about their conference and how that can also   40:00 also help educate you as a parent of a child with disabilities so that you can best advocate for your child.

Let's have some tough conversations around special needs, race and disabilities in school. I'll be discussing this with today's guest and my friend Rikki Saunders. Rikki is the director of special education at Kalamazoo Public Schools. She has als worked as a social worker in school and the community. Her role today is to find and identify children with disabilities who are enrolled in public schools in the Kalamazoo district and in need of special education and related services. She also helps educate staff to ensure they have the capacity to fulfill their responsibilities to execute Child Find under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.  I'm excited to learn more from Rikki on meeting the educational needs of children, and how to collaborate with colleagues in the schools.   [00:01 - 08:45] Opening Segment Introducing today's guest, Rikki Saunders Expertise and work  Rikki gives some background on her story  Always had a love for children  Time and degree at UMich  School social work  Passionate about special education  Preparing them for life  We can do better  [08:46 - 14:54] Changing Our Thinking of School Rikki talks about needing to change our approach  We are here to serve  We don't turn people away People come in with trauma  Some are even homeless Consistency is key  This system has everything the kids need  The impact on children  It's their day to day existence  Teachers spend as much time with kids as parents  It goes beyond reading and writing  [14:55 - 26:56] How Schooling Involves the Medical Community  Rikki talks about kids coming into school with disabilities  Qualifying for 504 Diabetes example  The options you have  Teachers are responsible to accommodate needs  Qualifying for IEP covered through IDEA The school has to show qualifications  The issue of behavior  Determining if behaviors are a disability  Can you progress? Response to an Intervention RTI  Burden of proof  The autism example  It has to impact education to qualify  The social side of disabilities  Rikki's procedure Can they do what their peers are doing? Social is part of the disability  [26:57 - 53:56] Speaking to Bias and Race and Asking the Questions Rikki talks about her responsibility  The main mission  Environmental vs. eligibility  The African American Male example Rikki talks about analyzing the race and social climates of certain communities  Diversity is in the school  Home is separate  Cultural relevance training  Being culturally aware  We need to be included in the conversation  It's not the answers, it's the discussion  It's uncomfortable but we need to talk about it  What Rikki does to enter the conversation  What do you know for sure, and what do you think?  Challenging certain ideas  Be clear on what you know for sure  You can't ignore the issues  How Pediatricians should go about talking about police safety  Having The Talk  Know that it can be stressful for families  How certain areas are affected over others  Ask the questions  Do you feel safe? Giving the feeling of acknowledgment  The AAP response  The importance of feeling safe  Being at the discussion table  My experience may not be yours  Remember the parents  Show that you care  [53:57 - 1:03:41] Closing Segment I give my thoughts on childhood experiences around race Government sanctioned childhood abuse Take it one day at a time We're all in this together  We'll have to repair one day Be the safe haven  Final Takeaways Partner with the school No one is turned away  RTI for Special Needs 504 plan  IEP Chronic trauma vs acute  School...

Catherine Michael, attorney & author On November 4, 2020, I interviewed attorney and author, Catherine Michael, of Connell, Michael, Kerr, LLP, a special education law practice with offices in Indiana and Texas (https://cmklawfirm.com). Catherine's book, The Exceptional Parent's Guide to Special Education, will become available on December 1, 2020 and can be pre-ordered at https://amzn.to/38euWaD. The following is the transcript from the interview (transcribed using Otter): Anne Zachry 00:00 First of all, thank you so much for being on this podcast with me, I don't get to interview folks very often, and it's always fun when I get to. And it's always very informative, because I think having all of us who do this kind of work, you know, talking these things through out loud, and just speaking to what's going on and how we think that's going to affect the the students that we work for, and the families that depend on us, I just think it's a really constructive use of time. So I really appreciate you being here. If you could, just introduce yourself and give us just your background, your history of how you've come into this line of work and what it is that you do now. Catherine Michael 00:33 Oh, yeah, absolutely. So, my name is Catherine Michael. I'm the managing partner of a law firm called Connell Michael Kerr. And we work in a multitude of states and have attorneys licensed in in several states as well. And what I do is, and for the past 20 years, I've worked in education, law or representation of children. And, and a lot of that involves filing educational due process cases against schools, personal injury, tort actions against schools, and sometimes group homes, residential facilities, and also advocating for children with special needs, for instance, the legislatures in several states, and at a national level. And, you know, I got into this line of work. My background had been in hospital risk management. And I got into this, because we were seeing a lot of children who had really substantial issues, whether they had a diagnosis of cancer, and we're now getting cranial radiation or having a tumor removed. And we saw how uncooperative schools were. And back then it was really quite shocking to me that we would find a school district who wouldn't want to provide a child a homebound program or a school district that would claim that cancer is not a disability, and this child doesn't need to be eligible. Anne Zachry 01:51 Oh, my gosh! Catherine Michael 01:52 That was really - Right! That was really fascinating to me, because as someone who had not worked in education, at that point, and was working with hospital systems, that was really shocking, because I think all of us believe that our procedures, tools are supposed to be very pro child, they are there to ensure educational services for children. And, you know, the first case I took was a child who had cancer, and was just really, really surprised how hard it was to get that young man a program. And thereafter started taking cases involving children who had learning disabilities, and really finding how substantial a need this was. And it had a snowball effect and has kept me in it to this day. Anne Zachry 02:36 Well, yeah. And a lot of us come into this, who are professionals from these paths where we encounter these challenges. And we're like, "Wait a minute, what?" And then we see how the system is constructed, how it's been designed, and what the rules actually are. And so I would imagine coming from a medical scenario, I mean, in the medical realm, you bought insurance billing rules, and all those kinds of things until there's somewhat of a similarity in that you've got this compliance standard that has to be met, in order for things to happen. And when you look at what those rules are in special education, and, you know, and you understand what the intent may have been. But then, and you and I spoke briefly of this before we started the interview, that enforcement is really the question here. So if you could speak about that, that would be ... Catherine Michael 03:29 Yeah, enforcement is a huge issue. And I think that because there is so little enforcement of the laws on the books, we've have found that basically schools have run amok. And so for parents who are listening, the main law is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and that is a federal law, which means that every state has to follow it. They can't have a state law that restricts any of the rights under a federal law. And every state in the United States has basically what we call "codified" that law into their own state laws, the only thing that they can do is add additional rights for parents. For instance, the state of Michigan actually extended how long the student can be in special ed. So it is age 22 under the federal law. Michigan made it 26. Other states change, for instance, when a parent requests an independent educational evaluation. California, basically has that if a parent request an independent educational evaluation, that the school gets a reasonable time to respond. Other states like Indiana say a school has to respond within 10 days. So there's some of these minor changes in the law that are that are supposed to in some states like Indiana or Michigan, give those parents additional rights. But also the way these laws are designed, is that the only enforcers of them are parents. That means the parents are basically their own private attorneys general; that parents are the equivalent of the cops on the road with the radar to catch the speeding cars. Your State Department of Education is not going to be looking over your child's IEP and saying, "Wow, your child has a lot of issues and they only have one goal," or "They're not receiving any direct speech services," or "They're not receiving any direct special educational services," or "Your child shouldn't be in a special education room all day long; that there's something called the 'least restrictive environment,' which says we need, to the maximum extent we can, have them with their general education peers.' So what I think a lot of parents don't realize is, your State Department of Education isn't doing that. Your federal Department of Education isn't doing that. No one has that obligation to enforce these laws, other than the parent bringing a private action called an educational due process complaint. So schools have all of these laws under IDEA. And just to give, you know, for parent, I'm sure if if you're listening to this podcast, you probably have a basic overview of it. But IDEA has requirements for what's called a free appropriate education. And that basically encompasses that your child is going to have an IEP, that has challenging ambitious goals, in light of their circumstances, that has related services. Related services would be counseling, social work services, parent training, speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy. The least restrictive environment: That if your child needs a one on one aide in order to be in a general education environment, they're supposed to do that versus moving your child to a resource room. If your child needs a therapeutic day placement or residential placement, that's also to be provided by the school. There are all sorts of procedural safeguards. If a school refuses your request, let's say for a one on one aide, or a specialized program for dyslexia, they actually have to provide you written notice saying what data they're relying upon to deny this, everything they've considered, and they have to provide this to you in writing. So there are all these laws on the books, okay. And regardless of where you live, when we say IDEA, it's that federal law, this applies to you, and it applies to your child in a public school. And as you know, going back again, but the only enforcer of this law, the only enforcer who can actually call a school to tap on it is you as a parent and that mechanism, as I said a second ago, it's what's called an educational due process complaint. And that's a complaint that is filed with your State Department of Education, a state appoints a hearing officer to determine if that program is in place. And you know, something we discussed before we started as well is that most parents have no idea that they have these rights. And that most of these laws are right now not being enforced. There are some states where there is less than one due process case a year. So when schools are developing these IEPs, being that there's no real enforcement mechanism, other than in some states like the timeline, they have to have it a yearly meeting, we're seeing really horrible consequences of that, I think across the states. Anne Zachry 08:27 Well and then now that with school closures and shutdowns, that certainly hasn't improved things at all. And so what are you seeing? Catherine Michael 08:36 It hasn't. Anne Zachry 08:36 What are you seeing now, that's different than before the shutdown started? Catherine Michael 08:40 I think the biggest problem I'm seeing is a complete lack of services. And that is where school districts, for instance, that have gone entirely virtual, have students who are just not able to access the services, they may be so cognitively impaired, they're not able to do a computer program Anne Zachry 09:01 Right. Catherine Michael 09:01 In some of those cases, I'm seeing schools basically just throw up their hands and say, "Well, you know, when we come up with a program, we'll let you know." And that's really contrary to law. And there are a lot of things that parents need to be doing right now. That is one of the biggest problems. The other one is where parents whose children are getting, for instance, speech therapy. The school's saying, "Sorry, we can't provide that right now." And in fact, they really can. I mean, virtual speech therapy has been done for years and it's something that should be being done. Anne Zachry 09:35 Right. Catherine Michael 09:36 And then lastly, I mean, we're seeing schools where kids are coming back to school, but we'll have a school that that, you know, I think for good reason has a mask mandate, but they don't understand that there are clearly going to be children who cannot wear masks, right? Anne Zachry 09:52 Right. Catherine Michael 09:52 They are too cognitively impaired or they have really significant health issues. And I've definitely seen a lot of those issues crop up, which is really quite shocking to me. Because some of these situations, you know, quite honestly, when we look at a child who for instance, has a tube down their throat, the fact that a school would even argue with a parent as to whether they're going to try and put a mask on this child is shocking. Anne Zachry 10:21 Right. Catherine Michael 10:21 They'll tell a parent that a child can't come to school. So that I think has been another one of the really big issues. Anne Zachry 10:28 Yeah. And we've what we've run into out here in California is it's hit or miss, it depends on the school district as to whether they're going to do the right thing or not. And but we have some school districts that are just flat out refusing to do any in-person services at all, under any circumstances, even though we have the governor's order that came out in April that said that any student that required in-person services in order to continue to learn and to receive educational benefits, just as a matter of FAPE, that those in-person services still had to be provided and the people who would do it would be considered essential infrastructure workers. But we have districts saying that, "Oh, no, there's something else that came out in July that says we don't have to do that." And it doesn't say that at all. And so they're just waiting until they get court ordered to actually do it before they'll comply. They're waiting for somebody to pull that trigger. They're not willing to assume the risk. It's a risk management decision. They don't want to assume the liability of choosing to do it, and then have somebody gets sick and say, "You made me go to work, and then then I got COVID." And then they're going to turn around and sue the school district as the employer. And so what we're seeing is that a lot of it has to do with human resources issues, and unionized employees and, you know, rightfully insisting on safe ways of getting things done, and satisfaction not being achieved at that level, which then impairs the system's ability to carry out its mandate, because the workers it relies upon, there's no agreement as to how they're going to do it. Until they get court ordered, they're just not gonna. And so that's what we're seeing out here. And it's weird. And I've also got OCR complaints and state compliance complaints as well pending because the due process system is now so flooded that, you know, the attorneys I work with can't file anything new until March. And so it's like, Okay, well, we got to find other avenues to still somehow enforce all of this and a compliance investigation, or an OCR investigation has a 60 day timeline. So at least that's something. Catherine Michael 12:27 Yeah, well, and I think that is, again, part of the big problem, here. It's just when we have schools that they know that the consequences to them are going to be really minimal, that's why we'll often see them wait for court orders versus getting creative. So when I say getting creative, we're seeing two are not able to serve, for instance, cognitively impaired kids, they have problems where they are not able to get the personnel in and not keep them safe. They can actually pay for a private therapeutic day placement, they can offer a parent sort of what we would call a continuum of services and placements ... Anne Zachry 13:02 Right. Catherine Michael 13:03 ... which is one of the requirements of federal law. And they can actually say to a parent, look, we do not have the infrastructure right now, or we don't have the ability to serve this child, here are four or five private placements that we can contract with, if that's something you're interested in. So and we see that happen in some places, and we don't see it happen in others. Anne Zachry 13:22 We're seeing that also with non-public agencies being able to provide in-home services like behavioral services. Catherine Michael 13:28 Yeah. Anne Zachry 13:28 Yeah, same thing. Catherine Michael 13:30 Yeah, I'm actually a big fan of that happening. When I see school districts that are really willing to think outside of the box to say, "Well, we have an absolute obligation to serve these kids. How do we do it?" Right? Where they're actually looking at it more along the lines of: "This is our job, this is our role, how do we perform it, even if we don't have the personnel right now?" Anne Zachry 13:52 Right. Catherine Michael 13:52 And so when I, certainly when I see school districts going above and beyond like that, and situations where, you know, you can see how difficult it is. I mean, I'm looking at those districts and saying, you know, at least they're making these attempts, but, you know, the, the problem we see over much of the country is school districts basically saying if a parent, if, after all this is done, brings a due process, our worst case scenario is we're just going to have to provide compensatory education. So I'm seeing some school districts, really, you know, as I said a moment ago, not provide anything. Anne Zachry 14:29 Right. Catherine Michael 14:29 And so, you know, if you're a parent who's listening to this, and you're saying, you know, my school district may be providing part of the program, or not any of it. I mean, the thing you need to be doing right now is documenting it. Anne Zachry 14:41 Yes! Catherine Michael 14:42 Because you are absolutely going to have a claim for those compensatory hours that your child should have been getting. So if your IEP had your child receiving 124 minutes a week of what we would call sort of direct special educational services like we would expect to see it you're talking about a child with a specific learning disability, who is getting some of that one on one reading intervention or math intervention, those are the minutes that are going to be ordered. If you have a situation where your child's not receiving that, or they were in a resource room, and we're talking about full time special ed placement, they're not able to access a computer, what you're going to want to do is just really document those hours that you're missing. Email the school, your child's school, and ask, you know, again, if your child's not receiving anything, what options are available? You know, if they don't have the infrastructure, are they going to offer a private therapeutic day placement or a home based placement at this point? And that's, you know, sending it for instance, a registered behavior technician, or if your child has autism, a BCBA, or you know, another individual who's trained in that, you know, behavior modification into the home to work on the child's behavioral goals, social skills goals, academic goals. What is the school able to do at this point? And you're certainly going to want to ask those questions. And you're going to want to push because, again, it's their absolute duty to be providing this right now. To the extent that they are unable, there are rural areas where, you know, there are no ABA centers are out there ... Anne Zachry 16:14 Right. Catherine Michael 16:15 ... no spec ial day placements, there are no private placements, quite honestly. And we have schools that are saying, you know, "We don't have enough staff," you know? It's really a very, very problematic situation for families in those places. And that's where the parent just really needs to be documenting to the best extent they can you know, what skills their child is losing how many minutes that their child isn't receiving, what they're doing, any costs that they are right now incurring. Like for instance, for parents who are having to go out and buy educational items, these are all things that you're going to want to keep track of as a parent so that as things return to normal, you can sit down initially with your school at an IEP meeting and say, we need to plan for the compensatory services, number one. Number two, here are the costs that I had to privately pay that I'm asking to be reimbursed for, Anne Zachry 17:05 Right! Well, and I don't know how other states are doing it, but in California, one of the things that we had a Senate bill pass over the summer, that now requires all IEPs to have a contingency plan and emergency plan for his schools shut down for emergency reasons for 10 or more days. And so now, and hindsight being 2020, obviously, that should something else ever arise, like another pandemic, or whatever that would, or, you know, a natural disaster that would require a school closure for 10 or more days, that there is already a backup plan of what to do for each kid ... Catherine Michael 17:40 Yes. Anne Zachry 17:40 ... on IEP. And so I don't know that other states have codified anything like that. But California has. And I think that's very valuable. And the same body of law that produced that I believe, also produced a requirement that there's going to have to be an analysis of how much compensatory education every special ed kid in California is due, because it's assumed that everybody will have suffered in some kind of way, and that everybody will have ... Catherine Michael 18:04 Yeah. Anne Zachry 18:04 ... lost services. And so it's, the IEP teams are now legally beholden to calculate that, once things, you know, once the shutdown is over. That ... Catherine Michael 18:12 Yeah. Anne Zachry 18:12 ... varies from community to community. And I, we now have like, I'm in Ventura County, where districts are not intending to open until January, at the soonest. And then you know, you go down into other counties, and they've already got campuses partially opened down in Orange County. And so and some campuses are reopening for their most severely impacted students who desperately need that in-person support. And so the families have to sign all kinds of waivers and everything, but then they can go back and they've got all of these empty classrooms that they can spread everybody out. Because not it's just a small number of students. And then those kids can get that individualized support. But that is like, you know, how much of this was working on social skills? And if they're all spread apart, can we really do that? You know, and so it's, it's still the challenge of how do we work on the goals. And what I've seen too, is some kind of distance learning program where, you know, the parents are expected to be the one-on-one aide and help their students login. And they do some kind of something on the internet, but it doesn't have anything to do with anybody's goals. It's just something to do. It's just to give them a sense of routine in the absence of, you know, an actual plan, and then they get very confused. And then eventually, the goals get worked in because enough people you know, make a fuss about it, then it starts to happen. And now you switched everything up on them again. Now, the instruction is a whole new novel experience, and you're transitioning them again, into something new that is unfamiliar. And so it just seems to me that it's very disruptive. And it's disheartening to see that there's this little coordination. I mean, as many milestones have been achieved, and as many things that have been accomplished with making some of the system work, this piece of it falling down is a real disappointment, you know? And ... Catherine Michael 19:53 Yeah! Anne Zachry 19:53 ... and it's disheartening, but I think that parents need to know that there are people like you and me out there who understand it, and we're trying to fight it, we're trying to help them. And it's not a lost cause; that there is help out there. If you could share about your practice, once again, that would be very helpful. Catherine Michael 20:12 Yeah, so my law firm is Connell, Michael, Kerr, and I am licensed in Michigan, Indiana, and Texas. And our website is www.cmklawfirm.com, and I also have recently, and I believe it's due out either in December or January, I'm not sure on the date. But I do know that we're having pre-orders. That's the Exceptional Parent's Guide to Special Education, where I basically have, you know, put all of my advice on how parents should navigate this system in one place. Everything that I go over with parents in consultations, how the process works, I've put that together and created that as a book. And so that will be due out, again, it's either in December or January, but parents can get it through Amazon, Kindle, I believe Barnes and Noble, a couple of the others. But I know that should be available shortly. And I'll send a link for that as well. (Note: It will become available on December 1, 2020, at https://amzn.to/38euWaD.) Anne Zachry 21:08 Very cool. Yeah, we'll include the link with our post so that people can access that. That's a good thing to know. Catherine Michael 21:14 Yeah. Because I, you know, I think the thing that parents need to remember is that they actually have power. When, you know, when I use the term, private attorney general, that parents are basically acting as though, you know, that is the main message I want to impart to families is that most accountability is going to come from families standing up together and saying,"No, we are entitled to appropriate services for our children," and doing their research and coming to unders tand the system and asking for the things they're supposed to be getting. Anne Zachry 21:47 Right. Catherine Michael 21:47 And it's only by asking for it, and schools really being held accountable that we're going going to see the system change. And I think a lot of parents, right, and this is all of us, right? It's difficult to challenge people that we want to like us and parents often want the teachers to like them, they want school staff to like them. And most people who go into teaching are very, very good people, but they're not taught the education laws, they're not ... Anne Zachry 22:11 Exactly. Catherine Michael 22:12 ... in a lot of situations, we find, you know, teachers don't know how to design the school for an IEP, they don't ... You know, I had a teacher in a due process hearing last week, they they didn't know that parent training, or counseling could even be part of an IEP. So it's really important for parents to take the horse by the reins, and learn how to navigate the system and start asking these things in a way that's diplomatic and kind. But at the same time is assertive enough that your child is going to get what they need, because quite honestly, you are your child's only advocate in the system. Anne Zachry 22:48 Right. Catherine Michael 22:48 And unless you're asking for these things, the schools simply aren't going to provide them. And in many, many situations, Anne Zachry 22:55 it's just a sad reality of it. But I mean, this also goes to the fact that in a democracy, we're of the people, for the people, and by the people, and the parents are the people, the students are the people and we shouldn't be afraid to take ownership of that responsibility. It's what we all agreed we wanted to live under. That's ... Catherine Michael 23:13 Yeah. Anne Zachry 23:13 ... the model we've chosen. And so I think, for me, what makes me upset most about the way it's designed, it's not just that it forces parents into litigation, because that's what the rules require, in order to resolve the dispute. It's the attitude that parents get from the school district personnel when they actually exercise that right. And the "How dare you?" and "Oh, you think you're ..." you know, whatever. And all of a sudden, the parent becomes the bad guy for simply exercising a right and following the rules, because that's the only mechanism available to them, not because they want to. Nobody wants to do that. But if they do, you know, as someone who works with families, if somebody comes to me and says, "I cannot wait to go to court," I'm like, "Well, okay, I hope you find somebody to help you with that, because it's not going to be me," You know, it's that you shouldn't be eager to go to court. It should be the last resort. And so when parents are forced into that corner, and that's the only option they have left, and they exercise that right, and then they catch grief for it, like somehow they're the bad guy, I think that's what bothers me the most. Because it's like you ... Catherine Michael 24:18 Yeah. Anne Zachry 24:18 ... said, you know, that the parents can be made out as, "Oh, they're just this this disgruntled person and they just aren't happy with anything. They're sad about being the parent of a special needs child." I've heard that one a lot. "They're having a hard time coping and they they're angry and they need someone to take it out on, so they're suing the school district." No, you broke the law and you harmed their child. That's why they're suing you. You know, it's frustrating. Catherine Michael 24:46 Yeah, and, to that end, like, I want, you know, schools as well as parents to I you know, I would so love if we could even stop thinking of due process as litigation or suing or something like that, because these parents cannot get damages under IDEA claims. Anne Zachry 25:04 Exactly. Catherine Michael 25:05 What you can get, right? You can recover your attorneys fees. But in these cases, I mean, if we look at them in their most simplistic nature, it's simply the parents asking their state Department of Education to appoint an independent hearing officer to make a decision as to the appropriateness of their child's program. Anne Zachry 25:23 Right. Catherine Michael 25:23 A parent doesn't need, although I certainly wouldn't recommend it, but a parent doesn't need an attorney. So, you know, I will often hear from schools that, you know, this is the litigious parent who filed a suit. And I'm thinking, number one, this person hasn't filed a suit against you. Right? A suit, you know, traditionally is a claim we would file in civil or federal court. Anne Zachry 25:46 Right. Catherine Michael 25:47 This is an administrative action that they filed with an administrative agency. It's not even ... so, and then we hear, you know, "a litigious parent." Parent's not asking for money, you know. They may be asking for what we call an "in lieu of FAPE" type of agreement where they can actually get the funds to place their child in an appropriate program. Anne Zachry 26:05 Right. Catherine Michael 26:06 But I think that is a mindset that we really need to have get schools over and also get parents again, thinking that if you have a problem with Social Security, or you had a problem with your child's Medicaid, you file an administrative action to get that corrected. Right? You file with, you know, your federal Social Security office, "Here, I need to get this adjudicated," or somebody who's disabled. We don't think about it the same way. Anne Zachry 26:31 No, not at all. Catherine Michael 26:32 I think if we could ... right? And so to me, that has always been fascinating as somebody who does this, when, you know, I have one that's in a hearing right now, where the, you know, the parents, quite honestly only asking for an appropriate IEP, and then assorted related services for her child. And now, you know, when the school's attorney is speaking to us, they're saying, you know, this is simply a litigious parent. And I'm thinking, you know, she's not asking for a dollar. Anne Zachry 27:00 Right. Catherine Michael 27:00 Just write an appropriate program. So I really want to even reframe how parents think about these things. Again, schools are basically performing a government function. Anne Zachry 27:14 Yep. Catherine Michael 27:14 When we ask for the enforcement of these laws, it's an administrative action. And you're asking, you know, someone from your state simply to make that decision. Certainly, they can be appealed to federal court. And there's all you know, all of the things that you and I often see. Anne Zachry 27:31 Yeah. Which Yeah, I've gone all the way to the Ninth Circuit on some of these things and it's just like, "Are you kidding me?" And something that you had said before we got started, as well as that how much money school districts are sometimes willing to throw in attorneys that they would never throw at services, I mean, hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to fight over a $7500 education service. Catherine Michael 27:50 Yeah. And you know, I've even seen that when a parent requests an independent educational evaluation. In most states, those can go for around $3500. Some states that we're looking at California and New York, it can be higher. So I've seen schools go through an entire due process, arguing that their evaluation is appropriate, where they spent triple, quadruple, what it would have cost them to provide the parents the evaluation. And when you look at that, you're really what you're seeing is a school district saying, "We want to make this process so hard on parents that they don't even bother to ask." And they talk to their friends and they're like, "Yeah, this is what happened." And that's not the role of a government entity, right? We shouldn't have government entities making it so difficult for individuals to get their, you know, their legal rights met. Anne Zachry 28:23 Right. Right. Catherine Michael 28:38 They don't even want to start that process. And that's why I think it's really important for parents to feel empowered, and to realize that what they're asking for is supposed to already be being provided to their child. And again, it becomes their job to enforce that. And you can do so in a diplomatic way. Anne Zachry 28:55 Exactly. Catherine Michael 28:56 There are a lot of you know, yeah. And there are a lot of things you can do even outside of due process. But I don't want parents to be afraid of due process. Anne Zachry 29:03 Right. Catherine Michael 29:03 And, I want to reframe their thinking on that topic. Anne Zachry 29:07 I think that's a really healthy perspective. I wish we could reframe the thinking of the folks from the school district who come in and deliberately try to make it toxic in those instances where they do. And you know, when it isn't always that case, you're right. I have been in situations where we've had to file for due process. And it's almost one of these things where everybody in the IEP team knows that it was coming, and nobody's surprised by it. And they're waiting to see what happens. And it's almost like the administration is hoping the parent will file because then they can go to the school board and say, "Look, now will you listen to me?" And because, sometimes it's not that the department doesn't want to do it, it's that their hands are tied by, you know, whoever holds the purse strings, who's not part of the IEP process, even though the team is the one vested with the authority to make those decisions. So, the politics that are going on behind the scenes become a toxifying effect. And ... Catherine Michael 29:59 Right. Anne Zachry 29:59 ... then you Have the attorneys that these individuals will hire and certain individuals, you know, birds of a feather flock together, and you'll find people who are like minded in their view of these things. And I know that for from what I've seen the socioeconomic status of the community where the school district is, can have an influence over whether they will comply or not. In a school district where they don't have the money to throw at lawyers, they'll go ahead and pay for the service, they're not going to fight over it ... Catherine Michael 30:27 Yeah. Anne Zachry 30:27 ... because they can't afford to. But you get into an affluent community, especially when you're talking Southern California where you got these little pockets of nouveau riche and their big McMansions. And they're feeling all special because they have money and the school district people will tell them, "Oh, well, you don't want to go through public special education services. That's like a welfare service. You would do much better if you pay privately for the services yourself. You'll get much better results than what we can give you because ours is publicly funded." And so they play that ... Catherine Michael 30:58 Yeah. Anne Zachry 30:58 ... that mind trip on these wealthy parents whose identities are all wrapped up in their their newly accomplished wealth, and they play on that and these parents are taken for a ride, because then these parents are paying out of pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars for all of these specialists who were hovering, like vultures just waiting because they know it's coming. So you've got, you know, you've got all of these parties that are financially invested in enabling that mechanism to play out the way that it does. And then you have parents who suddenly realize after, you know, they've broken the bank, and they don't have all that money anymore, because it went all to private school and residential placement costs and things and to come to find out that they could have gotten all of that from the school district. But there's ... Catherine Michael 31:40 Yeah. Anne Zachry 31:40 ... only a two year statute of limitations and they've been paying out of pocket for the last 10 years. And so not until they're bankrupted by it that they realize the error in their judgment, and then they can't go back and fully recover. And it just there's all of these different games being played by people who seem to be similarly motivated to not serve, while taking public dollars to hold a public service position. And I think that this is as much a taxpayer issue as it is a parent issue, because like you said, we've already paid for these services to be provided. Those are our tax dollars. And in those are the laws that our Representatives passed in order to provide for these children. And yet, this is what we have instead. And so I think ... Catherine Michael 32:22 Yeah. Anne Zachry 32:22 ... that one of the parent advocates that I met a few years ago said she went up to Sacramento with a group of parents and sat down with state assembly members or state Senate, I'm not sure who all she met with. It was state officials, representatives. And said, you know, "When you take into account all of the people in California who have disabilities, and their immediate family members, like their parents, or you know, a spouse, do you consider them a constituency?" And he said, "No, the number is too small." And she said, "Well, okay, what about all the people who are employed to support all of these people with disabilities and their families and their extended families? When you add all those people in, does that become a constituency to you?" And he said, "Yes ..." Catherine Michael 33:08 Yeah. Anne Zachry 33:08 "... at that point, now you're talking about a significant number of people." And so what that really communicates is all of this divisiveness that we've been seeing in our culture where, you know, we've got people being pitted against each other for different ways of thinking about things and the things that make them unique from each other. And disability is no stranger to that experience. And what we're starting to realize is that the people who are trying to divide us are a minority. And they're easily identified, we all have a common group of individuals who are all trying to pit us against each other and turn us into special interest groups, when really we're just the majority. And if we all ... Catherine Michael 33:49 Yeah. Anne Zachry 33:49 ... weave ourselves together and collectively advocate for each other, then we're a constituency. And I think that ... Catherine Michael 33:57 Yeah. Anne Zachry 33:57 ... that is where we have to start thinking about these things now that it's not, "Oh, my disability rights versus your LGBTQ+ rights." It's not my "My race rights versus your gender rights." You know, it's not a "versus." It's no, everybody. Everybody has equal rights. And that's the whole point. Catherine Michael 34:16 Yeah. Anne Zachry 34:16 And so I think that our dialogue needs to shift in that direction. I know that I had this conversation in an IEP meeting the other day with a team, I had to file an OCR complaint. I'm like, "Look, this pandemic is not the apocalypse, you know? Zombies are not at the door." Catherine Michael 34:32 Right. Anne Zachry 34:32 "Democracy has not fallen, the rule of law still applies. And at no point did public health usurp civil rights, they are equally important. So what are you guys gonna do?" And they're just like "Uhhh!" because they don't know. I mean, but they understood why I filed a complaint. They weren't mad at me. They're probably ... they're actually they're like waiting to see what comes of it because maybe now they'll be given permission to do their jobs. You know? Catherine Michael 34:56 Right. Anne Zachry 34:56 Nobody was angry about it. It was like "Okay, well, yeah,. That logically makes sense. We'll just have to see what happens." And so I'm not necessarily, in my situations ... and of course, I have relationships with a lot of these people, because I see the same people in IEP meetings for different kids over the span of decades. So we all know each other. So it's not like ... Catherine Michael 35:17 Yeah. Anne Zachry 35:17 ... you know, I'm going into a novel situation, and then some stranger coming in and telling them what to do. Because that can be, you know, people can become defensive and adversarial when that happens. So I have rapport, but, you know, even still, you know, the fact that I can say something like that, and everybody's like, "Yeah, you know what, you're right. We still are not empowered to do what you're asking us to do." And so that that, to me, is very frustrating, because I know that there's people who want to do the right thing, and they can't; they're not being allowed to. Catherine Michael 35:45 Yeah. Anne Zachry 35:46 And I think that parents need to understand that too, that, you know, not everybody's the enemy, but you got to be paying real close attention these days. I mean, would you agree, I mean, the parents just need to be ... Catherine Michael 35:56 I would. Anne Zachry 35:56 ... very discerning about who they can trust? Catherine Michael 35:58 Well, absolutely. I think it's, again, it's being discerning. And it's also it's being educated as to what your child needs are, what you're asking for. And then also, you know, again, understanding that you are going to be the only one who really has your child's true best interests at heart. That's not to say that there aren't, you know, within school systems there are really dedicated teachers, dedicated administrators who are doing their very, very best to ensure children are being educated appropriately. But at the end of the day, and I don't necessarily like that expression, but it really does come down to, you are always going to know your child best. And it is going to be up to you to enforce these laws. Anne Zachry 36:43 Right. Catherine Michael 36:43 You know, you may have a great teacher one year and not another. And again, the school's interest isn't going to be the same as yours, right? Theirs is going to be on their budgeting, the union, you know, everything going on, your interest is going to be on "Is my child getting an appropriate program?" Anne Zachry 36:51 Exactly. Right. And, I mean, in terms of checks and balances, that's why the parents are such an important part of the team, and are afforded so many rights and the protected right to meaningful parent participation and ... Catherine Michael 37:11 Right! Anne Zachry 37:12 ... informed consent. I mean, all of those privileges and rights are there, because that's meant to be a check and balance against the rest of the system. And so, you know, if they if the parents are being bamboozled, and they are signing documents that they don't actually understand, then those enforceable rights are not being honored. And, you know, it's parents have to understand that they have recourse and they need to educate themselves as to what what that is. Catherine Michael 37:36 Right. Anne Zachry 37:36 And ask! I mean, my favorite thing is when parents say, "Okay, well, what are my rights under this circumstance?" and put it back on the school people ... ... to explain what their rights are, you know? And I think that that's a good strategy, because it is the burden of the school district to explain to parents what their rights are. They're supposed to be able to do that. And so you know, if they've put you the parent on the spot, the parents should feel comfortable saying, "Well, you know, what, I need to turn this around to put you on the spot for a minute, because I don't understand my right. And I'm not sure what I can do here." If you're savvy enough to know, in some states, you know, how the rules play out are different. In California, all you have to do is give 24 hour written notice, minimum, and you can audio record your child's IEP as a parent. You can't video record, but you can audio record, and the school district can't say no, but they also have to record as well so that there's a backup copy. And you know ... Catherine Michael 37:42 Yes! Anne Zachry 38:23 ... just for authenticity reasons. So different states have different rules about audio recording, but, you know, I audio record every IEP meeting. One, because I have ADHD myself, and I don't want to miss anything. And so it's just a ... it's more of a safety net, because I very rarely have to go back and listen for ... Catherine Michael 38:23 Yeah. Yeah. Anne Zachry 38:38 ... my own account. But just to know that I can make me less anxious during the meeting, but also because, you know ... ... it ends up getting introduced into evidence if we do have to go to a due process hearing. And it's been a very powerful tool. Catherine Michael 38:44 Well, yeah. Right. And you can be clear as to what you asked for, why you asked for it, what the school's response was. Anne Zachry 38:58 Exactly, Catherine Michael 38:59 I think that can be extremely helpful. Anne Zachry 39:01 And if, you know, when you go into an IEP meeting and you do have the, you know, you've legally made it okay to audio record - given written notice or whatever is required - and you're doing it lawfully, and then you go in and say, "I don't understand my rights under the circumstance, please explain them to me," and then the explanation they give you is either going to be a good one, or it's going to be a bad one. And if it's a bad one ... ... you know, the backup, you know, it's like, "Okay, well, I didn't get the right answer, but I got proof that they don't know what they're talking about. And I'm not crazy." And so it becomes evidence and I think the parents and, certainly as an advocate, when I go into the to the IEP process, I'm trying to solve the problem for real in the moment but I'm also making the record along the way in case it doesn't get resolved ... Catherine Michael 39:24 Yeah. Right. Anne Zachry 39:28 ... and so that by the time we arrive at due process, the trail ... the evidence trail is clear. If when they say no their explanations are, you know, are whatever they are. And, going back to what you had said earlier about prior written notice one of the things that I've noticed out here is that I would say, a good third of the time when I get a prior written notice, in response to something I've submitted for a family, it won't make a lick of sense. It will say prior written notice according to 300.503, blah, blah, blah ... Catherine Michael 40:14 Right. Anne Zachry 40:14 ... and have all that legalese at the top of it, and then they ... it's like a form and they'll populate the form with a bunch of gibberish that's just nonsense. It doesn't even explain why they said, "No." There's no real explanation. I'm like, "Okay, well go ahead and make the record that this is what you're sending out on a PWN form, and this is what you're going to represent as PWN," ... because substantively, it is embarrassing. And just because you put "PWN" at the top, and you cite the code that you're supposed to be following, the fact that you didn't is reflected the document itself. And it just, it blows my mind what people will put into writing because they think they're so clever. And it's like, "Okay." And so one of the things that I think is really valuable, that's helpful for parents to know, too, is that the regulations, it's 34 CFR section 300.320(a)(4) mandates the application of the peer reviewed research to the design and delivery of special education. When you have a bad IEP, you can say, "I want to understand the science that underpins this IEP. What peer reviewed research did you rely on to inform ..." Catherine Michael 40:34 Yeah. Anne Zachry 41:20 ... you know, and of course, they don't have anything. And then when I ask for something specific, and I know, I can reasonably anticipate that they're going to balk at it, because it's something they've not done before. And it's going to require them to create something new. I will cite the science that backs up the request that I am making and say specifically, the regulations require you to apply the peer reviewed research to the degree that it's practicable. So if you're not going to do this, when you send your prior written notice, please explain what it is about the science that is not practicable. Catherine Michael 41:20 Yeah. Yeah. Anne Zachry 41:23 And then they're, they're stumped, because they don't know how to reply to that. And again, it goes back to the fact that they don't actually have access to the peer reviewed research. I'll go ahead and ... Catherine Michael 42:02 Yeah. Anne Zachry 42:02 ... spend $70 on an article just to make my point, because I can ... Catherine Michael 42:06 Yeah. Anne Zachry 42:06 ... you know, but I shouldn't have to do that. And that's the problem, is that we have this paywall between our educators and the science that would tell them what to do. And what is the politics behind that? Why is there a paywall between our educators and the research that will tell them how to teach our kids right? How is that not part of the public domain? Why do teachers not have access to that? And then, especially when you have a legal mandate that requires it, you know? Catherine Michael 42:31 Oh yeah, and ... Anne Zachry 42:32 It blows my mind. Catherine Michael 42:34 It goes to the fact that, yeah, that because the laws are not enforced, right? We're just not seeing, for instance, when we look at health care, right, we have, you know, standards of care, best practices, we see checklists for everything with the doctors getting weekly reports on different new procedures, medications, right? We don't see that in education, because, again, there's so little penalty. We're not seeing teachers, sort of, you know, given a weekly mailer, you know, here are some of the programs that we're seeing coming out. Here are some of the best practices for working with a specific learning disability, you know, can you update off on how you're implementing this in your classroom? We don't see that because, again, there's so little importance level. Yeah, I really haven't felt the need to do that. Anne Zachry 43:23 Yeah, well, and I'm thinking we're overdue for a reauthorization of the IDEA. And one of the things that I would like to see in there is beefing up of that enforcement arm because they're supposed to be what 10 year audits or something like that? That we have some kind of audit procedure in California that every once in a while somebody pulls the short straw and ends up getting audited. And of course, every time they go through there and examine all the IEPs, it's just a disaster, but then nothing ever gets fixed. Catherine Michael 43:48 Right. Anne Zachry 43:48 And so it doesn't change anything. It's like, Oh, they just documented that it's a disaster and moved on to the next one. And nothing got rectified. And we need to speak to that. I mean, is we're looking at all of these broken systems that are just cracked open and expose raw and wide for the whole world to see now that there's no covering up that our social programs are flawed, and that we need to overhaul them. And we need to bring them kicking and screaming into the 21st century with best practices and not just best practices in teaching, but in best practices in operational standards, and efficiency, and ... ... and security and privacy. And I know I worked in IT for a few years in these huge enterprise class computing environments like Walmart and Sanyo, and Volkswagen and all of these big huge computing environments, where you have these global wide area networks in these supply chain automated pieces. Back in the day, I'm talking like 25-30 years ago, this technology has been around for a long time. And if you look at the degrees of efficiency, and the cost savings and the reduction in overhead that is experienced by the industries that adopt all of this ISO standards and these automated supply chain things and and the internal and the way they automate their internal business operations, that California is starting to head in that direction with respect to individualized person centered planning. That there is a pilot program that's being developed. And I don't know when exactly it's going to be deployed. But I know Ventura County as part of it, where, whether you're Department of Rehab, or you're special ed, or you're county mental health, or you're welfare, or you're food stamps, or you're Medicaid, or whatever, it's one individualized plan, one caseworker, and your plan calls out to all the different funding sources. So the consumer is not having to chase after the funding, the funding is following the consumer through a single individualized plan, which is only common sense. But it was only achievable by marrying all of these computer systems together, that all of these disparate agencies were working autonomously with, and making them able to talk to each other. And so now we're getting to the point where we can stitch all of our our computing resources together to create this inter woven supply chain so that we can streamline how we deliver public services and do it more cost effectively. But then what that also means is that there are no there are no dark shadows to hide in where funds can be misappropriated. There will be such a stringent degree of accountability that the cronyism and the back scratching that has gone on will no longer be enabled. It won't be possible. And so that also will free up a lot of resources. And that is another aspect of increasing the efficiency and the fiscal responsibility of the system and the fiscal management of it. And so there are people who financially benefit from the system being antiquated and broken right now. And they don't want those kinds of changes coming in. Because there goes all of their opportunities to exploit. We're starting to see that public service is going through this transformation that private industry went through when this happened decades ago, as these technologies come in. And as the public pushes for a greater accountability. And as we repair and we overhaul our systems, we're going to be using the most modern tools we have. And so I think that we can be encouraged that the future does hold a lot of potential for a lot of corrective action, and a lot of prevention of things like this happening again in the future. But we are not there yet. And I think it takes ... it's going to take all of us pushing for those reforms. Because as much as each parent needs to advocate for their child on a child by child basis, and not be afraid of the due process mechanisms, if that's what it takes, you know, but not think that it's like, you know, the panacea, like it's going solve every problem, we also need to be pushing collectively as a community of people for reforms that will fix the system in a way where these are no longer the problems we have to deal with. And that we have to repair the broken system, not only on a kid by kid basis, but we also have to make it better than it was in the first place. And so that the next time catastrophe comes, we're better prepared to roll with it. I mean, sadly enough, this was long overdue, where the system needed to be confronted on its failures. But I think that parents can take hope that we're part of history right now we're part of fixing it, we're part of making this better for our kids with special needs, because all of its going to have to be reformed, we can't just tape it back together and go back to the way it was. So I think that ... Catherine Michael 44:23 Yeah. Right. Anne Zachry 44:54 ... you know, there's, there's a lot of encouragement in what's going on here, there's a lot of opportunity, and we don't need to be so terrified of the changes that are coming. And we need to really embrace them, because it's our opportunity to make it better, I think. And it's going to take people like you and me going in there and one kid at a time, you know, saying, "No, this is ... these are the rules, and this is how they apply to this one child. And this is ..." " ... the individualized program, and and the individual person matters. You know, it's like every vote matters, every child matters. And whether that child has a disability or not, should not be a defining criteria of whether that individual matters or not, it shouldn't even be a question. Catherine Michael 48:39 Right! Yeah. Anne Zachry 48:55 And so I think that what we're doing is a very powerful thing. This is a very prescient area of civil rights law right now. And, you know, I think that, you know, regardless of how things play out with what other people do, what people like you and I are doing, we're on the right side of history with this, you know? We're enforcing civil rights. We're ... Catherine Michael 49:13 Yeah. Anne Zachry 49:13 ... we're enforcing democracy. It's we are of the people, for the people by the people doing the work to make sure the people are protected. And I think that families need to understand that they're not alone, that there are folks like that, like us out there. And we're not that rare, you know, and the fact that you're licensed in multiple states goes to the fact that you recognize the degree to which there's not enough representation in some places, and that you're making it ... Catherine Michael 49:36 Yeah. Anne Zachry 49:36 ... happen anyway. And so that's really powerful. I think the parents need to ... and I know that there are other attorneys who are licensed in multiple states as well. One of the attorneys I work with here in California is also licensed in Alaska. And let me tell you, going out into the middle of Alaska in the middle of nowhere ... ... and enforcing special ad law is not an easy thing to do. You're coming in on a like a bush plane and landing in, you know, somebody field, you know, and going to a one room ... Catherine Michael 49:53 Yeah! Right. Anne Zachry 50:04 ... school house to say," Okay, this kid needs speech and language. How are you gonna make it happen?" and they still got to do it. And so, you know ... Catherine Michael 50:09 Yeah. Anne Zachry 50:09 ... parents need to understand that even under the most bizarre and difficult circumstances it can be made to happen. There's always a way. Catherine Michael 50:17 Right. Anne Zachry 50:17 You know, and that it's not a hopeless situation. So I think that talking about this with you has been very enlightening and very encouraging. And I think that you've given us a lot of really good information. I do want to remind everybody that I'm going to include a link to your book with all of our, you know, the stuff below on the ... because what we'll do is we we do the podcast, but we also do a corresponding text only post ... Catherine Michael 50:39 Great! Anne Zachry 50:40 That way, all the links for everything are embedded in the transcript ... Catherine Michael 50:44 Yeah. Anne Zachry 50:44 ... so we'll have all of that and then ... Catherine Michael 50:47 Oh, that would be fantastic! Anne Zachry 50:49 Yeah, and that way folks know how to get ahold of you. And this has been a really good discussion, I really appreciate you doing this with me. Catherine Michael 50:56 You know, you've done a great job, as well, at trying to keep parents aware of their rights and helping them feel empowered. And I think that's the biggest thing that they need to know is that they have a lot of power in their hands. They just need to know that there are lots of us on their side trying to help them along the way. Anne Zachry 51:13 Right. And it means the world to us to be able to do it. It's such an honor to be able to be part of making somebody's life something that you know that they're they're happy and they're fulfilled and they're not living in misery ... Catherine Michael 51:26 Yes! Anne Zachry 51:27 ... or in crisis, you know, that that we can help people turn those kinds of corners with the kind of work that we do. I mean, it's an honorable thing that we do and I'm proud of what we do. So thank you, and thank you for doing this and for sharing your information with us and hopefully we'll get to do something like this with you again soon. Catherine Michael 51:44 Yeah, I would love it. And thank you again, so much and for all that you do.

Today, we're branching into the Americans with Disabilities Education Act, otherwise known as the ADA!

Last week, we discussed employment and the Rehabilitation Act's impact on the neurodiverse community. In this week's episode we're branching off into IDEA, otherwise known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and how it reformed education for the neurodiverse.

This episode covers some of the most important disability rights laws including the Rehabilitation Act, which is today's topic, IDEA, otherwise known as Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act!

Mark Claypool, co-author of How Autism is Reshaping Special Education. Topic: The Unbundling of IDEA and more. Issues: What is IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), what it did right and where it went wrong; becoming an advocate for your child and getting the most appropriate services; who pays for services for children with autism […] The post Unbundling of IDEA + Mentally Strong Parents appeared first on Mr. Dad.

In this episode, Mike Robinson, Founder, Global Cannabinoid Research Center, Cannabis Advocate, Cancer Survivor joins Jill Woodworth to discuss his MILLION MILLIGRAM GIVEAWAY of CBD to alleviate the dire need of many within compassion communities affected by coronavirus. Mike shares his own lived experience as a special needs advocate for many years and how devastating it is to learn of past clients struggling profusely in light of the drop off of IEP services post Coronavirus restrictions. "Kids in regular ed will have free home school by their computer every day, paid for by the US government. And there's absolutely zero announcement about the most vulnerable members of society that attend public school in special education. There is Zero an announcement about the civil rights and protections put in place by our government to the 1971 Omnibus bill that created DHS, that created CPS, that created the Individual with Disabilities Education Act that requires states to take the funds that they got and create programs for children and special education. These are very strict laws regarding how you use these funds. And the issue right now is not whether or not there's a pandemic, a cold, a virus. The issue is that states that have received billions and billions of dollars in funding for special education. They commingle those into their regular funds. So now they have gone ahead and used that money and now are going ahead and allowing parents to call and say, "Hey, I can't help what's going on at home", to lose their child. So, by lack of supporting children who are federally protected with these supports, we are facing a crisis, of epidemic proportions." "People tell me that "Oh, it's not my business plan. Oh, I can't give this away. Oh I'm going bankrupt "and I am like, "Guess what? What you give comes back. Always". If you give negativity it comes back to you. When you give a loan. It comes back to you. If you expect instant gratification, when you give. guess what? It's not happening. There's no remuneration, there's money coming to you for giving. It's love and love is returned. You put love out to the world, and it's infectious. It's way more infectious than the Coronavirus. Yeah, so that's my plan. My plan is to put love into the world. 1 million milligrams, a million milligrams, and the details are still being worked out. It's pretty awesome. So people can get a small amount of CBD oil mailed to them or they'll pick it up and have something that they can use to help themselves their loved ones" Mike learned about compassion under the tutelage of Dennis Peron, an American activist and businessman who became a leader in the movement for the legalization of cannabis throughout the 1990s. He influenced many in California and thus changed the political debate on marijuana in the United States. Dennis passed away on January 27, 2018 (aged 72). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Peron Please join us in sharing this podcast within and without the Cannabis Industry to garner as much support as possible. Donations are needed and welcomed! Please email: 50Kreasons@gmail.com, or pjlacy6@gmail.com and check out Mike's page on our site: https://tsctalks.com/special-contributor-mike-robinson/the-mike-drop/ for more information. Mike's Links: ounder of: https://mikesmedicines.com https://genevievesdream.com https://globalcannabinoidrc.com https://carouselchallenge.com

Before the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act there was the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) from 1975 to 1990. This was enacted while I was in college, which is why I never really had exposure to students with disabilities, especially Down's Syndrome. I have spent my career working with students with all abilities and difficulties but have felt more of a need to advocate for children with Down's Syndrome because they are an endangered segment of our society. Even today there is a push internationally for abortion if a mother is carrying a fetus found to have Trisomy 21. I want to take a moment to celebrate all the achievements these children have given us. Let's not continue to discriminate against them from inception onward, but work to help them show us all that they have to offer. And they have a great deal to offer.

Before the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act there was the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) from 1975 to 1990. This was enacted while I was in college, which is why I never really had exposure to students with disabilities, especially Down's Syndrome. I have spent my career working with students with all abilities and difficulties but have felt more of a need to advocate for children with Down's Syndrome because they are an endangered segment of our society. Even today there is a push internationally for abortion if a mother is carrying a fetus found to have Trisomy 21. I want to take a moment to celebrate all the achievements these children have given us. Let's not continue to discriminate against them from inception onward, but work to help them show us all that they have to offer. And they have a great deal to offer.

In this episode, we’re speaking with Larry Altman. Larry is a return guest to TLTalkRadio, and currently works as a consultant for schools helping them develop legally compliant policies, protocols and procedures for Title IX, Anti-bullying, student suicide prevention, Section 504, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. He is also a distinguished member of the American Law Society and serves…Read more

Advocating for your special needs child in school or as a young adult in their transition years is something just about every special needs parent will have to do. In this episode of Parenting Impossible, Annette talks about how important it is to advocate properly for your loved one. Her guest this time is Ellen Chambers. Ellen has devoted her career as an advocate by helping families, educators and agencies secure proper special education services for school children with special needs. Ellen is also the founder of SPEDWatch, an organization in Massachusetts that works to make sure all special education students are provided with the education they are legally and morally entitled to. Ellen talks about IDEA which is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and how it is aimed at ensuring all students with disabilities have a free and appropriate education. Much of her work is based off this law that was passed in 1975. It ensures education as well as extending beyond academics. Annette and Ellen also discuss that when working with your school system, they should have a plan in place to ensure a proper education and that it should at some point, include post-secondary goals to prepare your student for transition. That includes basic living skills, employment and the training to gain meaningful employment. Ellen says that there are still some school districts that do not understand their legal obligations and it is up to you as an advocate to be aware. Ellen and Annette talk about your rights to have an independent evaluation of your student’s program and that you also have the right to choose your own evaluator. You can request that the school district pay for that evaluation as well. But be careful because the school district does not have to agree with the final outcome of that evaluation. Ellen offers listeners her top tips for advocating for your student and young adult. She says to make sure you understand your child’s abilities and disabilities, strengths and skills that need more attention. Build a strong independent clinical team for your loved one. Also, know how the system works, know your rights and know when to exercise those rights. She also says it is important to behave in a professional manner when dealing with your school system. Tensions can run high at times, but it is important to stay calm whenever possible. And she says, let your child develop at their own pace. If you need some advice on how to advocate for your special needs loved one, this is a great discussion. You can contact Ellen Chambers at: emchambers123@gmail.com              The IDEA website with many resources can be found here: https://sites.ed.gov/idea/

Next week is Super Tuesday and Amanda and Vickie bring you this timely episode to get you up-to-speed on the rest of the top candidates and their proposed education and disability platforms so that you can make the best-informed decision. If K-12 education and disability rights are important to you, you’re not going to want to miss this show! Show Highlights: The top five Presidential candidates are Amy Klobuchar, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders (which was Episode 117 and you can find it HERE), Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg. The one thing that these candidates have in common is that they have ALL said they want to ensure full funding of the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). However, just because schools receive the funding does not mean they will use it correctly. Klobuchar:  She is a firm proponent of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math-focused programs). Increase funding for public schools. Increase funding for state disability programs. Increase in teacher pay. Do not allow private school vouchers. Warren: IDEA initial funding to cover the additional costs of educating students with disabilities was 40% in 1975. Now it is around 15%. Block the private school vouchers. Civil rights - ensure that students are being treated fairly, including protections for the LGBTQ community. Wants funding fairly distributed. Biden: His 5 Key Points: Support our educators by giving them the pay and dignity they deserve. Invest in resources for our schools so students grow into physically and emotionally healthy adults, and educators can focus on teaching. Ensure that no child’s future is determined by their zip code, parents’ income, race, or disability. Provide every middle and high school student a path to a successful career. Start investing in our children at birth. Buttigieg: He actually lays out a 19-page plan on his website, so Amanda and Vickie will highlight some issues. Ensure that the inclusivity of people with disabilities spans not only education but platforms all across the United States. Make inclusive education an expectation. Improve students’ mental health. Improve interdisciplinary practices between general education and special education, as well as mental health. Support and strengthen Title 9. How is the education plan in YOUR state being affected by what’s being proposed? Links/Resources: Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to the show to receive every new episode delivered straight to your podcast player every Tuesday. If you enjoyed this episode and believe in our message, then please help us get the word out about this podcast. Rate and Review this show in Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, or Google Play. It helps other listeners find this show. Be sure to connect with us and reach out with any questions/concerns: Facebook Instagram Twitter IEP website This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not to be construed as legal advice specific to your circumstances. If you need help with any legal matters, be sure to consult with an attorney regarding your specific needs. Facebook Private Group - Inclusive Education Project Podcast Previous Episodes Team Sanders Speaks Out On His Educational Platform [IEP 117] Charter Schools: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly [IEP 66]

Every 21st century teacher can expect to teach students who have a classification from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. If you are not trained in special education, meeting those students’ needs may seem challenging. This episode provides an OVERVIEW of the SLD designation and what a teacher can expect in the mainstreamed classroom. Most information on specific learning disabilities can be found here: https://sites.ed.gov/idea/. Thank you for your support! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/CNorthingtonPurdie/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/CNorthingtonPurdie/support

Good morning, you're listening to the Daily Apple, your source for the latest in Education News. I'm your host Jim Kent, the date is December 18, 2019. Before we get into the news of the day, I'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, VictoryXR. VXR's award-winning content, helps kids experience science and engineering in a way that they have never been able to before, while making sure to cover everything within the NextGen Science Standards, and they've made it accessible on every kind of VR headset you can think of. To find out more, check out VictoryXR.com But now for the news.Politico reports that congress is looking to increase education spending . The $72.8 billion in discretionary funding for the Education Department, part of an eight-bill "minibus," H.R. 1865 (116), marks an increase of $1.3 billion compared with enacted fiscal 2019 funding. The maximum Pell Grant award under the bill would be increased by $150, an increase of more than 2 percent from $6,195 to $6,345 for the 2020-21 school year. Title I grants would increase by $450 million. Funding for grants under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act would get boosted by $410 million. The spending agreement offers $250 million in quality improvement funding, which includes a priority on addressing “the rise of adverse childhood experiences attributable to increased prevalence of substance use, economic hardship, home and community violence, and other traumatic experiences that can negatively impact child development and lead to disruptions in classroom environments.”https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-education/2019/12/17/education-department-in-line-for-a-13b-spending-bump-783766  According to reporting by the Daily Californian, The 2019 California School Dashboard report shows statewide improvement in graduation rates, college and career readiness and in English and math test scores.Every year, the California Department of Education, or CDE, releases a report measuring statewide academic performance based on six main indicators: chronic absenteeism, suspension rates, graduation rates, college and career preparedness and English and math test scores.The CDE uses the report to identify school districts that are in most need of assistance, based on student groups receiving extremely low rankings in two or more indicators. The number of school districts eligible for this “differentiated assistance” has gone down from 386 in 2018 to 333 in 2019, according to CDE spokesperson Scott Roark. The only measure of academic performance in the report that saw a significant negative change from 2018 to 2019 was chronic absenteeism, with 10.1% of students missing 10% or more of the school year, a 1.1% increase from the 2018 report. For the upcoming year, in order to further the educational progress seen this year, the ACOE will continue working on its Pathways to College and Career Department, as well as building more youth-led initiatives and investing in leadership development for teachers, Roberson said. The ACOE is also working on addressing the unique needs of at-risk student groups, such as homeless students. https://www.dailycal.org/2019/12/17/annual-ca-education-report-shows-statewide-academic-progress/American School & University Magazine reports that In fall 2019, overall postsecondary enrollment at U.S. institutions decreased 1.3 percent, or more than 231,000 students, from the previous fall.The Fall 2019 Current Term Enrollment Estimates report compiled by the National Student Clearinghouse® Research calculated fall 2019 higher education enrollment at 17.9 million students.Florida saw the greatest drop in year-to-year enrollment—52,328 students.Fifteen states saw increases in enrollment, especially those in the South and the West. Utah had the greatest year-to-year  increase—nearly 16,800 students or a 4.9% growth from last year.California, with more than 2.4 million students, had the largest college enrollment among the states, nearly a million more students than second place Texas.https://www.asumag.com/research/top-10s/article/21118631/states-with-largest-higher-education-enrollment-fall-2019KOCO in Okahoma City reports that New requirements from the Oklahoma State Department of Education could nearly wipe out the four-day school week model, forcing schools across the state to go back to a five-day week.Senate Bill 441 is designed to limit four-day school weeks, setting the standard that a minimum of 165 days must be spent in the classroom. To be exempt, a district must meet the Department of Education's guidelines, which a local advocacy group said are unattainable. The Oklahoma 4 Day School Coalition said the standards are so high that only 12% of all school districts in Oklahoma would meet them right now.Gov. Kevin Stitt signed the Senate bill earlier this year. The exemption rules will go to the state Legislature for final approval. https://www.koco.com/article/oklahoma-ag-says-hes-withdrawing-from-tribal-gaming-compact-negotiations/30259499Inside Higher Ed reports that The proportion of all enrolled college students who took at least one online class continued to rise, edging up to 34.7 percent in fall 2018 from 33.1 percent the previous year. The rate of increase appears to be slowing ever so slightly, although online education remains the main driver of growth in postsecondary enrollments. Western Governors University's aggressive expansion has catapulted it to the top of universities with the most students taking at least one online course. It is followed by Southern New Hampshire University, another fast grower (15.2 percent year-over-year growth and, like WGU, growing by nearly 73 percent over three years).Southern New Hampshire and Western Governors were early movers among nonprofit universities to challenge the for-profit colleges that had largely captured the online market for adult learners in the 1990s and 2000s.The list also shows significant growth by several large public universities in recent years, with institutions like Arizona State University (nearly doubling online enrollments since 2015), Florida International University (up 10 percent from 2017, and 44 percent since 2015), the Lone Star College system and the University of Texas at Arlington ascendant. Numerous other flagship institutions and public university systems are planning major investments in online learning, hoping to join the ranks of major national players. https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/12/17/colleges-and-universities-most-online-students-2018Bloomberg is reporting that The owners of a struggling luxury dorm at the University of Oklahoma sued the college Monday for allegedly breaking a commitment to rent retail and parking spaces at a 1,230-bed complex at its flagship campus.Provident Oklahoma Education Resources Inc., a non-profit that financed the $250 million project with municipal bonds, sued the university in state court, saying that if it had known the school would break its promise it never would have built the dorm, which includes a theater, a hair salon and a fitness center. Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based Provident is seeking more than $250 million in damages.The project is suffering because the university doesn't allow first-year students to live in the dorm, Provident said. The school also wanted suites without kitchens so students would eat at a university-run dining facility located in the dorm. However, upperclassmen overwhelmingly want in-unit kitchens, the lawsuit said. In addition, the university provided a flawed market study that didn't include fraternity and sorority housing and another dorm traditionally occupied by upperclassmen that competes directly with the project, the lawsuit said. The University of Oklahoma received $20 million from proceeds of the 2017 bond issue for the complex for a 50-year ground lease of the site. High ranking university officials, including its chief financial officer promised Provident it would rent the commercial and parking space every year over the life of the bonds, Provident alleged. The university also said it had obtained authorization to rent the space, which was later “exposed as patently inaccurate“ by the university's Board of Regents, the lawsuit said. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-16/university-of-oklahoma-sued-over-struggling-luxury-dorm-project  According to Japan Times, The government Tuesday decided against adding open-ended questions for Japanese and math to the country's new standardized university entrance exams due to start January 2021.Education minister Koichi Hagiuda said issues such as the potential for errors to be made by private-sector graders, which includes student part-timers, and the difficulty for test-takers to be able to self-assess answers to open-ended questions could not be overcome.Questions in the current standardized entrance exams are all in multiple-choice format. The scores determine which universities students choose to take further entrance exams.However, the minister stressed the importance of including open-ended questions that evaluate logical thinking and a student's ability to express themselves, and urged universities to put these types of questions on their own entrance exams.https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/12/17/national/open-ended-questions-scrapped-university-entry-exams-japan/#.Xflhrh9INEY And that rounds it up for todays headlines. Thanks again to VictoryXr for making this all possible. You can find the full transcript of today's episode, along with links to the full stories, in the description of the episode. If you have any questions, comments, or stories of your own that deserve to be broadcast, let us know on social media at dailyapplepod or by email at dailyapplepod@gmail.comThanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow morning, bright and early

On this episode of the Advocacy Update, Claire and Clark spoke with Barbara Raimondo, Executive Director, Conference of Educational Administrators of Schools and Programs for the Deaf, about reintroduction of the Cogswell Macy Act (H.R. 4822 & S. 2681). Named for the first deaf student to be formally educated in the U.S. and for Helen Keller’s beloved teacher, respectively, the Alice Cogswell and Anne Sullivan Macy Act will strengthen the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to improve results for deaf, hard of hearing, blind, visually impaired, and deaf-blind children, including those with additional disabilities. More information about the Cogswell Macy Act is available at: https://cogswellmacyact.org/. To learn more about ACB, please visit: www.acb.org. A transcript of this podcast is available at: https://acb.org/ACB-Advocacy-Update-12-5-19-Transcript

On this episode of the Advocacy Update, Claire and Clark spoke with Barbara Raimondo, Executive Director, Conference of Educational Administrators of Schools and Programs for the Deaf, about reintroduction of the Cogswell Macy Act (H.R. 4822 & S. 2681). Named for the first deaf student to be formally educated in the U.S. and for Helen Keller’s beloved teacher, respectively, the Alice Cogswell and Anne Sullivan Macy Act will strengthen the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to improve results for deaf, hard of hearing, blind, visually impaired, and deaf-blind children, including those with additional disabilities. More information about the Cogswell Macy Act is available at: https://cogswellmacyact.org/. To learn more about ACB, please visit: www.acb.org. A transcript of this podcast is available at: https://acb.org/ACB-Advocacy-Update-12-5-19-Transcript

On this episode of the Advocacy Update, Claire and Clark spoke with Barbara Raimondo, Executive Director, Conference of Educational Administrators of Schools and Programs for the Deaf, about reintroduction of the Cogswell Macy Act (H.R. 4822 & S. 2681). Named for the first deaf student to be formally educated in the U.S. and for Helen Keller’s beloved teacher, respectively, the Alice Cogswell and Anne Sullivan Macy Act will strengthen the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to improve results for deaf, hard of hearing, blind, visually impaired, and deaf-blind children, including those with additional disabilities. More information about the Cogswell Macy Act is available at: https://cogswellmacyact.org/. To learn more about ACB, please visit: www.acb.org. A transcript of this podcast is available at: https://acb.org/ACB-Advocacy-Update-12-5-19-Transcript

On this episode of the Advocacy Update, Claire and Clark spoke with Barbara Raimondo, Executive Director, Conference of Educational Administrators of Schools and Programs for the Deaf, about reintroduction of the Cogswell Macy Act (H.R. 4822 & S. 2681). Named for the first deaf student to be formally educated in the U.S. and for Helen Keller’s beloved teacher, respectively, the Alice Cogswell and Anne Sullivan Macy Act will strengthen the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to improve results for deaf, hard of hearing, blind, visually impaired, and deaf-blind children, including those with additional disabilities. More information about the Cogswell Macy Act is available at: https://cogswellmacyact.org/. To learn more about ACB, please visit: www.acb.org. A transcript of this podcast is available at: https://acb.org/ACB-Advocacy-Update-12-5-19-Transcript

Host Sloan Simmons talks to Lozano Smith’s Special Education Practice Group Leader Marcy Gutierrez and special education litigator Kristy Boyes about the challenges schools face in providing the least restrictive environment (LRE) to students with special needs, and what guidance we can glean from federal law as enunciated by the Ninth Circuit, including in the 2019 case of Solorio v. Clovis Unified School District (J.S.) (9th Cir. Jan. 15, 2019) Case No. 17-16625, which was litigated by Sloan and Kristy before the district court and Ninth Circuit. Show Notes & References 1:42  LRE (Least Restrictive Environment) - 20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(5); 34 C.F.R. § 300.114; 34 C.F.R. § 300.115 2:50  IDEA (Individual with Disabilities Education Act) - 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq. 7:34  Sacramento City Unified Sch. Dist. v. Rachel H. (9th Cir. 1994) 14 F.3d 1398 11:05  Poolaw v. Bishop (9th Cir. 1995) 567 F.3d 830 20:12  K.M. v. Tehachapi Unified Sch. Dist. (E.D. Cal. Apr. 5, 2017) Case No. 1:15-cv-001835 LJO JLT, 2017 WL 1348807 23:02  Solorio v. Clovis Unified Sch. Dist. (J.S.) (9th Cir. Jan. 15, 2019) Case No. 17-16625, 748 Fed.Appx. 146 32:47  R.M. by and through S.M. v. Gilbert Unified Sch. Dist. (9th Cir. Apr. 24, 2019) Case No. 17-16722, 768 Fed.Appx. 720 34:45  Baquerizo v. Garden Grove Unified Sch. Dist. (9th Cir. 2016) 826 F.3d 1179   For more information on the topics discussed in this podcast, please visit our website at: www.lozanosmith.com/podcast.

The TSC world famous & beloved Dena Hook, Vice President of Support Services at the TS Alliance comes on the podcast to discuss, well, a lot. This is Part 1 of our conversation and Dena walks us through her history right up until she started working at the TS Alliance in 2007. Dena shares her experience advocating for her son with severe dyslexia in the early years of special needs legislation and how that inspired & launched her career in advocacy. She describes that it was a time when being "in the building" for a kid with special needs, was about as much support as was given. Dena was Technical Assistant Coordinator for the National Parent Training and Information Center (PACER) for over 6 years training educational advocates throughout the country. She worked with the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) during the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1997. A published author through Incentive Publication, she wrote: “Success with IEPs” and “An IEP Writing Tool” for teachers and school administrators. During her time as CEO of Family and Children First, she ran Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Early Childhood Program, Truancy Mediation, and Strengthening Families a Mental Health and Drug Addiction Program for Marion County in Ohio. She is certified as Special Education Mediator through the Juvenile Justice Center of Atlanta and as a Truancy Mediator through the Ohio Supreme Court. On a personal level, Dena also talks about leaving her job at PACER & working with OSEP to return to Ohio to aid her mother and how despite leaving an esteemed position, she was able to use her experience as a parent, advocate & then administrator to rise once again to leadership at Family & Children First in her home state of Ohio. Buckle up, there's a lot here and more on the way! (music credit: https://www.purple-planet.com)

The TSC world famous & beloved Dena Hook, Vice President of Support Services at the TS Alliance comes on the podcast to discuss, well, a lot. This is Part 1 of our conversation and Dena walks us through her history right up until she started working at the TS Alliance in 2007. Dena shares her experience advocating for her son with severe dyslexia in the early years of special needs legislation and how that inspired & launched her career in advocacy. She describes that it was a time when being "in the building" for a kid with special needs, was about as much support as was given. Dena was Technical Assistant Coordinator for the National Parent Training and Information Center (PACER) for over 6 years training educational advocates throughout the country. She worked with the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) during the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1997. A published author through Incentive Publication, she wrote: “Success with IEPs” and “An IEP Writing Tool” for teachers and school administrators. During her time as CEO of Family and Children First, she ran Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Early Childhood Program, Truancy Mediation, and Strengthening Families a Mental Health and Drug Addiction Program for Marion County in Ohio. She is certified as Special Education Mediator through the Juvenile Justice Center of Atlanta and as a Truancy Mediator through the Ohio Supreme Court. On a personal level, Dena also talks about leaving her job at PACER & working with OSEP to return to Ohio to aid her mother and how despite leaving an esteemed position, she was able to use her experience as a parent, advocate & then administrator to rise once again to leadership at Family & Children First in her home state of Ohio. Buckle up, there's a lot here and more on the way! (music credit: https://www.purple-planet.com)

Laws that mandate education for special needs students have not always existed. In the United States, courts only began referring to students with special needs in the early 1900s. At the time, such students were typically excluded from public school. Things began to change after the Brown v. Board of Education supreme country ruling in 1954. Twenty years later in the 1970s, congress enacted various legislation mandating educational services and support for children with special needs. My guest today is Charlie Russo. In our conversation, Charlie details the power of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and situates it in an international context. Charlie Russo is the Joseph Panzer Chair in Education in the School of Education and Health Sciences and Research Professor of Law in the School of Law at the University of Dayton. www.freshedpodcast.com/Charlierusso Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com

Today we continue our Education and Law mini-series with a show on the legal and policy issues surrounding special education. My guest is Janet Decker, an Associate Professor in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Department at Indiana University. Dr. Decker became interested in special education policy when she taught students with autism. In our conversation, Dr. Decker talks about the legal term FAPE, which stands for Free and Appropriate Public Education. FAPE is legally guaranteed to children under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. It is one of the most important legal issues in special education, but also one of the most problematic. What is the definition of 'Free' and 'Appropriate' 'Public' 'Education'? Janet Decker’s latest co-written book with Martha McCarthy and Suzanne Eckes is Legal Rights of School Leaders, Teachers, and Students, published by Pearson. This episode was put together in collaboration with the Education Law Association. www.freshedpodcast.com/decker Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Email: info@freshedpodcast.com

It seems like almost every week we hear yet another news story about a school in hot water because of a secret tape recorder or phone that a parent sent in a student's back pack. Is this even legal?  And what if a parent requests to send a recording device with her child in advance?  Do school districts have to agree?  What if the parent wants to record a team meeting?  When is a school district obligated to allow such recordings and what precautions should the team take? Lisa and Miriam kick off Season Three with a fabulous interview with Peter Zawadski, an attorney at Walter Haverfield who often advises school districts about developments in technology and privacy laws. In this episode, Peter reviews school district obligations when parents ask to record their child's classroom or a team meeting, including considerations under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Miriam, Lisa, and Peter practice education law at Walter Haverfield in Cleveland, Ohio. We love hearing from you! Drop us a line, let us know what you thought, and tell us which education-related legal topics you'd like to hear about in future episodes! Check us out at: https://www.walterhav.com/professionals/Pete-T-Zawadski   https://www.walterhav.com/professionals/Miriam-M-Pearlmutter   https://www.walterhav.com/professionals/Lisa-Woloszynek  

Show Summary: (Full Transcript Below) In partnership with State Services for the Blind of Minnesota we are proud to present, PACER Center - Champions for Children with Disabilities.  Barb and Kate sit down with Jeff Thompson of Blind Abilities in the sixth of a series of podcasts in partnership with PACER Center and State Services for the Blind. You can find the entire PACER Center series here. Barb talks about her role as Co-Director of the National Parent Center on Transition and Employment and her experiences in advocacy that led her to PACER Center. Kate shares her experiences from her journey through her kids transition from youth into adulthood. What worked and where she found answers. Join Barb, Kate and Jeff in this informative podcast about how PACER Center, State Services for the Blind and others played a role in the success of not only their kids transition into college, the work place and independence, but how Barb and Kate too, made the transition themselves in part by letting them grow. From the web: PACER Center enhances the quality of life and expands opportunities for children, youth, and young adults with all disabilities and their families, so each person can reach his or her highest potential. PACER operates on the principles of parents helping parents, supporting families, promoting a safe environment for all children, and working in collaboration with others. With assistance to individual families, workshops, materials for parents and professionals, and leadership in securing a free and appropriate public education for all children, PACER's work affects and encourages families in Minnesota and across the nation. Contacts: You can find out more about PACER Center on the web at www.pacer.org You can reach pACER Center by phone at 952-838-9000 You can find out more about State Services for the Blind on the web at www.MN.Gov/Deed/SSB And by calling 651-539-2300 Live Learn Work and Play Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities Appon the App Store. Full Transcript: PACER Center: Letting Them Grow – Transitioning from Youth to Adulthood - A Conversation with Parents Barb Ziemke and Kate Reinicke Jeff Thompson: State Services for the Blind of Minnesota presents PACER Center, champions for children with disabilities. This episode focuses on a parent's perspective of the transition period from youth to adulthood. We feature to speakers today. We have Barb Ziemke. She's the co-director of the National Parent Center on Transition and Employment. Also joining us is Kate Reinicke. She's the parent of three children with visual impairments. You can find out more about PACER Center and the National Parent Center on Transition and Employment on the web at www.PACER.org. Kate Reinicke: Have high expectations. Your kids can handle it. If they can't, you make an adjustment. Barb Ziemke: Desire to have my son included and to have meaningful experiences and not to be misunderstood or for people to judge his potential on the basis of assumptions. Kate Reinicke: Then after that it was taking care of. I didn't have to worry about it anymore. This was something he was handling. Barb Ziemke: Letting grow as a concept for young adults, especially those with challenges that do make this transition more challenging, as opposed to letting go. Kate Reinicke: Everyone was there with the same purpose. We all need information, we all want information, we all want to know how can we navigate this together. Everybody's there to help out. Jeff Thompson: Realizing the possibilities. Kate Reinicke: The blind abilities and possibilities. Jeff Thompson: Welcome to Blind Abilities. I'm Jeff Thompson. I'm at the PACER Center in Bloomington, Minnesota. Today I'm joined by Barb Ziemke. How are you doing? Barb Ziemke: I'm doing great. Thanks so much for being here today. Jeff Thompson: Barb, can you tell us a little about PACER Center and yourself? Barb Ziemke: Sure. PACER Center is Minnesota's parent training and information center that receives some funding under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to help families navigate special education, students on 504 Plans, any individual with a disability who requires support or services or accommodations. Barb Ziemke: PACER is here to provide information in family-friendly kinds of language to interpret the language or the law to language that helps families be the best advocate they can be to get what their students need to succeed. We like to support high expectations and help families know about the possibilities so that they don't feel alone on the journey. I like to say PACER tries to give both help and hope. Jeff Thompson: Well, that's great. How about a little bit about yourself? Barb Ziemke: Well, I came to PACER 17 years ago. I am the parent of two children: my daughter, Kristen, and then her younger brother, Brandon. When Brandon was born, he had an unspecific developmental disability with global developmental issues, including he has hearing only on one side and very poor fine motor skills and a variety of challenges, including intellectual disability. Barb Ziemke: As a parent, it just threw me for a loop. My background is education, but I didn't know anything really about disability or about special education, and so I dove head first into being involved in some local efforts to include families as much as possible in both policy and practices for helping young children with disabilities really have inclusive educations that led to great outcomes. Barb Ziemke: I lifelong have been an advocate for children, but when Brandon was in about seventh grade, I remember thinking, "I think I finally know what I'm doing around advocating as a parent within the education system. I wonder if there's any kind of job out there where you could help other families who maybe don't have a background in education or don't have the family support that I have, or maybe they don't speak English as their first language or they have a disability themselves." I thought of PACER and, fortunately, they had a job opening, and I became an advocate. Barb Ziemke: My primary role here for 15 years was as a special education advocate. Then a few years ago, PACER really realized that it's not enough to get students through school because the big challenge often is what some people call the transition cliff, when you have to make that transition into adulthood. We started the National Parent Center on Transition and Employment to support families and young adults as they launch into adulthood. I am co-directing that project along with our transition team here. We've partnered with State Services for the Blind for the last couple of years to provide more support for the pre-employment transition services, especially as it relates to family engagement in that process. Jeff Thompson: Well, you've done a good job with that. Let me go back a little bit. When you first realized that you had to start advocating, what feeling was that? Was it empty or were you lost? Barb Ziemke: Well, the first feeling was being overwhelmed and a bit scared. Mainly it stemmed, for me, and every parent is different, but I don't deal well with the unknown. I'm a researcher, I'm an information person. Because Brandon didn't have a specific diagnosis and his early prognosis was we're not sure if he'll ever walk, talk, be independent, it was difficult to figure out how to proceed when I didn't have any good idea of what the end might be. To plan with the end in mind when you don't know what the end could be was really daunting. Barb Ziemke: I had an older daughter, and although none of us can predict the future, I had basic expectations for her that were similar to my own life trajectory. Now I assumed she'd graduate from school, go to college, probably get married someday. Now I had Brandon, and I was supposed to make sure he got what he needed, but no one could give me a clear picture of where we were headed. Initially, it was pretty overwhelming. Jeff Thompson: Taking that experience, you brought that to PACER Center once you found them. Barb Ziemke: Exactly, because I remember what it was like. I also remember so much that desire to have my son included and to have meaningful experiences and not to be misunderstood or for people to judge his potential on the basis of assumptions. That drove my advocacy because I found that although the professionals who came alongside us were wonderful and we couldn't have accomplished what we did without them, that the parent voice was pivotal because other people can't care as much and they don't know as much. We are the experts on our kids. Barb Ziemke: It's just really drove what I do here at PACER because I really feel like if parents don't know how important they are in their role and if they don't have the support they need, that young people won't do as well. At the core of all this, I really care about youth and children success. Jeff Thompson: Oh, great. It's a great thing that PACER is doing. There's other parents that come here for the same thing now as you did. Barb Ziemke: That's right. Those parents who don't become a professional staff advocate, the families that come to our workshops and use our resources online, it's training to be the best advocate they can be as well as to help support them in helping their youth and young adult to be the best self-advocate they can be and to make this transition as families with some supports during the process. Jeff Thompson: One of those parents we have here today. Barb Ziemke: I'm so thankful that Kate Reinicke has joined us today. Kate and her husband participated in a workshop and a focus group for us. One of the things that I personally have found really challenging as the parent of a young person with a disability was this process that we're supposed to be engaged in of consistently letting go, and especially as we reach the transition years, I would hear from many professionals, "Barb, you just really need to start letting go." Barb Ziemke: I have to say that for me that phrase early was a little bit like in my face, a little bit too much. I thought, "You have no idea why I'm concerned the way I am about this and the legitimacy of those concerns." At our house, we're big fans of Charles Schulz. When I thought about letting go, the visual image I got was like I'm flying the kite and the kite is up now and I'm supposed to let go. Then I think of Charlie Brown's kite in the tree and the string all wound around the branches and I'm thinking, "There's no way I'm letting go of this kite." Barb Ziemke: Over the years, I don't know where I heard the phrase ... It's out there, other people use it ... "letting grow" as a concept for young adults, especially those with challenges that do make this transition more challenging as opposed to letting go. I found that when I looked at it that way, I could see more of a role for me. It wasn't just an, "Okay, I'm done now," it was, "How do I cultivate some soil? How do we find an environment that's appropriate for this kind of seed? What can we do to support growth in collaboration with professionals and others? Then place our young person there and back off a bit and let growth occur." Barb Ziemke: Over the years, I've learned that the hard way. Sometimes I haven't let grow as much as I needed to. If people are listening to this who know me, I pretty much kill all the plants I try to grow, so it's not the best analogy. I did a little research, though, about growing and the two things I found really interesting were that the size of the pot is really essential, that if the pot is too small, you'll stunt their growth of their roots. If there's not enough space around the plant on the top of the soil, the plant can't grow. Barb Ziemke: I just, as a parent, I could see that what my role was going to be was make sure that we had increasingly larger pots and that I gave increasingly more space. Really, as I talk to families, I like to try to help them envision the growth process more than the letting go at this point; although, of course, you're always, as parents, letting go. That's part of what we do. Barb Ziemke: As I was thinking about doing this as part of a podcast, my concern was I have the perspective from having worked with families from all different kinds of disabilities. Then my own personal perspective as a parent of someone with a developmental disability and intellectual disability, but I don't know what it's like to parent a son or daughter who has visual impairment or is blind or deaf-blind, and I really wanted that voice to be part of our conversation. Barb Ziemke: I immediately thought of Kate. She had participated in a focus group and I talked with her at a workshop. She and her husband have, I'll let her tell you, more than one child. She has a lot of experience and she's in the middle of it. I'm really thankful that Kate Reinicke agreed to be with us here today. I'd like to introduce you and ask Kate to tell us a little bit about herself. Kate Reinicke: Hello. I'm Kate Reinicke. I'm the parent of three children, all of which have visual impairment. They range in age from 17 to recently 20. Our oldest is a sophomore at North Hennepin Community College. Jeff Thompson: Kate, how did you find PACER? Kate Reinicke: My family, we moved up here in November of 2012. Our middle son is severely autistic. In moving up here, we needed to know what kind of resources and supports were available here. I actually found PACER through a Google search, looking for supports and resources for our middle son in regards to his severe autism. Jeff Thompson: With the visual aspect, did you find State Services for the Blind? Kate Reinicke: Actually, the visual teacher for the blind and visually impaired, TVIs, we have a great set of those in the Anoka-Hennepin School District. They actually got us in touch with State Services for the Blind. We signed up our oldest son at the age of 14. Jeff Thompson: Because that's the age where transition students can apply for services. Kate Reinicke: That's correct. I was surprised that it would be that young. In my mind, transition was graduating from high school and moving on to college or career. To have a child sign up at 14 was a pleasant surprise to think about all the training that they could do in those years leading up to graduation. Jeff Thompson: Some possibilities were opening up. Kate Reinicke: Exactly, the blind abilities and possibilities. Jeff Thompson: Plug. With all those possibilities coming your way, what was it like before that happened? There had to have been some doubt, some confusion, as Barb was mentioning earlier in her situation. Now here we are with the blindness, the visual impairment aspect. What was that like for you? Kate Reinicke: These are actually my stepchildren. Coming in not only as a step-parent but also starting to learn more about our kids' disabilities, we were also in transition about learning what their visual impairment was, what the cause of it was, how severe is it going to get. We learned through the years that it's actually a genetic disorder called Bardet-Biedl syndrome, and it causes the children to have retinitis pigmentosa. With retinitis pigmentosa, I'm sure most of your listeners know, tunnel vision, loss of color vision, and blind spots in your vision. Kate Reinicke: As we're learning more about that, it was very helpful to have the TVIs and State Services for the Blind there to show us that there were already pathways set for kids like ours that, unlike Barb, we weren't starting from scratch. There were programs and resources already in place that they could help us get in contact with. Like Barb said, I'm the type of person that if I'm presented with a problem, I want to know as much as I possibly can so that I can come up with a good solution, so that the more I can learn, the better I feel. Jeff Thompson: What were some of the first solutions that came across your pathway? Kate Reinicke: TVI definitely and working with the IEP process at schools. Jeff Thompson: Did something surprise you? Was there a moment like a wow moment? Kate Reinicke: What I learned with retinitis pigmentosa is that our kids can become virtually blind in low lighting situations. In a lot of cases, I'd never paid attention to that. Going to restaurants and realizing, "Oh, it's actually pretty dark in here. My kids are going to need a sighted guide by holding my elbow," or walking through the hallways of their high school, "This area is really not well lit. This is going to be a problem," but also realizing how much accommodations could be made for our children so that they could succeed, and also getting in touch with BLIND, Inc., where BLIND, Inc. stands for Blindness Learning in New Dimensions and understanding that there are not things that my kids can't do, they just have to do them differently. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. That's a local training center for adults and transition-age students in Minneapolis. Barb Ziemke: Kate, what you just said now just reminds me to the importance of that starting early. Most parents are not thinking about what's going to happen after school at age 14. They're just trying so hard to make school work. I just love that reminder that what you need, though, is several years at least once you've identified what they need to learn the skills to develop. You're learning what accommodations are helpful. You need that time, the technology. Waiting until 18 or 19 will not give you that time. That's one of the things that we try at PACER in our training with families is start earlier than you think you need to. I just really appreciate that illustration of age 14. Barb Ziemke: The other thing it just brought to mind for me, Kate, was I'm just wondering did you encounter any lower expectations for your children than you and your husband have or in general? Did you feel like the people working with your son or daughter, you have both, right, were on the same wavelength as you? Did you ever have to close that gap? Kate Reinicke: Thankfully, the folks that we were working with didn't have lower expectations. If anything, they were at the same school of thought as you are, that have high expectations, your kids can handle it. If they can't, you make an adjustment. Jeff Thompson: With that positive attitude that you have, how was it as your son started college and started spreading his wings a little bit? Kate Reinicke: Again, the more that I knew, the better I felt. Going to college myself, I never had the experience of working with a disabilities office or an accessibilities office. I didn't even know it existed. Coming to different workshops, either through PACER or through SSB, specifically focused on transition-age students and bringing in people from different universities that could talk about their disability offices or accessibility offices put both myself and my son at ease knowing that they already had mechanisms in place to help him and, again, not coddle him, not give him an advantage, but level the playing field. Barb Ziemke: That's so important. The whole idea behind all of this for families is that it's not just the son or daughter that's going to transition. We as parents actually have to transition as well. We're learning new skills, we're learning about what's out there, and we're having to change our approach. Barb Ziemke: One of the main things I emphasize when we talk to families about what comes next is like IEPs don't go to college and IEPs don't go into a workplace, and IEPs don't go to your resident manager of an apartment. While your role will change, you'll still have a role, but it will become more like an advisor, a mentor, a supporter, not the decision-maker. You're going to move from the driver's seat to the passenger seat and then, hopefully, the backseat and then out of the car at some point. Barb Ziemke: But in that process, Kate mentioned something so important, and I want to just address that. Kate sounds like a brave parent. I have some friends who are like Kate. They were able, unlike me, to learn about some new opportunity and just get some information and just send their kid off and be rejoicing as they went. Barb Ziemke: There are a lot of different kinds of parents, and I am more what professionals would call probably too cautious and maybe overprotective. I can still remember ... I kick myself to this day. My son is now ... He just turned 30. I do want to say he's living in an apartment in the community and he works at a community job. He successfully, both of us, made this transition. Barb Ziemke: But I remember early on there was an opportunity from his deaf, hard of hearing teaching said, when Brandon was in seventh grade, "Oh, I think it would be really great for him to go to Camp Courage. They have a literacy camp." I thought, "Oh, that sounds really good. Is it a day camp?" "No, it's a residential camp." I immediately thought, because of the needs of my son, "Well, that's not a possibility. He can't do that. He has other disabilities besides his reading disability, and you don't understand how much support he would need." It's all in my head, but I shut it down way too quickly. I went to the website and it didn't tell how they give the supports for overnight support. Barb Ziemke: This is a little reminder to professionals. Give us the information we need to make informed decisions upfront. Don't assume we know what you're talking about with your programs, because from our focus groups and surveys, about 30% of parents of kids who have blind, vision impairment have another disability with that. The support needs go beyond the support for their visual impairment. But, regardless, at this time I just shut it down and we didn't go. Barb Ziemke: Now that I work at PACER, I know about that camp and I know about the wonderful outcomes. I know now that camp has been around for 15 years, no child has ever been lost or probably injured. All the things I had in my mind that could have happened, I didn't need to base my decision on unfounded fears if I would have known upfront when I heard about the opportunity to take a breath and say, "What do I need to know in order to be able to do this? What does Brandon need to know upfront in order to want to do this?" Then do the detective work upfront. That has, all these years later, I think, "Gosh, darn it. He could have been ahead of the curve." Barb Ziemke: For those of you parents who do have some of the concerns and fears and your kids perhaps do have additional support needs, there are things that are dangerous for our kids out there. The safety concerns are not invalid. The unpredictability of an environment is a real thing. I just want to encourage you to take that breath and ask yourself: what would help me be able to even consider this? Sometimes it's talking to another parent like Kate, whose son has gone off to college. She might be willing to say, "Hey, it worked and this is why," or contacting PACER, State Services for the Blind, and get that information that you need. Jeff Thompson: Well, it sounds like Kate just pulls up tuck and roll and her kids just goes out there. I'm sure it's not that easy, though. Kate Reinicke: No, it's not that easy. This is after years of training myself to not be afraid for him. You have to decide what kind of adult do you want your child to be. Do you envision them being confident and independent, or do you envision them to be tied to your apron strings for the rest of their lives? My kids want to be independent. They want to learn Braille. They want to learn the technology. They want to have their own homes someday. Kate Reinicke: My husband teases them that they're going to live with us forever and it thrills me every time when they say, "No way, dad. No way." Keeping that in mind that they are still teenagers, they still have things to learn, thinking back to how did I learn to be independent and knowing that my kids need to go through the same thing just a little bit differently. Jeff Thompson: Exactly. Barb Ziemke: That reminds me, too, of just a really important principle of the dignity of risk. Some of your listeners may be familiar with that. Robert Perske, a long time ago, talked about how in our really well-intentioned efforts to keep people safe and to make sure that they don't experience harm, we sometimes take away the dignity that we all us adults should have in making choices and being able to make mistakes and perhaps even being allowed to fail. Barb Ziemke: Of course, there's risk management involved in this. Part of the trick for parents is this delicate balance between risk management and then offering the dignity of risk opportunity that all of us needed. If you talk to almost anybody who's successful in any field about how they got successful, they almost always come back to mistakes they made and what they learned from them. Barb Ziemke: I realized just personally for myself that my well-meaning flying in at the moment I notice that there was something that was challenging to my son, and a lot of things were challenging for him, was, as Kate said, I had to think to myself, but if I do it for him, what does his future look like versus could I just wait a minute? Barb Ziemke: I just read a phrase recently that, as our sons and daughters are moving towards adulthood, this young adulthood stage, that when they contact us with a problem, we should walk as if we're walking in molasses. Just slowing down this ... I don't know if it's true for other parents, but this immediate need to intervene, and even just start to, if your son is 14, 15, your daughter is 16, 17, you start to intentionally give it longer for them to be able to figure it out themselves. There's that quote "Mistakes are the portals of discovery", and so just allowing mistakes. I like what you just said about giving them those opportunities. Kate Reinicke: Like you said in becoming a mentor and a teacher, having our kids start to take over aspects of their lives that we had always handled, for instance, refilling a prescription, I taught my son how to do that. We put the phone on speaker phone, it's an automated system, and together we went through. I showed him how it was done. The next time he needed it, I watched him do it. Then after that, it was taken care of. I didn't have to worry about it anymore. This was something he was handling. Kate Reinicke: The same went with making his own appointments. He knows to check in with me regarding the family calendar and transportation, but learning also through his TVI that Metro Mobility is an option, Uber is an option to get him where he needs to go, that that works out, too. But he's also learning to check in with others to see how his schedule can mesh with others. Barb Ziemke: Which is huge for adult living, managing your schedule. I like what you said because it makes me remember, too, around the medication thing. When it just occurred to me we go to doctor's appointments together, and I would go to the desk and show them the insurance card. I thought, "What?" One day I just thought, "What am I doing this for?" There are things he can't do and he does need support for, but he can go and show them their card. Barb Ziemke: As parents, I think just thinking through, "Oh, wait a minute. Is this something they could do? Could we back off?" and now instead of doing for them, do with them. Then again move back. Perfect example with how much we schedule our kids and keep track of all their appointments. Now we have technology. Teaching them how to use the technology to do that is a great way to help them in this transition and for us to let go. I couldn't have let go or let grow like I was able to with my son when I say he's living in an apartment without technology because he has an iPhone, we have immediate communication, there's GPS built in. If he gets lost, he has emergency numbers. Barb Ziemke: I think as families, too, that's the kind of support that can help support you. My daughter doesn't have a disability, but when she had a cellphone, she used to call it her leash because she knew I could find her when she had it. That's one technique. Kate Reinicke: That's another good point that technology can be extremely helpful. I'm always grateful to SSB and PACER for introducing us to different technologies that I didn't know existed. On top of that, there are low tech options that are helpful for folks for everyday needs. My mother-in-law actually turned us on to Independent Living Aids and other vendors that sell very low tech items that actually we end up using every day that I didn't know existed. Again, the more you can learn, the better you'll feel. Jeff Thompson: What is the importance of meeting other parents of children with a disability as blindness? Kate Reinicke: It's been great to see how they're treating their kids and also to have them model behavior, if they've been working with their kids if they're kids are older, but also to just talk shop, for lack of a better word. When we sit down and chat, it's usually, "Oh, I just found this new app," or, "Oh, I just heard that such and such station is now doing video description," or, "I just heard my son's friend actually did an internship with a company that does video description," or, "One of the women that my stepdaughter rows with, she is fully blind now, and she just recently got a job working with a company, making sure that their website is more accessible to people who are visually impaired. It never occurred to me that that was a job. It never occurred to me that that was an option." Kate Reinicke: Being able to sit down with other adults that are either parents of youths or the youths themselves or recently adult, it's great to learn about the things that you didn't even know were out there. It's only by gathering information, sharing information, saying, "You know what? I tried this, I didn't care for it. I tried that, and I loved it." Kate Reinicke: Even between the children, my oldest son really enjoys his video magnifier and really liked the more low-tech version of it. That really worked for him. My youngest, she really liked the high tech tablet-driven video magnifiers that could do a few more things, but that was right up her alley. She loved knowing the ins and out of that technology. Also thinking that one size fits all, it's not true. Your kids have preferences just like anybody else, and it's great to find those. Jeff Thompson: In finding parents, PACER Center has a big hand in that, don't they? Barb Ziemke: I will say that one of my selfish motivations for coming to work for PACER was that I already understood that a real key to success was being able to access other families who had gone through similar experiences, but were perhaps a few steps ahead of me on the road. I knew that all the advocates here are also parents of kids with disabilities and that I would be talking with families a lot. Barb Ziemke: Honestly, and I say this in my workshops, I think about 80% of the real practical, tangible tips that I received about what app or what service or what program, even other services that are available, somehow came through another parent who mentioned it or I saw a resource around that. PACER, we don't do support groups per se, but I think our workshops are an opportunity to see that you're not alone in this. There's a lot of families who are doing the same kinds of things that you're working on and just informal conversations when you get involved in State Services for the Blind activities and you're dropping off kids or picking up kids. Barb Ziemke: Those are just organic opportunities to connect with families, but there are through resources online some great online supports for the family connect and other opportunities. PACER's page, the SSB partnership website page can refer families to other resources to connect with families. Jeff Thompson: Kate, you and your husband came here to the workshops. Kate Reinicke: We did. We first started with coming to the IEP workshops because that was a new process for us. Understanding what our rights were, what our role was supposed to be, and what schools were not only expected to do, but capable of doing for us was extremely helpful in not only being able to read the IEP and understand what it was saying, it can be a different language, the language of education. It can have some jargon in it that you're not familiar with. Kate Reinicke: Being able to sit down and work one-on-one with another parent advocate to say, "What does this really say? Is this actually helpful or is this just documenting all the things that are wrong with my kid?" After that, we signed up for the PACER newsletter and their mailings, and you can get very specific about what kind of mailings you would like to receive, to have the knowledge of what other workshops were coming up. Kate Reinicke: I would say one of the most helpful ones was the housing fair that you had held. My husband and I came to that as well to learn about what kind of options are out there for youths with disabilities and transition-age adults for where they can live, because they're not going to live with you forever and you're not going to be able to take care of them forever. Barb Ziemke: That's right. Jeff Thompson: Well, that's great information. Barb, how can they get a hold of PACER? Barb Ziemke: There's a few ways that you can do that. We do have a really great website with tons of information on it. If you go to the workshops and livestream, we do many of our workshops via technology as well. There is a list that you can sort by location, by date, by topic and take a look at what's coming up for usually the next three months or so. Again, signing up for our newsletters is a great way to stay in touch. Barb Ziemke: Our National Parent Center on Transition and Employment has a twice monthly e-newsletter that goes out that highlights all sorts of resources for all sorts of disabilities. These aren't specific to vision impairment, blindness, and deaf-blindness, but there's so much overlap between the laws you need to understand and what youth need to do to prepare. Barb Ziemke: You can also call and talk to a real person. It's one thing I really like about how we do business here. When you call, you'll talk first to someone at our front desk, who'll take some basic information, and then that will get routed to the most appropriate person to respond within PACER. We do, as Kate said, work individually with families around transition planning in their IEP. Advocates help if you're in disagreement with the school and you need to resolve that. We participate in conciliation and other methods for coming to agreement about educational plans. Barb Ziemke: Then our Transition and Employment website, there's an email link there. You can email us specific individual questions as well as just get help. We do a lot of resource and referral. I often say we don't know everything, obviously. You can't know everything. But we know a lot about who knows everything, and we try to connect families to who you need to connect with in order to get that question answered. That would be the primary ways. Barb Ziemke: Kate mentioned before that there is no one size fits all either to the students or to the parents. I think for parents who might be listening today who have young adults or children even with a visual impairment plus like perhaps autism or a severe ADHD or a mental health issue that's perhaps quite significant, you may be thinking, "Well, that sounds really great, but you don't really understand the challenges and how far behind we are in certain areas," and I don't understand your specific situation, but even for me, I found that having unrealistic expectations about the transition into adulthood was not helpful. Barb Ziemke: Typical youth nowadays are not routinely getting their college degree by age 21 and moving out of their family home. Adolescence has really extended up into the late 20s. For me, I realized that there was no way by age 21, when school was over, that we were going to have a plan in place for where our son would live, work, do everything that he needed to do. Barb Ziemke: I tried to go to a five-year plan. What do we want by age 26? What do we need to be doing to do that? I will say in our particular situation, it wasn't until our son was 28 that he was now living in an apartment successfully, had been to a college program for students with intellectual disabilities, which he didn't go to until he was 25, had work experience in between that he really needed. Take the pressure off yourself about the timeline, focus on what the hope for destination is there, and then just keep taking steps forward, and you will most likely come to a successful outcome. Jeff Thompson: It's great. Like Kate mentioned earlier about the pathways that she found that, Barb, you helped blaze earlier, pick up the bread crumbs that people have left behind and just take those and keep moving forward. Kate Reinicke: You may have to do some synthesis. You may have to take what you have learned in a workshop about helping students with autism and blend it with a workshop that you learned about how to help students with blindness. Chances are there will be another parent there who knows what you're going through and chances are that the moderator or the expert that they've brought in to speak about that topic has had to narrow it down to fit into the one to two-hour session. But if you take a few moments afterwards and ask them, "Well, my student has multiple needs. Can you tell me more information regarding my situation?" they will be more than happy to share their email, take a few minutes to chat with you, or give you information where you can find the answer to your questions. Please don't ever feel alone or that your situation is so unique that no one can help you. Jeff Thompson: It may seem that it's oceans apart, but there's so much common ground once you get down to the nuts and bolts of it all. Kate, the first time you came to a PACER Center workshop, what did you expect and what did you find out? Kate Reinicke: I expected to be ushered into a small conference room with a few chairs and someone with a screen down and a slide show, giving out a few facts here and there that maybe I could figure out how to utilize in my own life. I was shocked to walk in and find multitudes of parents. Your largest room was filled from wall to wall with parents like me, with kids like mine, with questions that I had. What was great was no one felt inhibited to ask question. Parents ask questions a lot. Kate Reinicke: Not only that, if there was a question that the moderator or the presenter possibly didn't know the exact answer to, sometimes there was another parent saying, "Oh, we just went through that. I can speak to that," or, "I'll talk to you afterwards." Everyone was there with the same purpose. We all need information, we all want information, we all want to know how can we navigate this together. Everybody's there to help out. Jeff Thompson: Now with the individual education plan, that's some place where you would have to get on top of, and advocate for. What was that process like as you ... The letting grow? Did you transition through that, too? You said age 14. Kate Reinicke: We did, not only with PACER Center's help but also with the TVI. They wanted to make sure that our kids, again, had a level playing field. SSB was great about allowing us to have technology evaluations and showing us what was available and coming to realize that there are so many different types of technology that our kids had options. What do you like? Do you like this? Do you like that? Do you prefer this? Do you prefer that? They could be in the driver's seat about what was most helpful for them. Jeff Thompson: That's great. At what point during the IEP did your son start speaking up for himself? Kate Reinicke: What was great about the teachers and the team that was put together for our kids was they made a point to specifically ask our kids questions and say, "Mom and dad, we don't want to hear from you. We want to know what does your kid need? What do they want? What have they noticed? And give them the opportunity to not only express what they found to be a problem or a challenge, but also encourage them, well, what do you think would be a good solution? Be able to participate in that conversation and that give and take over, well, what would be the best of all worlds and let's compromise to what works for you and what works for the staff." Jeff Thompson: That's when self-advocacy starts. That's a lifelong skill. Kate Reinicke: Any person, whether they have disabilities or not. Barb Ziemke: Looking for those opportunities to give them voice and choice I think is a key to it. Again, that swooping in- Kate Reinicke: [crosstalk] Barb Ziemke: ... when we know that maybe we do know more and maybe we would have more to bring to the table, but allowing them that opportunity to speak for themselves is really powerful. Jeff Thompson: Kate, could you tell us a little something? Did you ever get the phone call or during a conversation where all of a sudden that light went off like, "Oh, my gosh. He's grown up"? Kate Reinicke: The light bulb went off for me that we'd reached a really good level with his independence when he could come home from class and say, "You know what? I had this problem," and my mind would immediately go to, "Oh, I need to jump in and fix this for him because that's my job as his mother," but I took a minute, I took a breath, I took a beat and said, "What do you want to do about it?" He said, "I already handled it. I walked down to the disabilities office and I explained what kind of problem I was having," or, "I walked down to the TRIO office and I explained the problem I was having. I sought help for myself. I'm just telling you about it. I'm not asking you to actually help me." Jeff Thompson: He's growing up. Kate Reinicke: Yes, exactly. Jeff Thompson: It goes back to you, Barb, let it grow. Barb Ziemke: That's a beautiful illustration of really what research even shows as, for young people in general, what they need from adults is for us to listen to validate their feelings or emotions about whatever the situation is and then support them in their ability to either fix it or take the next step. A perfect illustration of that. Barb Ziemke: One thing I wanted to talk about a little bit, too, is how I think sometimes it's harder for parents of kids who have challenges to make the shift at the same time as other students, like when they get to high school, to see them as high school students or to see them as a young adult. I learned that I needed to put on a bit of a new pair of glasses. My son has developed a mental disability, which delays him in many areas, but guess what? He still started growing a beard. He is becoming an adult even if intellectually he's at another stage. Barb Ziemke: Thinking through some of the things I wish I would have done earlier, for instance, if a son or daughter is still living at home, maybe even to go to community college. Perhaps it's time to move the bedroom down to the basement, give them a microwave and a mini fridge and redecorate a room that might still look like a childhood room to help them and to help you see them as the young adult that they actually are and are becoming. Just getting that shift from, "This is my child." Barb Ziemke: At PACER, we intentionally within our project here use the word "youth" instead of child when we're talking to parents, or young adult, because we as parents sometimes, they're our children forever, but we need to see them in this new light so that we can actually change the dynamic of our relationship. Jeff Thompson: You can't just squeeze them and keep them small like in The Waltons. Barb Ziemke: It doesn't work. I tried, it doesn't work. I think one of the tendencies for families who have students who are in high school particularly is to focus a lot on the educational component as far as academics. Academics are really important. With an overlay of visual impairment, there is a lot of work that has to be done to make sure that they do well academically. The skill acquisition around literacy skills is huge for successes in adults. Barb Ziemke: That's all important, but I think families need to consider once the school bus doesn't come anymore, once school is out of the picture, what you got on the history test may not be all that important unless your hope is to be a historian, and to look holistically at what are you focusing on. We know for students with visual impairments, blindness, for instance, having experiences in recreation and leisure, physical activities, extracurriculars, those are often where skills are developed that are going to actually allow them to have the confidence they need to have when they're in an unfamiliar environment, and that often families ... Barb Ziemke: And I don't have that perspective, but I have one from my own perspective of in trying to protect them from these environments that seem fraught with danger when you are feeling like you don't have the ability to navigate them, high school's really a time to look for those opportunities and, again, then work with your IEP team or State Services for the Blind to come up with what are those accommodations, what are those safety nets that could be put in place so that they don't lose that experience. Barb Ziemke: Social skills are going to be huge, and that's usually where those are developed, not in academic classrooms in high school. Really broadening your perspective of school is not really all about academics. College degrees don't really of themselves guarantee success. Looking at the big picture. Kate Reinicke: A couple of things that I wanted to mention that also helped our family and I feel could help other youths and parents alike is to have experiences with role models. I can honestly say as an adult in her 40s I had not met more than two or three visually impaired people in my everyday life. Now that my children are becoming more involved in the blind community, having those opportunities to meet other adults who are independent and successful not only can assure parents that it's possible, it is possible. Kate Reinicke: I know it's hard for you to imagine because you rely on your vision so heavily, it is possible to live an independent life without your vision and to then also show your children, your youths that there are successful adults out there doing what they like to do, doing what they want to do, and not feeling marginalized, not feeling that they can't. Again, they're just doing things differently. Kate Reinicke: Being involved in programs through SSB, Sheila Koenig had some really great programs. It was a job fair where all of the participants were blind adults. They ran the gamut from working in corporate America to being a package handler at UPS. The students could walk through and talk to everyone about how they were able to do their jobs successfully as a visually impaired person. I think that inspires our kids and also puts the parents at ease. Kate Reinicke: My kids have had great experiences with Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute with their adaptive sports programs. Again, they have to interact with the coaches and volunteers. I back off. I'm not going to be helpful as my stepdaughter is snowboarding down the hill. Their SHARE program, I can't highly recommend enough. Whatever activities your child enjoys, Stacy Shamblott can find them and find ways to make them adaptive to whatever supports your child may need. Kate Reinicke: My oldest son really enjoys playing the drums and has had the opportunity in the past few years to play in bands in bars and give performances and not have us hover over him. He did just fine. It was wonderful to see him express himself doing something that he loved and having an audience cheer. Jeff Thompson: Role models. That's very important. Like when you said you only knew two or three people or just met two or three people, but when they can meet a peer, someone their own age, and like, "How are you doing that?" or, "They can do it. Why can't I do it?" it just increases their self-determination and it just seems to roll after that. Barb Ziemke: I think a key component of that for all of us parents in this letting grow process is coming to terms with some of the limitations and there will just have to be some supports and ways that we ... Accommodations in place, but focusing, like Kate just said, on the strengths and the interests and the preferences. What makes this kid tick and how can we use that to launch them into adult life? Because who of us wants to have a job we don't enjoy? When we define ourselves, like if the three of us had more time to talk, I could probably see you get really excited when you talk about some of your personal interests or hobbies or things that you really like to do. Barb Ziemke: I think as parents, I always say we need to be strengths finders, strengths finder 101 to our youth and young adults. Sometimes they don't see it, and to notice what they're good at and not, again, make it all about academics but who they are and what they can contribute and how their personality and their relational skills call that out and help them see it, because that's really what they'll build their future off of. Jeff Thompson: I think this has been a great conversation for anyone that's listening to take all those analogies that you used, Barb, in the beginning that was so great, about the plant, the pot size, and the space needed to grow, and then the apron strings. I've heard that so many times, but when you can actually apply it and see [inaudible] you have to respond and let it grow, that's awesome. Thank you, Barb, thank you, Kate, for coming onto Blind Abilities. Thank you, PACER Center for putting this together with State Services for the Blind. Barb Ziemke: Thanks so much. Kate Reinicke: Thank you. Jeff Thompson: Be sure to check out PACER Center, champions for children with disabilities, on the web at www.PACER.org. Check out State Services for the Blind of Minnesota at www.MN.gov/deed/SSB. Live, learn, work, and play. A big thank you goes out to Chee Chau for his music. You can find Chee Chau on Twitter @LCheeChau.. From PACER Center, State Services for the Blind, and Blind Abilities, thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed. Until next time, bye bye.  [Music]  [Transition noise]  -When we share -What we see -Through each other's eyes... [Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence] ...We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities. Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts for the blindness perspective check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com. On Twitter @BlindAbilities. Download our app from the app store, Blind Abilities, that's two words. Or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com. Thanks for listening. 

Full Transcript Below Show Summary: In partnership with State Services for the Blind of Minnesota we are proud to present, PACER Center - Champions for Children with Disabilities: Self-Advocacy, Self-Awareness and the ADA - A Visit with PACER Center’s Transition Coordinator Deborah Leuchovius   Deborah sits down with Jeff Thompson of Blind Abilities in the fifth of a series of podcasts in partnership with PACER Center and State Services for the Blind. Be sure to check out all of the PACER series of podcasts.   Deborah talks about preparing youth for the responsibilities of adulthood and the protections of the ADA. How self-advocacy and self-awareness can help one self determine and understand their accommodation needs.   Join Deborah and Jeff in this informative podcast covering the history of the ADA, examples and the impact of the ADA and where you can learn more about the ADA and it’s importance during the transition years.   From the web: PACER Center enhances the quality of life and expands opportunities for children, youth, and young adults with all disabilities and their families, so each person can reach his or her highest potential. PACER operates on the principles of parents helping parents, supporting families, promoting a safe environment for all children, and working in collaboration with others. With assistance to individual families, workshops, materials for parents and professionals, and leadership in securing a free and appropriate public education for all children, PACER's work affects and encourages families in Minnesota and across the nation.   Contacts: You can find out more about PACER Center on the web at www.pacer.org You can reach pACER Center by phone at 952-838-9000   You can find out more about State Services for the Blind on the web at www.MN.Gov/Deed/SSB And by calling 651-539-2300 Live Learn Work and Play   Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities Appon the App Store.   Full Transcript: Self-Advocacy, Self-Awareness and the ADA - A Visit with PACER Center’s Transition Coordinator Deborah Leuchovius Jeff Thompson: State Services for the Blind in Minnesota presents PACER Center, Champions for Children with Disabilities.   Deborah L: The purpose of the ADA is: (1) to end discrimination based on disability and (2) to promote integration or inclusion of people with disabilities into society.   Jeff Thompson: On this episode, we'll be covering the American Disabilities Act and how it relates to transition-age students.   Deborah L: There are no ADA police. It's up to us to bring lack of accessibility or discrimination to the attention of the people that may not realize that they are being discriminatory.   Jeff Thompson: With us today is Deborah Leuchovius, she's a transition coordinator at PACER's National Parent Center on Transition and Employment.   Deborah L: The Americans with Disabilities Act is that it is not an entitlement program. It is a civil rights law.   Jeff Thompson: The importance of self-advocacy and self-awareness.   Deborah L: If there's things that parents can do to prepare their youth for the responsibilities of adulthood and the protections of the ADA, it's to know what their accommodation needs are and be able to express them.   Jeff Thompson: And you can find out more about the PACER National Parents Center on the web at pacer.org/transition.   Deborah L: PACER's National Parent Center on Transition and Employment, just called 9528389000.   Jeff Thompson: Welcome to Blind Abilities. I'm Jeff Thompson and I'm at the PACER Center in Bloomington, Minnesota. And I'm talking to transition coordinator, Deborah Leuchovius. How are you doing?   Deborah L: Just fine, Jeff. Thanks.   Jeff Thompson: Deborah. What is your role here at PACER Center?   Deborah L: I'm a transition coordinator. I work primarily on two projects, but we all do a number of things. All my projects are related to transition that is working with families around issues important to youth in transitioning from their school years into young adulthood, independent living, post-secondary education and employment. I work on PACER's National Parent Center on Transition and Employment and also on Minnesota's Disability Employment Initiative, DEI project.   Jeff Thompson: So the Americans Disabilities Act. Can you explain the importance of that with regards to the transition and transition students?   Deborah L: Sure. The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990 and most of its provisions took effect in 1992. ADA impacts the lives of youth with disabilities and even younger youth and in many areas of our daily life we may not be aware of and we may take for granted anything that happens outside of the school setting. Anytime that you're out in the community. Again, I look pre-ADA, Mall of America is one of the most accessible places that I have been to. It really changed the way that shopping looks. If you go to the Mall of America there, it's full of people with disabilities in a way that it wasn't before the law was passed. So anytime you're out in the community, you'll see the impact of the ADA. Anytime that you want to join a camp that is not specifically for youth with disabilities. Anytime that you participate in recreation, that is not specifically for youth with disabilities.   Deborah L: If you want to investigate employment programs outside the scope of State Services for the Blind or vocational rehabilitation. And you walk into a workforce center serving individuals in inclusive settings as opposed to segregated settings is happening all across America for people with disabilities because of the Americans with Disabilities Act.   Jeff Thompson: Especially in those transition years.   Deborah L: The transition years are exactly that, moving into adulthood, so it's important for young adults to learn about the protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act. As they leave the school system and the entitlement and services of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA that they have received in high school because things change pretty differently as they leave that K12 system.   Jeff Thompson: Deborah, can you explain I-D-E-A, IDEA to the listeners.   Deborah L: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is responsible for the provision of special education services to students with disabilities. From now, it's preschool through graduation. But for some students with disabilities that may be after their senior year, they may go onto an 18 to 21-year-old transition program. But at that point they leave the special education service system and go on to the adult world, at which point the provisions of the ADA will have a tremendous effect on what they do.   Jeff Thompson: The word inclusive seems like the new thing right now.   Deborah L: Oh, I don't think it's a new thing at all. Inclusive is the ... Purposes of the ADA is: (1) to end discrimination based on disability and (2) to promote integration or inclusion of people with disabilities into society.   Jeff Thompson: I mean, businesses are out there using that word. It seems like the new word that's more prevalent today, like you'll see it in pamphlet, you'll see it on commercials. You'll see it on social media inclusion.   Deborah L: Yes. I think that ... And that inclusion, it is meant in a really broad sense, not just to include people with disabilities but to include people from diverse cultures and a variety of backgrounds. But it's important to say that initially diversity efforts of Corporate America primarily focused on integrating employees of more diverse backgrounds. And diversity efforts are also include integrating the work place with people with disabilities as well.   Jeff Thompson: While I was in college we had a diversity department, and they didn't include people with disabilities. `It was kind of separated. We fought to kind of be included in that, and I believe now today it is.   Deborah L: Well, I think there've been a lot of efforts along the way that we ... Well I can say that there are some things that we'd like to see change, and sometimes we've seen setbacks, we have seen a lot of progress since the Americans with Disabilities Act was implemented. It does not mean that we've completed the task of being completely accessible or completely inclusive, but we're coming along way and we're still making progress.   Jeff Thompson: Great. I lost my eyesight 21 years ago and ADA was just a word. It didn't mean anything. And then I started realizing reasonable accommodations, curb cuts, a few other things that, you know door widenings and accessibility steps, ramps and all that stuff. But what happens when someone is out there, and they run into a wall?   Deborah L: Well, if you are encountering inaccessibility, either in the community or in an employment setting or in a post-secondary setting, there are ways to file a complaint. But the most important first step is for you to bring your complaint to the attention of the business owner or the employer or the school and let it be known that you're not happy with the accommodation or the lack of accommodation. So that you can work out a solution and ideally that's where you would be able to find the solution. There are provisions in place for filing complaints and I think especially small business owners, that would be one backlash against the ADA is the concern about having to lose space in their stores for display. Or something if they were to have to widen the aisles or make things more accessible. But you can work that out or you can file a complaint and the complaint process, I think it would best be described by the folks at the Great Lakes ADA Center. Because depending on whether you're making a complaint about an employment situation or a post-secondary school or out in the community, the complaint process differs.   Deborah L: And again that number is 18009494232, but especially in the employment settings and in post-secondary settings, they should have internal people identified ADA coordinators or human resource coordinators that you would go to with your complaint. And that would be where you would start. The business owner is the person that you would first approach in a community setting.   Jeff Thompson: You mentioned this earlier when we were talking, you said there are no ADA police.   Deborah L: Yes, there are no ADA police. It's up to us to bring lack of accessibility or discrimination to the attention of the people that may not realize that they are being discriminatory. Explain how that process works. Most accommodations they say in employment settings costs nothing, and the same is true oftentimes in post-secondary settings. It's not an expense one can you modify a procedure or the way that things typically have been done, which is sometimes hard for faculty members or academics to get their head around changing the way the things is typically have done. But it's not something that is an expense. So you become responsible for education yourself, about the Americans with Disabilities Act and about how to accommodate people with disabilities.   Jeff Thompson: Now, just I think it was a couple of days ago, I read an article that in Minnesota it might be a first that's someone filed something using the ADA against a hospital that their website wasn't in compliance with the ADA. And they said it was the first one in Minnesota, but lately there's been a lot of frivolous suits going around the nation. And they've to some administration trying to take some action against it. Has that impacted corporations, companies, how they view the ADA?   Deborah L: I suppose it is. I see a lot of the reaction in the small business community where it's less easy to make an accommodation where small expenses are a bigger portion of the budget. And sort of in that title three world, title three of the ADA has to do with public accommodations, but web accessibility is huge because of course web accessibility changes at an astonishing rate these days. In fact, that's another area where although the US Department of Justice has made clear that corporations are responsible for making their websites accessible. They are again, in a recent letter indicated that they're willing to grant a certain amount of latitude in how they do that rather than trying to come up with specific standards which could be outdated in a number of years as technology changes.   Jeff Thompson: It's hard to keep up with everything, isn't it? And how do parents and even the transition-age student get educated on the ADA?   Deborah L: Well, we hope some of this is taking place in the schools, especially with regard to training transition-age students about self-advocacy. PACER has a lot of information on its website that was developed through projects that were funded several years ago, when the ADA was first being implemented. And so we have a number of information articles available to parents that they can educate themselves. We also incorporated into the trainings that we provide. I will tell you that when parents come to parent workshops here at PACER for younger youth, there will not be the emphasis on the Americans with Disabilities Act that it is until you get to the transition years will start to spend some years on the importance of learning about that. Great place to learn about the Americans with Disabilities Act are Centers for Independent Living, and also there's in our area the Great Lakes ADA Center, which you can get to through its website and also by calling with individual questions at 18009494, ADA. That's 4232.   Jeff Thompson: That's great. What is probably the single most important thing that someone should take from learning about the ADA as they're transitioning to college and to the workplace?   Deborah L: Well, I think the single most important thing is the need for self-advocacy. In the special education system, schools are charged with identifying students with disabilities and going out. They actually have the term, "Child Find," where they will find individuals with disabilities and identify them, then assess their needs and then they're responsible for meeting those needs in an educational system. The huge difference with the Americans with Disabilities Act is that it is not an entitlement program. It is a civil rights law, so you are protected from discrimination. But you have to know what your rights are because there is no one out there finding you and identifying your needs and then is automatically responsible for meeting those needs. You are responsible for advocating for yourself in order to get your needs met. So that also means one huge thing for young adults and for parents preparing their youth for adulthood is that they really need to cultivate self-awareness and self-advocacy skills on the part of their youth so that they can compete in this world where the rules change [inaudible 00:12:48] services.   Jeff Thompson: With the ADA being implemented and here we are coming up on 30 years. What is one of the most threatened areas of the ADA? Surprise question. I'm sorry. I mean, sometimes it seems like the ADA is being challenged a little bit or it's not being implemented, or it's not even being addressed, or people aren't aware of it. Do you find any challenges with it?   Deborah L: Well, there are always challenges with implementation. A movement that was very exciting for disability rights advocates that was based on the ADA was the Olmstead decision being applied to employment setting. So the Olmstead decision was a Supreme Court decision based on the ADA. It said that services provided by government should be provided in the most integrated setting possible. And at first that was mostly applied to residential settings, serving individuals with disabilities in community settings as opposed to segregated residential settings. But a couple of years ago there was a direction from the US Department of Justice under the Obama administration, which indicated that that was equally applied to employment settings. Not just the way that it had been interpreted in terms of providing housing for individuals with disabilities and community services for individuals with disabilities. But there's been some step back from that under the current Department of Justice and the current administration. So they've taken back that letter. I'm not sure if that's exactly how I would phrase it, but they have indicated that they're less willing to interpret the Olmstead in terms of employment settings.   Jeff Thompson: And that's probably the biggest thing that depending on who's in charge, the interpretation gets changed from one administration to the other.   Deborah L: Yeah, very much so. So that is a cause for concern and some disappointments among us advocates. And I have to say that I approached the Americans with Disabilities Act from an advocate's position. I am not a lawyer and I am not interpreting the law in a legal way, so I don't want to give your listeners the impression that I'm speaking from that space. But despite those disappointments, I would rather focus on the ways that the ADA has been implied. It's become and, in many ways, a way of life for us now, especially thinking just very obviously about how it affects the young people with disabilities. With vision impairments is things like Metro Mobility came into effect or into law across the nation as required by the Americans with Disability Acts. Likewise, protections about bringing your guide dog or service animals into places of public accommodation is also a protection that is provided under the Americans with Disabilities Act.   Deborah L: So there are many, many ways that it's changed the face. Now granted you will find people that will tell you, you still can't bring your dog in, but by and large it's much more accepted, normal way of doing things in our society.   Jeff Thompson: I remember when the ADA was implemented and when I lost my eyesight, two words popped out that was kind of like, no matter where I saw it, it was like, "Reasonable accommodation." Who determines the reasonable part of that?   Deborah L: Well, it's a joint effort. So it will always be determined by the setting that you're in and between the person with the disability and what accommodation they are requesting that they need in order to perform some job function or some academic assignment. So between the person with a disability and who knows what they need in order to be successful and then making that request to whoever they are working for or working with. So that is the employer and/or the School Faculty Disability Services office at a post-secondary situation. It's always an individual decision based on individual circumstances.   Jeff Thompson: It kind of a collaborative effort though, and that's where self-advocacy probably comes into play when you're in that situation.   Deborah L: Not only self-advocacy. I really want to stress self-awareness is that if there's things that parents can do to prepare their youth for the responsibilities of adulthood and the protections of the ADA, it's to know what their accommodation needs are. So that and be able to express them. So, (1) is self-awareness, (2) is self-advocacy. You have to ... Sometimes things are done for young people without them even asking. And one example that I had from when my son was very little, and he used to wheelchair, when we switched from a manual chair to a power chair, I realized that I had automatically just been steering my son towards the curb cuts without him realizing that there was such a thing as a curb cut. He just thought you drove off the edge of the sidewalk into the street because that was how he experienced it.   Deborah L: So there's some many things that we do for our young people that we don't even realize we're doing that. They don't realize they're doing, so building that consciousness of the kinds of accommodations that we make on a daily basis that are what is needed to be successful is an important part of growing up with a disability in our society.   Jeff Thompson: So, transitioning from high school to college is one thing, but also transitioning into being your own advocate and creating your own self-determination, breaking away from the parents. I don't want to say grip, but their involvement you've got to start making decisions yourself too.   Deborah L: Yes. I have been asked one of the things that, what can parents do to prepare their children for adult responsibilities? And that is to gradually wean them off of your own taking responsibility for them and of course it's age appropriate. And of course there may be differences for young people with disabilities and for young people without disabilities, but that's a good measure. What I do for my kid without a disability, what I am doing for my son or daughter with a disability, and try, and promote independence. At here at PACER by independence, we don't mean totally letting go. We know that parents are going to be involved in the lives of their children well into adulthood, as is the case in other families. But it's really important that you begin to give your children the opportunity to make decisions for themselves and also to fail and learn from their failure along the way. That's really important part of building resiliency and growing up and also learning what makes them successful.   Deborah L: Again, relating back to the Americans with Disabilities Act and knowing what kinds of supports do you need in order to be successful in different settings, academic, employment, community.   Jeff Thompson: Deborah, can you talk about Project Launch?   Deborah L: Sure. Project Launch is a PACER Project that works primarily with families of youth that are older, making the transition into employment, into post-secondary education. The majority of our advocates here at PACER work with transition-age students who are still in school but are planning the transition to out of school. Project Launch works with that age group where they have either just made the transition into adulthood or are into their 20s as they are managing the transition to employment and independent living in post-secondary education settings.   Jeff Thompson: Right. So how can a parent or a transition-age student find out more about the ADA and what you do here at PACER Center?   Deborah L: Well, I would encourage people to go to our website for the National Parent Center on Transition and Employment and the website is www.pacer.org/transition and we have a number of resources there. Particularly if you go to our learning center under our employment section or if you go into our learning center under laws, it will give you information on the Americans with Disabilities Act. If you have specific issues that you would like to discuss with families, you can either get connected to PACER's Project Launch or to one of the advocates that work with our National Parents Center on Transition and Employment. And just called 9528389000, our general number and ask to speak to someone about adult services or adult transition. You can specifically ask for Project Launch. You can specifically ask for the National Parent Center on Transition, but pretty much once you give the age of student that you're working with and letting them know whether they're still in school or out of school, you'll be able to talk to an advocate about any individual issues that you might have.   Jeff Thompson: Deborah, what advice would you have for a parent or a student as they're approaching transition?   Deborah L: Well, other than what I have said earlier about self-awareness and self-advocacy, I would encourage them to learn as much as possible about their rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act. I would encourage them to investigate Centers for Independent Living and what training opportunities and there are that exists through those organizations. Once the ADA was passed and in its early implementation days, PACER rarely has trainings that focus specifically on the Americans with Disabilities Act. Instead we kind of roll the content about the protections of the ADA and the importance of knowing the protections of the ADA into our regular transition trainings or into our trainings about particular topics. So I suspect that the Centers for Independent Living have more direct training for learning about the Americans with Disabilities Act other than just self-study.   Jeff Thompson: That seems like a nice way to do it because it's encompassing. It covers everything. And as for training here, you have the Simon Technology Center. You have a lot of different projects, departments here that someone could find on the website as well.   Deborah L: Absolutely.   Jeff Thompson: We've been talking to Deborah Leuchovius, a transition coordinator at PACER Center in Bloomington, Minnesota. Deborah, I want to thank you from State Services for the Blind for coming on to Blind Abilities and sharing with us about the American Disabilities Act and how it relates to transition-age students. And I want to thank you and PACER Center for all that you do for parents of children with disabilities.   Deborah L: You're very welcome Jeff.   Jeff Thompson: Be sure to check out PACER Center champions for Children with Disabilities on the web at www.pacer.org, checkout State Services for the Blind in Minnesota at wwwmn.gov/d/ssb. Live, Learn, work, and play. And a big thank you goes out the [inaudible 00:22:52], for his beautiful music and you can find [inaudible 00:22:54] on Twitter at [inaudible 00:22:56]. And from PACER Center, State Services for the Blind and Blind Abilities thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed it. And until next time, bye, bye.   [Music]  [Transition noise] When we share -What we see -Through each other's eyes...   [Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]   ...We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.     Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts with a blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com, on Twitter @BlindAbilities. Download our app from the App Store, Blind Abilities. That's two words. Or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com. Thanks for listening.

The inclusion-conversation continues with our friend, Kristin Enriquez this week! She is an inclusion expert and educational consultant, who has the unique perspective of both an educator and mom, with her 24+ year career in special education and her ten year old son with Down syndrome. Kristen works with families and educators to ensure that students meet and exceed expectations while making certain that all parties have equal access to support systems for the students. She speaks about various topics in Special Education to the public and through social media with her outreach efforts called Stand for 21. Last week we focused our conversation on inclusion from an educator's perspective. Today, we chat about our roles as parents, and as she proved last week, Kristin has so much to teach us. Listen along to learn more about finding your voice as a parent and backing that up with research and resources you can bring to your next IEP meeting! LINKS Website: www.theluckyfewpodcast.com Instagram: www.instagram.com/theluckyfewpod Twitter: www.twitter.com/theluckyfewpod Facebook: www.facebook.com/theluckyfewpod SHOW LINKS Research and Resources Mentioned by Kristen: Down Syndrome Education International: https://www.dseinternational.org/en-us/ Comparison between Mainstream and Special Education: https://www.down-syndrome.org/reports/295/ Challenging the Down Syndrome Profile: https://www.down-syndrome.org/essays/294/ Research Supporting Full Inclusion: https://www.thinkinclusive.us/essential-research-inclusive-education/ Individuals with Disabilities Education Act: http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title20/chapter33/subchapter1&edition=prelim “Inclusion is best for everybody.” https://www.includeusfromthestart.com Keep up with Kristen and “Stand for 21!” Email: sevissmile@gmail.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/standfor21/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/standfor21/ Show Sponsor: Lovevery https://loveverybaby.com/ (For 10% off play kit subscription or $10 off a Play Gym, use the code “theluckyfew” at checkout! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theluckyfewpod/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theluckyfewpod/support

IDEA, or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, is a federal law written to protect the rights of you as a parent and your child with special needs. You will be in a better position to advocate for your child by understanding how it governs state and other educational agencies in providing special education services.

Learning the Skill of Self-Advocacy: Meet PACER Center's Transition and Employment Specialist Erika Theiler   Full Transcript Below PACER Center - Champions for Children with Disabilities: A Visit with National Parents Center on Transition and Employment Specialist Erika Theiler In partnership with State Services for the Blind of Minnesota we are proud to present, PACER Center - Champions for Children with Disabilities: A Visit with National Parents Center on Transition and Employment Specialist Erika Theiler Erika sits down with Jeff Thompson of Blind Abilities in the fourth of a series of podcasts in partnership with PACER Center and State Services for the Blind. Erika talks about the importance of self-advocacy, soft-skills, the family’s role in building a young adults advocacy skills and the importance of knowing your rights as a person with a disability. Join Erika Theiler and Jeff Thompson of Blind Abilities for this in-depth conversation about Self-Advocacy in Transition and Employment. From the PACER Center web site: Postsecondary education is an exciting opportunity for all youth, including those with disabilities. Going to college today can mean attending a 4-year college or university, a 2-year community college, or a technical institute or trade school. It can mean studying full-time or part-time, or living at school or commuting from home. Learning and earning go hand-in-hand. The more years of schooling your youth completes, the higher his or her income is likely to be. The wide variety of postsecondary educational programs currently available for youth makes exploring options with your son or daughter an exciting process. Although postsecondary students with disabilities are entitled to certain protections, the process for accessing accommodations is much different than in high school. Youth must take a more active role in knowing their rights and advocating for needed supports. This means they must know about their disability and the accommodations they need to be successful. Families play an important role in helping their young adults learn self-advocacy skills, as well as their rights as a person with a disability. You can watch the Great Schools video of Nasina: Kids with Character: Grit"Grit is having the courage to do your impossible or to do what you think is hard and to do it anyway," says Nasina, a young woman with incredible grit. Her story will awe and inspire you. Be sure to check out the entire PACER Center Series at www.BlindAbilities.com PACER Center enhances the quality of life and expands opportunities for children, youth, and young adults with all disabilities and their families so each person can reach his or her highest potential. PACER operates on the principles of parents helping parents, supporting families, promoting a safe environment for all children, and working in collaboration with others. With assistance to individual families, workshops, materials for parents and professionals, and leadership in securing a free and appropriate public education for all children, PACER's work affects and encourages families in Minnesota and across the nation. You can find out more about PACER Center on the web at www.Pacer.org http://www.Pacer.org You can reach the National Parent’s Center on Transition and Employment on the web at www.PACER.org/Transition You can reach pACER Center by phone at 952-838-9000 You can find out more about State Services for the Blind on the web at www.MN.Gov/Deed/SSB And by calling 651-539-2300 Live Learn Work and Play Thanks for Listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store   Full Transcript: Learning the Skill of Self-Advocacy: Meet PACER Center's Transition and Employment Specialist Erika Theiler Erica Theiler: Self advocacy really means speaking up for yourself, and asking for what you need. Jeff Thompson: State Services for the Blind of Minnesota presents PACER Center, champions for children with disabilities. Erica Theiler: Especially right at senior year of high school, or after high school, where your young adult will have to know how to advocate for themselves too. Jeff Thompson: We will be talking to  Erica Theiler, transition and employment specialist at PACER Center. Erica Theiler: I would encourage the participants of the team meeting to talk directly to the student, rather than asking the parent what they think the student needs or wants. Jeff Thompson: Helping parents, families, and young adults transition from high school into adult service systems. Erica Theiler: And assertive communication is really having the posture, and the confidence, and saying what you need in a way that respects others, but also respects yourself. Jeff Thompson: And you can find out more about National Parent Center on transition and employment on the web at www.PACER.org/transition. Erica Theiler: Just give us a call. The main PACER number, which is 952-838-9000, and we can help you brainstorm and problem solve whatever is happening or what questions that you have. Jeff Thompson: Produced by Blind Abilities in part with State Services for the Blind Minnesota. Live, learn, work, and play. We hope you enjoy. Jeff Thompson: Welcome to Blind Abilities, I'm  Jeff Thompson, and I’m at the PACER Center in Bloomington, Minnesota, and I'm talking to Erica Theiler. And she is the transition and employment specialist here at PACER. How you doing? Erica Theiler: Hi, I'm good this morning, thank you. Jeff Thompson: Can you give us a little overview on PACER and your department? Erica Theiler: Sure. Well PACER was founded back in 1977, and really it's all about parents helping parents support individuals with disabilities. It started with just children with disabilities, but we've really grown to support young adults with disabilities as well. My department is called the National Parent Center on Transition and Employment. And it was founded in 2014. And our goal is really helping parents, and families, and young adults transition from high school to the adult service system. So how do you get job supports for people with disabilities? Or how do you access accommodations in college, or live independently, whether it's housing, or recreation and leisure? Our focus is giving that one on one assistance and workshops, but really about what happens after high school, and how things change.   Nasna: So, I woke up and got myself together and went to school, and I became a scholar, not just a student. Jeff Thompson: That's the voice of Nasna a young woman with determination, perseverance, what she calls grit. Jeff Thompson: One of the important skills that I know is when you're transitioning from high school to college, and into later on in life, is self advocacy. Can you talk about self advocacy? Erica Theiler: Sure, yeah. Self advocacy really means speaking up for yourself, and asking for what you need. In order to do that effectively though includes knowing your rights, and being able to explain your disability, knowing about your disability and how to talk about it with other people, whether it's an employer, or a professor at college, or somebody in the community to access the supports that you need. Jeff Thompson: Now advocacy, usually when there's a disability, or someone that's struggling with certain aspects of their education and stuff. It's usually the parents that notice this and so they are their first advocate. Erica Theiler: Yeah, they're their first advocate, and their lifelong advocate, really. You know, when I have a big decision in my life I still call my mom. I still ask her for some help, and I ask my dad for help when it comes to buying a car, or big decisions in my life, I rely on my parents. And I think that's good for families to know that we're not expecting that role to ever go away as a parent, you will always be the best advocate for your young adult, or your teen, or your adult child. Erica Theiler: But there is kind of this period where, especially right at senior year of high school, or after high school, where your young adult will have to know how to advocate for themselves, too. Jeff Thompson: And that includes like making sure that you have the right equipment, the right accessibility tools for success, and possibly taking the right courses in school, so you have to be able to be there for yourself, because whether you're doing an IPE or IEP, or anything like that, it comes down to you advocating for yourself. Erica Theiler: Yeah, and I really encourage parents to start that process of teaching their child how to advocate for themselves really early. So when I was a teacher, I was a special education teacher for six years, and when I was a teacher I would include self advocacy goals in the IEP as early as fifth or sixth grade. In partnership with the school, we could start teaching the child how to advocate for themselves, how to ask for what they want as far as accommodations, or talk about their goals for the future, so then we can build a really good IEP that supports them moving forward. Erica Theiler: And fifth and sixth grade seems really early, but that's when ... you know, the earlier you start the better, and that's when students are starting to formulate their really solid ideas of what they want to do in the future, and we can really encourage them to be their own individual person, and direct their own lives. Nasna: Anything in my way, I have tried to move it. There's a second where I have a little meltdown, like, oh my goodness, I can't do this, and I panic a little bit internally. But then that lasts for like 10 seconds, and I'm back on it. I appreciate school, and I love the power of learning. Jeff Thompson: I did some teaching myself, and I remember some kids would come into the training center, and it seems like the umbilical cord was cut right at the door where they have all the skills in the world to do a bunch of different things, mostly technology, or braille reading, they're great at that, but they just haven't been able to make a sandwich, do other things that the parents kind of did for them. And it actually comes into what decisions are made, and them to make decisions, and to learn to know what skills they should get. And I think advocacy is one of those ones that, if you have that, the rest will follow. Erica Theiler: Yeah, and another thing that parents can do in the community to help build that advocacy skill is just allowing your young adult, or your child, to speak up at a restaurant, and order what they want, or speak up when they're asking for a job application for their first job. Or helping them to have the skills to tell a coach about their disability, and maybe what accommodations they would need on the sporting team, or for whatever event is coming up. So just really supporting their young adult, and being their own voice, and helping them to ask for what they need at an early age when there's still those supports in place, rather than when they're ... after they graduate from high school. A lot of times they're on their own when it comes ... they're doing these requests on their own, rather than with the support of a parent or a teacher by their side. Erica Theiler: So giving them as much practice as possible is really helpful. Jeff Thompson: You bring up a great point. Like at a restaurant, there's so many times, and there's a saying in England that I learned, it's called, "Does she want sugar?" And it's when you ask for tea, and they bring you the tea, and they turn to the person across the table and say, "Does she want sugar?" And that's one of those things that even at cash registers, that other thing, you pay for it and they hand the other person the receipt, or something, to speak up. Like you said, once you leave high school, you don't have all that structure. You don't have the TBI at your side, you can't bring them with you because once you go to college there's a whole different system, and that's where you have to start knowing what you want, and asking for what you want. Erica Theiler: Exactly, and thank you for saying that, Jeff. And one thing that I did as a teacher as well, is at IEP team meetings, when I could get a student to participate or to come to a meeting, which sometimes was uncomfortable for them, but I would encourage the participants of the team meeting, whether it's teachers, or an administrator, or the parents, to talk directly to the student. And say, "What would you like your goals to be for this next school year? Or what kind of classes do you want to take? Or what accommodations do you think that you need?" Rather than asking the parent what they think the student needs or wants. Erica Theiler: Of course we want the parent input, and we need that parent input because they know their young adult and their child best, but I think encouraging students to see themselves as their own voice, and see themselves as their own advocate as early as possible is really helpful.   Nasna: Grit is having courage to do your impossible. Or to do what you think is hard, and do it anyway, even if it's not the most pleasant thing going through. Erica Theiler: And like you said, you know, when you get to college, there's not an IEP team meeting anymore. You have to be the one to go into the disability services office and say, "Hey, I need some accommodations, because I have a disability, and this is what works for me in the past, let's talk about this, let's work on what classes that I have, and how I can access the program of study." Erica Theiler: A lot of colleges, they won't directly with the parent, they only work directly with the student. And even if the student signs a waiver saying that the college can talk to a parent, the colleges don't have to. They're going to work mostly with the student directly. And that's the same with an employer. And employer's going to work directly with their employee, rather than going through a parent or a guardian. So just really preparing your child, your young adult, your youth, the student, if you're a teacher, preparing the student for that reality after high school is really important. Jeff Thompson: And especially you have individual teachers along the way while you're in college, you have to be able to talk to them, and ask them or tell them what works for you. I like how you put that, what works for you, because what works for the teacher they've done or for the school may not be what ... if you're a braille reader, and they want to have you use a reader, actual person read it to you, maybe the braille's the best one for you. So you can educate the teachers, you can educate the disability services office, and then like you said, you can't bring them to the workplace. So you advocating for getting the stuff that works well for you is actually you know best, that's going to work. Erica Theiler: Yeah, and I like that, I haven't heard of it that way, but how you said you have to be the one to educate others. So you, as the self advocate, need to be able to know how to talk about your disability, talk about what works for you in order to educate the people around you that are there to provide the supports. Whether that's a professor in college, a disability services office, or your employer, somebody in the community, the list kind of goes on and on, but being able to talk about your disability succinctly, and in a way that tells others what you need as far as accommodations, and deciding how much you want to disclose is really important, and something that should be practiced early and often.   Jeff Thompson: Yeah, and you're right, those parents have a lot of opportunity to give them that. Whether it's responsibilities for taking out the garbage or something like that. And they might say ... I don't want to use the word argue, or I don't think when someone is self advocating that they're a pain, I think it's putting value on themself and their needs, and what they need to succeed. Erica Theiler: Yeah. And one thing that I did as a teacher in my classroom was encourage what are called soft skills. Soft skills are things like communication skills, critical thinking, leadership, teamwork, having a good work ethic. And employers report, there's some data out there, that they want those skills more than technical skills on the job. So in the classroom, we would encourage ... I would plan lessons around communication, or lessons around teamwork. And build in the academic skills as well, but also be focusing on these extra soft skills that come into play that are important, not just to get your diploma, but to be an individual in the workforce, and be an individual in college, and to be a community member. Jeff Thompson: Exactly. And the employment component that you're talking about, that, like you said, it may not be all the technical skills that they're looking for, they're actually looking for team players. They're looking for people who think out of the box, and when you have a disability you've been doing that for quite a while. So a lot of these skills, the soft skills that you're talking about, the stuff that we're advocating for people to get involved in to use, actually is something that employers don't even realize they're looking for. The skills that you develop through your challenges as you venture through the transition process. Erica Theiler: Yeah, and I think I included those soft skills in my day to day teaching, and I think that parents have the opportunity to include those soft skills in their home, like you said, with chores, or with roles in ... very defined roles and responsibilities, if a youth with a disability has a sibling, and then they have to figure out, if they have to problem solve together if they don't ... if they both don't want to do the same thing that day, if one of them wants to go to the pool and one of them wants to go to Valley Fair, having them be the ones to problem solve together rather than the parent making the decision. I'm not a parent, I'm one of the few people at PACER that's not a parent yet, so I can't say I don't know how easy that is to let your children problem solve. But, I think that that would be something that could be a good learning moment, or learning opportunity for the kids. Jeff Thompson: Exactly. Just like labeling the microwave. Mom may not want something that covers up the numbers, it might be clear, or it might be a bump above, or dad might not want this, so that's a point for you to say ... or your voice. I think self advocacy is just basically putting value behind your voice, your input into the conversation. Erica Theiler: And then one thing that goes along with sharing your voice is being confident. So I've done some self advocacy lessons back when I was a teacher, but also in the past year here at PACER, and one thing that we talk about with students in the 18 to 21 programs is something called assertive communication, and being really confident in talking about yourself, talking about what you need. When I say assertive communication, there's passive communication, assertive communication, and aggressive communication. And assertive communication is really having the posture, and the confidence, and saying what you need in a way that respects others, but also respects yourself. And shares that you know what you need, you know what you have a right to, and you're willing to work with others in order to make that happen. Jeff Thompson: I notice when you said assertive we both kind of sat up just a little bit. We got our posture going. Erica Theiler: And when I taught that lesson about those types of assertive communications, we actually do a body posture activity, where I have the students sit up. And I have them put their shoulders back, and you know, you kind of get into that ... you speak better when you're in that posture, and you express yourself better in that posture. Whereas we would also have the students show me what passive communication looked like, and they would have their head down on the table, and be really sleepy. And then we'd also practice aggressive communication, and how standing over top of somebody, or having that mean look on your face, whatever it may be. We'd do some role playing activities, and to really show them that assertive and confident communication is going to get you the supports that you need and get your point across in a respectful way to yourself and others. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. And parents have that great opportunity to start that early, because the sooner that someone begins to realize they have a voice and their voice is heard, and they get that experience, it just carries on for every level of stage of life that's ahead of them. Erica Theiler: Yeah. And these skills that we're talking about today, they transfer and they develop throughout life. They're not going to go away, they're not going to be forgotten. If you continue to use them, and you continue to practice in the community, you're going to continue to have those skills. Erica Theiler: You know, I think about I was a math teacher for a while, and teaching geometry for example, or the Pythagorean theorem, or different math skills, you know, if you don't ... you'll always kind of remember, okay, I know kind of how to do that, I know it has to do with triangles, or I know it has to do with algebra, or solving a problem, but if you don't use it, then sometimes you learn that skill in order to get your diploma, and then you kind of forget about it. Whereas self advocacy skills, or these soft skills, like leadership and having a positive attitude, and assertive communication, that can really transfer to all aspects of life. Jeff Thompson: Lifelong skills. Erica Theiler: Exactly.   Nasna: You can push yourself to achieve that A plus in, you know, pre-calculus, or to get an A in trigonometry, you can do that. Erica Theiler: So another thing when I was working with students in high school, high school aged students with disabilities, we did a lot of goal setting activities. And what I realized is that some students could set a goal for their day, and that was it. They could set a goal I need to get through the day by staying focused, or I need to get this piece of homework done today. Whereas other people could really set a goal for long term, they could set a goal for 10 years from now, what they would like to do. Erica Theiler: And I realized when I'm teaching them some of these skills for the future, I really needed to individualize the skills based on what their goals were. So what I mean is the student that could only kind of see into the future for the day, I would talk to them about, okay, how are you going to advocate for yourself to get the accommodation that you need on this assignment in order to get it done today? Or how are you going to share your voice in a classroom when you're feeling overwhelmed in order to get through the day? If they had some sort of anxiety disorder, anxiety difficulties in getting through a certain class. I would have students that science was a common one that was difficult for them to get through because it was a technical class, and they have anxiety in this class. So we would talk about how they would advocate for themselves when they were feeling overwhelmed. So those skills I built into their one day. Erica Theiler: Whereas I had some students who could think five, 10 years down the road. And they wanted to be an English teacher, or they wanted to go to ... I had one student that wanted to be a grant writer for a nonprofit. So we talked about how can you learn the skills that you need to get that degree in college, how can you apply to that college, ask for those services that you need, get that degree. And then what are you going to do in order to get that specific job that you want? So knowing the students, and if you're a parent, knowing your child and their goal setting abilities, can help you develop these advocacy skills, or these communication skills, these teamwork skills. You can really base it on their goals for the future, whether it's a goal for today or a goal for 10 years from now. Jeff Thompson: That's a really good point, you just set my mind spinning there, it was really good because working within the parameters of their capabilities, and kind of enhancing that, like if they can only do a day, well, let's build that into the day, and maybe that's enough, or recognizing someone else. So at some point, do students recognize what works best for them? Like if they try to plan too far out, or are they better off ... is that suggested to them, to maximize your potential, but realize what works best for you? Erica Theiler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). You know, I think it depends on the student, and where they're at. The goal as a teacher was always to get them to think about what they want to do after high school. So you want them to goal set for what they want to do for their future so you can really plan appropriately while they're in high school, and get them prepared. Some students, when you'd ask them that question, they would talk about what they're going to do this weekend versus what they're going to do after high school. Or they would talk about ... they have a job interview tomorrow, rather than what career they want for the future. Erica Theiler: So when I heard those things, or them talk about the day to day, or this coming weekend rather than the future, when I was asking them about their future, then I would kind of take a step back, and say, "Okay, let's talk about this job interview you have tomorrow. How can you prepare for that?" And then we'd start there. And then after that job interview, we'd debrief, "How'd it go? What could you have done better?" And then that's when the opportunity arose to talk about what happens next. So, "When you have another job interview in the future, what do you think you should do different, or how can we prepare you differently for that for after high school?" I try to build in those terms, after high school or after you graduate, or build those into our conversations, but not force it for a student that wasn't ready for those sorts of goal setting. Jeff Thompson: So students shouldn't actually expect miracles in a day, it's just a practice. Like you said, early on, the safeguards are there, it's a good time to practice, you're in fifth, sixth grade, seventh grade, then pretty soon high school, and then you're bridging the gap into young adulthood. And by practicing this and having a good support group, like your parents and friends that encourage it, it sounds like a pathway to success. Erica Theiler: Yeah, and helping youth understand, youth that are in middle school and high school, understand that it's okay to fail. It's okay to go to a job interview and not get the job. It's okay to not do so well on a test. But being able to give them some reflection skills and some goal setting skills that will help them get where they want to go in the future is really important. Jeff Thompson: Experience is the best teacher. Erica Theiler: Yeah, for sure.   Nasna: I'm going to UC Berkeley. I got the black and gold scholarship for UC Berkeley. I'm really proud of myself. I am completely covered my first year. Jeff Thompson: Well Erica, what advice would you give to a student who is entering that transition period of their life? Erica Theiler: I think one thing we haven't talked about yet is knowing your rights, being confident, and being assertive in what you want for your future, is my biggest advice. And when I say knowing your rights, is knowing that after high school the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, once you take your diploma, you're no longer covered under that law anymore, that piece of legislation, so you're then covered under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the Am Ericans With Disabilities Act. And they have different requirements, they have a different definition of disability, they have different ways to access services, and to access protections as a person with a disability. Kind of researching those laws is important, and knowing your rights under those laws. PACER, of course, has some help sheets that are written in a way that's family friendly, that you can ... that you as parents or you as a student can talk to your families together, and discuss those rights, or give us a call. Erica Theiler: But once you know those rights, having a base for being confident and assertive in asking for what you need. Jeff Thompson: Now the Transition and Employment Project, they have a website, and there's lots of tips and tricks for parents and for students on the website. How can someone get ahold of that? Erica Theiler: Yeah, so our specific website is www.PACER.org/transition. And that'll get you to our main site, and I encourage people to explore the Learning Center on that site, and there's some links to some resources about post secondary education, employment, independent living, laws and rights, as we discussed, health transition, housing, there's a lot of wealth of resources there. And it's a good place to start. I will say that there's a lot there, so if you're feeling overwhelmed, just give us a call. If you call the main PACER number, which is 952-838-9000 and ask to speak to a transition advocate, or ask to speak to me, if you can say, "I want to talk to Erica," I'm the only Erica here. Then we can give you some one on one support as far as what your specific questions are. Because every situation is unique. We get tons of different calls here. If we don't know the answer, we know who knows the answer for you. And we can help you brainstorm and problem solve whatever is happening, or what questions that you have. Jeff Thompson: Well Erica, I want to thank you so much for all this information. Thanks for taking the time out of your day, and speaking to the listeners, yeah, just wonderful. Thank you. Erica Theiler: Yeah, absolutely, thanks for being here, Jeff. Jeff Thompson: Be sure to check out PACER Center, champions for children with disabilities. On the web at www.PACER.org. Check out State Services for the Blind of Minnesota, at www.mn.gov/deed/ssb. Live, learn, work, and play. And a big thank you goes out to Cheechau[ for the beautiful music. You can find Chee Chau on Twitter @LCheeChau . Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com. On Twitter @BlindAbilities, and download the free Blind Abilities app on the App Store, and on Google Play. That's two words, Blind Abilities. Jeff Thompson: You can also enable the Blind Abilities skill on your Amazon device. Just say, "Enable Blind Abilities". Jeff Thompson: And from PACER Center, State Services for the Blind, and Blind Abilities, thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed, and until next time, bye bye.   [Music]  [Transition noise]  -When we share -What we see -Through each other's eyes...   [Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]   ...We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.            

Brian Wheatle IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, has been the law of the land since 1975, longer even than the ADA. Thus, it should come as no surprise that our guest, Brian Wheatley, is a person with a disability who's running for school board in San Jose. But it probably does, even to many of us.   Join hosts Mark Romoser and Sheela Gunn-Cushman as we find out where we stand both in the classroom and on the campaign trail. The post Education Issues with Brian Wheatley appeared first on KPFA.

In partnership with State Services for the Blind of Minnesota we are proud to present, PACER Center – Champions for Children with Disabilities:  A Visit with pACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center Director Julie Hertzog Julie helped start the Bullying Prevention Center back in 2006 and is a recognized National Leader in Bullying Prevention. She has been featured on CNN, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, Time for Kids, PEOPLE, Family Circle and The Huffington Post. Julie sits down with Jeff Thompson of Blind Abilities in the first of a series of podcasts in partnership with PACER Center and State Services for the Blind. Be sure to check out our upcoming Pacer Center podcast featuring the Simon Technology Center and how innovations and opportunities are being created every day and every way. From the web: PACER Center enhances the quality of life and expands opportunities for children, youth, and young adults with all disabilities and their families so each person can reach his or her highest potential. PACER operates on the principles of parents helping parents, supporting families, promoting a safe environment for all children, and working in collaboration with others. With assistance to individual families, workshops, materials for parents and professionals, and leadership in securing a free and appropriate public education for all children, PACER’s work affects and encourages families in Minnesota and across the nation. You can find out more about PACER Center on the web at www.Pacer.org And PACER’s national Bullying Prevention Center at www.Pacer.org/Bullying You can reach pACER Center by phone at 952-838-9000 You can find out more about State Services for the Blind on the web at  www.MN.Gov/Deed/SSB And by calling 651-539-2300 Live Learn Work and Play Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.   Full Transcript [Music] Child 1: Bullying is hurting too many people in this world. Child 2: Sometimes I cry when I'm being bullied. Child 3: Bullying makes me feel sad, when I am bullied I try to walk away. Child 4: Sometimes they punch you in the eye, it's so bad that you could cry. Child 5: I got bullied at school. Child 6: Children leave me out of games. I don't like it at all. [Music] Jeff: State Services for the Blind of Minnesota presents "PACER Center Champions for Children with Disabilities". This episode focuses on bullying and with us today we have Julie Hertzog, director of PACERs National Bullying Prevention Center. Julie helped start the bullying prevention center back in 2006, and is a recognized national leader in bullying prevention. You can find out more about PACER Center and PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center on the web at www.PACER.org, we hope you enjoy. [Music] Jeff: Welcome to Blind Abilities, I'm Jeff Thompson. We are at the PACER Center located in Bloomington, Minnesota. We're talking to the director of PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center, Julie Hertzog. Julie, can you fill us in on what Pacer Center is all about and what you do as Director the National Bullying Prevention Center? Julie: Sure, thank you Jeff. Yes, we are in Bloomington Minnesota at Pacer Center and PACER is actually an acronym, P A C E R, and its Parents Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights ,though that's probably outdated. We've been around since the late 70's and we, our organization began when students with disabilities were given the federal right to be included in the classroom and so that law today is called the IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and so we are a parent advocacy organization and what we do is help parents understand what their rights are when their child has a disability in an educational setting. People will oftentimes say, well where does your connection to bullying come in then as a disability organization? In response to that, as an organization we're here in Minnesota, so we do take a lot of calls from parents in Minnesota, and starting in, well it was around early 2000, we noticed that our staff noticed that we were taking more and more calls about kids who were involved in bullying situations and really both kids who were being bullied as well as kids who were doing the bullying, and a lot of those stories just kind of broke our hearts. We knew that we wanted to, to do something we knew we wanted to take action. And at the time bullying in early 2000, it really wasn't something that people were talking about and so PACER pioneered a lot of the education that happened around early 2000, and in 2006 we actually formed a program under the PACER umbrella called PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center. And the connection to our mission with disability is that students with disabilities are bullied two to three times more than their non-disabled peers, and at the time when we formed the National Bullying Prevention Center we knew that, we wanted to always make sure that we emphasize students with disabilities, but to really make a difference, we realized that we, we also wanted to focus on any kids who are vulnerable to bullying and whether that was a student with a disability, are being bullied based on their disability, on their race, their religion, their weight, their gender, we wanted to be inclusive. But we also didn't want to focus just on the kids who are being bullied, we wanted to really engage, we knew to make a difference, we wanted to engage the entire community, so we wanted to be speaking to schools, we want to be speaking to teachers, and and parents, and the students themselves because at that time we had adopted the tagline, the end of bullying begins with you, and we knew that we wanted to really have a community conversation about this. That it wasn't about saying that, you know, schools need to fix this, or teachers need to fix this, or the kids need to fix it, it was really about all of us working together. And so that is the background on the National Bullying Prevention Center and how we got started. Jeff: You mentioned something that really struck me as it's more than just one person, it well, it is about one person, what I'm getting at is, it's a community, it's the family, and the communication that happens between all of them that will help solve this. Julie: Yeah for so long we talked about some of those misperceptions that we had about bullying or some of those stereotypes that we had about bullying and if you think back to early 2000, I remember when I first started working on this and again I've been on this project since its origin and there was so many statements such as boys will be boys, yeah, meaning that it was justified because they were boys, that it was okay for them to fight, that's just the way it was. Of course, we've all heard that universal one, sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you. We know that that is not true, that bullying is not only about physical, it's about emotional, and you know through the years we've had kids say some really poignant things like, words are like weapons, or words will break your heart, and we know that that emotional bullying has just as much effect on students and probably lives inside them much longer even than the physical bullying has. There's also other stereotypes and misperceptions out there that have rationalized bullying for so long such as, you know, just fight back, or you know, kids have also been blamed for why the behaviors happening to them and parents or adults have said to kids, well if you didn't act that way, bullying wouldn't happen to you. And so those are all things that in early 2000, just those stereotypes allowed bullying behavior to perpetuate because we were silent, so when a child was reaching out to us and we were saying things back to them like, well what did you do to make that happen? Really what we were doing is shutting down the conversation and any options that they had to make it stop. Or even when kids would tell an adult that someone else was being bullied, you know our response was, don't be a tattletale. And so again if we're so long what has happened is our society allowed the behavior to perpetuate not, not intentionally but, there was also that statement of, bullying is just a natural part of growing up, I mean those, those were all rationalizations for the behavior for so long. But I will say around you know in that early kind of mid-2000's that people really started recognizing the incredibly negative impact that bullying had, not only short term, but also long term. And there was a couple things that happened at that time in that, the results of the advent of social media at that time. I can remember saying that in 2006 that the Internet is the new bathroom wall, meaning that bullying used to be limited to the school or you know, possibly the neighborhood and kids could go home and escape that, well maybe except for that occasional phone call that they would get or something, but they were really able to, you know, go back home and remove themselves from it. But with social media it became their, you know with the evolution of technology also became the evolution to bully, and so kids were vulnerable to bullying 24 hours a day, and I think that that was one of the reasons that bullying really was put on kind of that national dialogue and also there was a recognition that kids because of things like self-harm, things like depression, anxiety, we began to recognize that there was medical things happening with our kids that were the result of being bullied, and also their you know, the suicide ideation, and suicide attempts, became part of the dialogue as well. So those two things really kind of started to put bullying much more in the public radar and also, they turned a lot of those stereotypes around and we recognize that bullying was a very serious issue for our kids. Jeff: You mentioned in the beginning that educating parents and giving them tools to deal with some of the stuff that comes with, I mean mostly parents in my situation that I know, they didn't choose to become a parent of a child with disabilities, and where do they go for that so, that's what PACER was basically built on. Julie: Absolutely and Jeff I'll just share too that I am the parent of a young man who was born with Down syndrome, who was also nonverbal, he has a feeding tube, a pacemaker, some really significant medical issues and so, it was David who, he was three when I started here at PACER, and he's now 21, and it was thinking about those vulnerabilities of kids that really inspired our, my work here, and also the work of others, in that so much of bullying happens because someone is not able to defend themselves against it, and so it was about how do we educate parents to raise kids who are self-advocates? How do we educate parents to be advocates for their own children? You know and I think back, and again I'll just reference back to 2000, so often when kids would tell their parents that they were being bullied, I think the first response from parents from majority of parents was, oh just ignore it, it'll go away, and you know, and that came from a really good place, and I think parents hoped that by ignoring it, it would stop, but we know from history that just ignoring it does not make a go away, in fact it usually gets worse, and and I remember kids, there was some kids who jokingly when we were talking to them for the focus groups and everything else and they said, well what if I would tell my parents to just ignore their annoying boss? Would that be a solution to the situation? And I remember there was another kid he said, What if I told my parents just to ignore their bills? Would their bills just go away? And so, you know we'd say that, and we realized that, how ineffective that response was, but that was the only thing we had at that time, and we know now that there's so many more solutions. And since 2000 now, every state across the nation has a law about bullying, and bullying prevention in schools, and legislators focused on the school environment when creating those laws. So, we now know that parents and kids have rights and within every state about what can happen if they're being bullied and those weren't in place before, and we also teach parents just how they could be supportive of their child. So instead of being that dismissive, just ignore it, we help them understand how important it is to talk through it and let them know that they're not alone, that we're getting, that you're gonna as a parent, you're gonna be there to help them learn how to advocate their way through it, and I would say to Jeff, that you know, I think for my own son even, self-advocacy skills were so important for him and being a child who's nonverbal, one of the things that we taught him how to do is, if, if you're not feeling comfortable, first thing we want you to do is find a teacher, and we had that written into his IEP, and even from there we continued developing more strategic options for him. Jeff: So, when I was on the website for the National Bullying Prevention Center, I noticed there's some videos and it just wasn't a collection of videos, they were broken down into young children, teens, and you know it even led to what you're talking about educating adults. Can you tell us a little bit about those videos? They really impacted me because it brought me back to the realization that, I may have been part of, not may have, I was part of bullying a little bit and I was bullied, and it just it doesn't go away really, because it all came back to me pretty vivid, pretty, it was all there. Child 7: It makes me cry after school. Child 8: We are different in many different ways, size, shape, and color. Child 9: I have been bullied so I know how it feels to everyone going through a hard time out in the world. Several child voices: Tall, short, skinny, or round, tall, short, skinny, or round, you have a voice, so make a sound. never meant to be the same. Child 10: You have to care because there are other people in the world besides you that have feelings. Child 11: Bullying can prevent good in the world and make the bad go in the world. Child 12: It's not nice to bully, it's better to be a friend. Julie: Yeah absolutely, and you bring up such a good point to Jeff in that, one of the decisions we made very early on was to recognize that any student within the same day can play multiple roles in what we call a bullying situation, and that you may be that young person, you're on a bus riding to school and someone might be throwing, you know, wads of paper at the back of your head over and over and everybody's laughing. So you're that person that's targeted by bullying on the bus and so you can imagine how that feels, that vulnerability, you're on the bus and you get to school and there's all sorts of emotions you're feeling, you're, you know you might be feeling anger, you might be feeling fear, you might be feeling sad, and then you get off that bus and you walk into school and you see a kid by a locker and for whatever reason you just decide to push that kid because you know that you can, and you you push that kid, you've now taken on that role of the kid who's doing the bullying. The next hour you might be witnessing a similar situation you know, in your own classroom, and so to just be labeling kids as a bully, or as a victim, or as you know, somebody who sees it, it wasn't strategic for us. We realized that this is the root of all bullying, it's a social issue. It's a very social issue and by us allowing the behavior to continue to happen without anybody saying anything about it is why it was perpetuated for so long, and I think it's about, we say bullying is about behavior, and so our kids, they're about behaviors, they're not about labels, and what we really want to do is be educating them, and Jeff you mentioned those videos and I think that, again in today's culture, and our evolution, the way we absorb information, we thought it was so important to be offering everybody a variety, so everything from being able to read information, to listen to information, to have access to videos, and you know, and we do a lot of interactive stuff as well. The video series we wanted to touch a parent audience because we want to be giving them a little bit different information than what we would give our kids. So, we actually do have three different websites. We have the National Bullying Prevention Center which we consider our portal page, and that's really for our adult audience, and then we also have two age-appropriate websites. One is called Teens Against Bullying and that is for middle and high school students, and the second is called Kids Against Bullying, which is for elementary school students, so we present to information that that's age-appropriate on those sites through a variety of dissemination, so everything from reading, to interaction on the website, to videos. Jeff: Yeah that was really interesting because I think the ones for kids had animated drawings, it actually described what was going to be on there and said drawings that the kids did, and then their voices, so it really brings it home, and when you witness, or you hear that kids voice, and the tones in their voice, it really like, you can feel it and you mentioned something about everyone's kind of a participant in it. Either your bullying, your target, or you're a bystander. Julie: Yeah and you know, bullying doesn't affect just that kid who's being bullied because when we think about, we like to talk about bullying on a continuum, so if you take a hundred students and you'd line them up, there's gonna be ten students who are frequently targeted by bullying, there's gonna be ten students who maybe are doing the bullying, but that leaves these eighty kids in-between who probably you know might experience bullying a little bit, or might participate in groups, but they're also that 80 percent that sees it happening and you know Jeff I'll tell you universally from talking to kids for, for the past almost twenty years, that group doesn't like it, they don't like what they see, but what they've never had in the past is that they didn't feel empowered to do something about it. You know it goes back to maybe one of those kids in that group was the one that went and told a teacher when they saw a bully and when they were met with, don't be a tattletale, you know what does that do, it shuts them down, they're not going to go back again and say something about it, and so again, it's about making that cultural shift to really engage that 80% to be what we call advocates. It goes back to our PACER model of advocacy, and we say it's advocacy for self, and advocacy for others, and so really giving that that group the dialogue and the tools about, what do you say if you see a bullying situation? And I think that 80% is so important for our kids with disabilities to because the majority of bullying is happening outside the adult's world, and so it's happening in places like a bus where there's not adults, you know, the one person who's on a bus is the bus driver, and what are they doing, they're facing the other way of where all these kids are sitting behind them. And so bullying also happens online, in places where adults aren't, you know that's why so many social media sites that adults are using, kids aren't, because they want to be in a world of their own choosing, and interacting with each other. And so if you think about it, it becomes extremely important for this peer group, this, these bystanders to be empowered to do and say something about bullying, and especially for those who aren't able to stop it on their own. And there's also a really powerful statistic that almost 60% of bullying situations will stop when a peer intervenes and that peer invention becomes so much more powerful than anything in an adult could ever do because just as kids who bully have a lot of power, the peers can take that power away in that situation by saying, you know, we don't accept this, this is not what our school is about, we're better than this, and we've found that that it's extremely effective. [Music] Jeff: It's cool to be kind. [Laughter] Julie: Yeah you know you want to say something, it's cool to be kind sounds really cool to us as adults, but we like to frame it a little bit different for kids and, and especially you know, I think our elementary school students, things like that still resonate with them, you can go with that, some of those really very simple messages. Life gets a lot more complicated for our middle and high school students and how that empathy is, how do you tap into that natural empathy that kids have, because most people don't want to see another person be hurt, but they don't want to put themselves in that situation where they themselves might next become the target, or they get in trouble for sometimes intervening, and so you, you want to really make the payoff, you want to make the trade-off worth their investment of intervening and taking that risk. Jeff: Yeah that group mentality, those eighty students, is it cool to be part of the cool group, that the group is doing this, or is it cool, and I think because of PACER and you know the states passing the laws about bullying that the youth now is starting to realize that it's okay, and cool, those to step out step in, and be part of the conversation part of the solution to bullying. Julie: Absolutely, and Jeff again, my son David, I remember when he was going into middle school and again, you know everybody has their individual vulnerabilities and for him, it was not being able to tell us if he was in a bullying situation he just he wouldn't have that ability to do that and we wouldn't know, and so one of the things that we wrote into his IEP at that time was about training kids to be his advocates. So, at that time, we selected four young people who I knew were already allies of David and these weren't popular kids, they weren't the student council kids, they were they were kids I just knew who had empathy and who cared. We gave them the training to look out for David because we knew that they would know about bullying long before any of the adults would and those students were amazing, and they had such incredible, just their own self-worth and their self-confidence was brought up so much by learning those advocacy skills for David that they shared it with friends and they told people how much you know, this meant to them being part of you know, being delegated with this responsibility, and so that model quickly expanded within my son's school, that advocacy model and they became known as peer advocates. And so, what we did is we continued to train students about what to do if they saw somebody in a bullying situation, how they could intervene, what kind of support they could provide for David, and we also provided an adult mentor that they could go to. So that they could you know, share if there was something that was beyond what they could handle. And that model was incredibly effective, and it became known as the peer advocacy model, and it's still in place at that school today and I know we also have information about it on PACER's website. Yeah there's a great video on there, there's the toolkit, there's statistical data, and there's also a way that you can start it within your own school as well. Jeff: And that's what that toolkits about right? Julie: We have several toolkits on the website, but there's a peer advocacy toolkit on the website that really explains that model in more detail. Jeff: In my world of disability with the blindness and vision loss and difficulty in reading the printed word, self-advocacy is an important skill to develop because typically the parents are what becomes a personís advocate to make, ensure that they're receiving services, or they seek, come to PACER's to learn how to be their advocate in a sense, but then there's a point where the parent will assign chores, or wean them into responsibilities and self-advocacy because they're going to transition from high school to college to the workplace and having that skill set is very important. I was glad to see in the bullying that you guys mentioned self-advocacy. Julie: Yeah, I would say with self-advocacy in bullying, the one important nuance there, is that, we want to make sure that we're not putting full responsibility upon the student to stop it themselves because if they could have stopped it themselves they would have already done that. But what we do say is that self-advocacy is very important and that'll help you get your power back in this situation because I think so much about being bullied, you start to feel powerless, you start to feel like you don't have any options, so in doing that self-advocacy piece is really powerful, and in the world of disability too, it's important to note a couple things, that you have either your IEP, or your 504 that you can be writing those goals and objectives right into, and we've seen parents and teachers get incredibly creative with that. So everything from identifying an adult that a young person can go to if they need help in a bullying situation, and, and that advice, because that isn't always readily available in the school, and so writing that right into your plan is very important, or you know, we've seen other situations where students can leave class five minutes early just because if a hallway is really busy and they're getting bumped around you know, quote-unquote by accident, when we really know it's not by accident that it's on purpose, you know maybe for a short period of time they want to leave class early just to make sure that, that it's not happening, but ultimately we want that behavior to stop in the hallway and for it not to be happening so that they can be included with their peers. But the other important piece is that there's not a federal law about bullying, so every state has a law, but at the federal level there's a law on harassment. So, the distinction between that is that if the bullying is based on an individual's disability, or their race, or their religion, or their gender, or their national origin, then it reaches a threshold of harassment, and at that time the Department of Education as well as the office for civil rights are looking at those scenarios too, so there are some protections in place when the bullying is based on an individual's disability. Child 13: I push myself and yet it is never enough. Child 14: It's never enough. Child 13: And it's hard to ask for what I need. Child 15: I wish others could see that I may not be tough on the football field. Child 16: Or deal with social events very well, but I am a dependable friend. Child 17: It is hard to be understood. Jeff: You mentioned harassment and bullying and you thinking about all the definitions as they're defined in whether a dictionary, you know Webster would say, but it seems like they all blur together, it's a little blurry like conflict harassment, bullying, can you talk just a little bit about that? Julie: Sure I'll give a quick 101 on a definition of bullying, and again Jeff, you know like you say it's, it's somewhat nebulous, and so I'll go back to, if you're listening to this, this recording in the state of Minnesota, Minnesota's definition of bullying in the schools might be much different than how California legislation defines it, or legislation in Pennsylvania, but there are some common hallmarks that I'm gonna mention as far as what defines bullying. So, the first would be that there has to be the intent to hurt, harm, or humiliate, and that can be either emotionally or physically. So, everything from a push, a shove, to name-calling/gossip, so there's that intentionality to hurt, harm, humiliate. The second is is that, the act is typically repeated, instead of you know, but often you know, if it's of significance it can be a one-time act, and I'll use the illustration of say for example if somebody's on social media and they say something really inflammatory and it reaches the an audience of a thousand people immediately, to me that may be a single act, but because it's reaching a thousand people it would definitely hit that threshold of bullying. The third is there's this power imbalance, and again this is, this is I, you know, the imbalance of power up, with that in quotations because it sounds very lofty, but what it is is when a person has either more physical or social power, so everything from you know, so a larger person being much more intimidating to someone else, to a person of smaller stature, but it can also be social power you know, so often we hear it's the quote-unquote the cool kids who are bullying, and so they have much more social cachet then the person that they're bullying. But that imbalance of power can also be about groups, because so often with bullying there's a group mentality and you know, against one person, and it's awfully hard to have power in that situation as an individual versus a group. And the fourth one is that the person is not able to defend themselves, because we see a lot of times people act inappropriately, but it's when, when that person is, feels vulnerable, and they're not able to stop what is happening to them without the help of someone else. The distinction between bullying conflict and harassment then, so with harassment, it has all those hallmarks of bullying, but it's also, and again we're looking at the legal definitions based on legislation, and so the distinction with harassment is that it has all the hallmarks of bullying, but it's also based on an individual's disability, gender, race, religion, national origin, and so the legal, that's the legal definition. And at the interesting nuance to is just to understand what the difference is between conflict and bullying because I think that's very important with our kids, is that we want to let them know, that to have a disagreement, to have an argument, that's a natural part of just life, and it's going to happen through through life, and the distinction of when conflict crosses over into that threshold of bullying is when one person feels unsafe, they no longer feel safe in that disagreement, and also that most conflict will stop when the person realizes how much they're hurting the other person, and so those are really those those distinctions. Jeff: Yeah, I remember there's something saying, guided by empathy that someone does then, retreat or realize they're doing, they're harming someone, they actually realize it, and some people just don't. Julie: Yeah and they'll usually though, they'll be an apology or just an acknowledgement of, hey I guess you know, we've, we've crossed a line here that's not comfortable for someone, for the other person. Jeff: I think the, one of the biggest things you know I, I knew I was coming here to talk about bullying and so I you know, looked at the website and I talked to a couple people about it, and I reflected some things in my past, and I just am grateful that the children today in schools and stuff have the opportunity to be part of the conversation that you and PACER are doing, the bullying prevention, are doing, that there is a conversation that people can join in on. Julie: Yeah one of the I think important parts about our websites is that we wanted to make it not only educational, but we also want it to be aspirational and inspirational and you do that through the sharing of stories, and so if you do go on our website, one of our primary hub and navigation just lists stories, and that's true in all three of our web sites, whether it's for our kids, teens, or adults because we need to understand that impact that bullying has, and I think it's so, it's so easy to say, oh you know it's horrible what happened to somebody, but when you read their their personal story, and you understand the impact that it had for that person, literally about them maybe not wanting to get up and go to school because they couldn't face another day, it's important to know that, and it's those stories and the sharing of stories that really changes lives. And so we wanted to have a way that people could interact and so story sharing is one of those, we also have a nice feature called I care because dot dot dot, where individuals can go on there and fill out why this topic matters to them, and again those are very poignant, and very telling, and also just that kind of that aspirational piece is that, we want the opportunity for anyone to get involved and we realized that we're a small staff so PACER overall has a staff of almost seventy people but on our bullying prevention project there's only three of us, so there's three of us within PACER and we obviously have an infrastructure that supports us, but one of the things that we knew is that the only way we could make change with such a small staff was to really have people who wanted to get invested within every community and that's really what we found is whether it's kids, whether it's parents, or teachers, or even community members, we want to give them tools so that they could be part of the conversation. I think an important evolution you know, what you've heard me talk about what bullying was like in 2000 and where we are now in 2018 is that when we started in 2000 we really needed to be educating people about why do you need to care about this topic of bullying, and then you know, and the reasons were is because it had such a negative impact on her kids, everything from them not wanting to go to school, to also having these physical symptoms of depression and anxiety. You know I think the majority of our society now understands that, that bullying is is not acceptable, but now we need to beware. What are we going to do about it and what behaviors do we want to replace it with and so our conversation has continued to evolve to, we are together against bullying but we're also United for attributes such as kindness, because again you can't go wrong with kindness, and the world just needs a lot more of it. But we also started talking about the concepts of inclusion and acceptance, and we chose those two very purposefully. Inclusion because so often our students with disabilities are not included, you know traditionally they're not included in a classroom setting, they're not included in peer groups, they're not included in friendships, and so to be having active conversations about that we felt was really important. And the other values of kindness, inclusion, and acceptance, and I think so often bullying is about people's differences and in thinking about it, so often what somebody is bullied about is really what makes them unique and valuable to society and I'll just use my own that I, I'm five-eleven now, and I think I was five-eleven back in sixth grade and though I was teased about height and, but really that's what I value, and I think in blind or visually impaired community, and again Jeff, you can probably speak to this, but it's probably your uniqueness that you value about yourself. And so one of the things that we want to do is to say that acceptance is about who somebody is and things that they cannot change, but it's also probably what really they value most about themselves as well, and even my son with Down syndrome, I think what people value about him is his disability because of what he brings to a community, because of his uniqueness, and how he approaches life because of this disability. Jeff: I'm so glad to be part of this conversation because I'm just reflecting back and you talked about acceptance, like when I first lost my eyesight there was a period of time there where I was like, hmm, I didn't know what I didn't know, and I was like kind of lost, so vulnerability at that point until I was able to accept my blindness, my visual impairment, then I could deflect comments or just things like that so, Julie what suggestions would you have for someone who may be experiencing bullying? Julie: Sure, and I'm gonna look at this through the lens of we really focus on students in K through 12, and the first thing I always want to tell anyone who's in that age range and/or their parents is to know that, especially if you are experiencing bullying, that you're not alone, and and I say that Jeff because, one of the things we so commonly hear from individuals is that they feel like they're the only ones that are going through this experience. And you're not alone, in that people are here for you, and if you are being bullied, absolutely as a young person reach out to somebody and let them know, because you have the right to do that, you have the right to be safe at school, you have the right to feel safe online, and so in talking to a parent it's not a show of weakness, it's a show of strength, and I think it takes incredible courage if you are being bullied to just show up to school every day, and so use that courage and translate it into action by talking to an adult and then figure out what you want to do to, to advocate to make it better, and part of advocacy is telling somebody and letting them help you through a plan, and you know whatever that plan may be, make it unique to you, that fits your needs. And for adults, if you find out that your child is being bullied number one listen to them, and let them talk through it because it's a very emotional thing, and you as a parent are going to be experiencing a lot of emotion if you find out that your child is being bullied. Everything from why didn't I know about this before to why didn't they tell me before, but the most important thing you can do is be supportive and the 2nd thing is to go in and find out what your rights are, you know be calling us, or be emailing us, or going online and in finding out what your rights are because your child does have the right to be safe at school, I think that's, that's just of primary importance in of advocate. Jeff: I don't know this one will make the podcast, but as you're talking there I was thinking, do kids who bully ever come forward and wonder why they're doing it? Julie: Yeah absolutely and it's a great question and, and again, I can only speak [inaudible] from the kids that we that we have communicated with, but we've heard where kids go on our website and we actually have a checklist on there especially for our young kids and it's called, do you bully? And they go on there and they read through those behaviors and they, they read through it, and they say, wow I'm doing that, and they don't realize the impact that they've had on another person through their actions, and so we need to be teaching our kids about what appropriate behaviors are, and if you as a parent find out that your kid is, is showing those bullying behaviors, absolutely be having that conversation with them and saying how can we redirect what you're doing? And teaching them how to have empathy for others, such an important piece, and, and I don't think most kids would identify themselves as quote/unquote a bully, and so that's where it's particularly important for adults to be acknowledging those behaviors and saying what can we do to redirect them? Jeff: Once again thank you so much for all this information, there's just a wealth of information that I was able to tap into, I'm going on to the website and talking to you, and you know even this podcast people are gonna be listening, and it's just, sometimes you feel like you're in a vacuum in life, you're isolated from it like, what do I know about bullying in a sense that do I have the answers, but with the conversation going on, and the website and stuff people can get connected to each other and share, especially their parents because they're the ones if they know about it, they're the ones that can do stuff too, and it's just great resource. Can you tell people how they can get to your website? Julie: Absolutely, you go to PACER, again P A C E R, is that acronym that I talked about way back at the beginning and it's PACER.org, and that'll get you to PACER's primary website, and then to reach the National Bullying Prevention Center you would put in PACER.org slash bullying. Jeff: Well that's easy enough, well Julie thank you so much for carrying on this conversation that we all need, and I don't think just because I'm in the blindness community, and bullying doesn't have boundaries, so opening it up to so much, most of our podcasts deal with blindness and stuff but we can't hide from bullying because it it does exist, so thank you very much. Julie: Thank you Jeff and thank you listeners! Child 18: Sometimes we are just told to deal with it. Child 19: Sometimes I don't think I'm any different from other teenagers. Child 20: We kind of all struggle to be understood. Child 21: But yeah, I struggle. Child 22: Emotionally and intellectually, it's sad when people are insulted and made fun of because they have something they're born with and cannot help but have. Child 23: If only others could see, I have so much to offer. Child 24: I would like to encourage kids of my generation... Child 25: Well, really everyone.... Child 26: To be more kind each other.... Child 27: To be more kind to each other...... Child 28: To be more kind to each other. Child 29: Think about how good it feels when someone comes to help you when you least expect it. Child 30: We are all trying to fit in. Child 31: We are all trying to fit in. Child 32: We are all trying to figure life out. Child 33: We are all trying to figure life out. [Music] Jeff: Be sure to check out PACER's Center Champions for Children with Disabilities and PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center on the web at www.pacer.org, and check out State Services for the Blind in Minnesota at www.mn.gov/deed/ssb. Live, learn, work, and play. And a big thank you goes out to Chee Chau and Steven Letnes for their beautiful music. You can find Chee Chau on Twitter at lcheechau, and Stephen Letnes at stephenletnes.com. For more podcast with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on twitter at BlindAbilities, and download the free Blind Abilities app from the app store, and on Google Play, that's two words, Blind Abilities. You can also enable the Blind Abilities Skill on your Amazon device, just say enable Blind Abilities. And from Pacer Center, State Services for the Blind, and Blind Abilities, Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed, and until next time, bye bye! [Music]

In this episode, we are speaking with Larry Altman, co-author of Bullying to Sexual Violence – Protecting Students and Schools through Compliance. Larry currently works as a consultant for schools helping them  develop  legally compliant policies, protocols and procedures for Title IX, Anti-bullying, student suicide prevention, Section 504, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. He is also a distinguished…Read more

Students with disabilities, under  the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004), have the right to a free and appropriate public education, which means they are ensured they will get the needed related services and special education accommodations.  But who are these students and what are these services?  Episode 10 explores how students are identified as special education, what services are legally required to be provided, funding for these services, the difference between a 504 and an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) and other questions related to Special Education. We offer insight into our own experiences as teachers with the special education process and working with special education students, and offer some insight on why schools struggle with providing the services. Below are some links that will provide you with additional information and resources related to Special Education. 1)Overview of Special Education Law   2) Difference between 504 and IEP 3) American w/Disabilities Act and determining if a student is eligible for services. 4) Special Education Funding 5) How a 504/IEP is developed 6) Special Education Expenditure Project (research on funding) 7) Parent Center Hub for Special Education  

Mark Claypool, co-author of How Autism is Reshaping Special Education. Topic: The Unbundling of IDEA and more. Issues: What is IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), what it did right and where it went wrong; becoming an advocate for your child and getting the most appropriate services; who pays for services for children with autism […] The post How Autism is Reshaping Special Education + Training Kids’ Brains for a Life of Happines and Meaning appeared first on Mr. Dad.

We're going way back in today's episode. We're chatting about one of the most influential cases in American history that helped lay the foundation for our special education laws today.  We also discuss the importance of the language we use to describe children living with disabilities.   What You'll Learn in this Episode: How Brown v. Board of Education (1954), where the court decided that separate is not equal, set up the foundation for the special education conversation In 1975, the Senate established the IDEA – Individuals with Disabilities Education Act which indicated that children needed to be in school whether or not they had a disability Why it's important to use person-first language like “children living with a disability” instead of a “disabled person” How and why we're trying to change the perception of “disability”  Where do we learn our perceptions anyways? What is Free and Appropriate Public Education and why is it important? What does the Constitution guarantee anyways when it comes to education? Find out more about our non-profit organization, the Inclusive Education Project Contact Information: Our non-profit: www.iepcalifornia.org   Thank you for listening! Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to the show to receive every new episode delivered straight to your podcast player of choice. If you enjoyed this episode and believe in our message, then please help us get the word out about this podcast. Rate and Review this show in Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, or Google Play. It helps other listeners find this show. Be sure to connect with us and reach out with any questions/concerns: https://www.facebook.com/IEPcalifornia/ (Facebook) https://www.instagram.com/iepcalifornia/ (Instagram) http://www.iepcalifornia.org (IEP website)

Additional resources: Grant Wood Area Education Agency (AEA) http://www.aea10.k12.ia.us Iowa City Autism Community http://autismiowacity.org First Words Project http://firstwordsproject.com/ Individuals with Disabilities Education Act https://sites.ed.gov/idea/ The Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers https://m-chat.org/

Revisiting Episode 17 When Schools Say ‘No’. It’s IEP Season and we’re revisiting past episodes on the Individualized Education Plan. Find out what you can do when schools say ‘no’. Special Parents Confidential Episode 17 When Schools Say ‘No’. In 1990 Congress passed IDEA, or Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which entitles each student with a […] The post Revisiting Special Parents Confidential Episode 17 When Schools Say ‘No’. appeared first on Special Parents Confidential.

Martin and Camille have four children.  Three of which have a seizure disorder. Camille and Martin were pioneers in getting appropriate services for their children.  Camille and Martin were candid about first learning about their children’s seizure disorder and are grateful for them in their lives. Having Multiple Children with a Disability Being born with no issues Camille explained that all three of her children were born presenting no issues.  Around five to seven months, is when they started having seizures. Camille said, “The oldest one was considered a genius.  She was able to put a puzzle together at the age of four months, and she was able to walk into the doctor's office three or four steps on her own by the age of seven months, and then she had her first seizure.” The medication that she was given to control the seizures was phenobarbital which Camille said will cause an intellectual disability. Her three children took phenobarbital and all developed an intellectual disability. No explanation for seizures “..they never found a specific reason for it or a name for it.  They all had the same issue, and then the learning disabilities on top of that were all slightly different.” Camille explained. With their first child, Camille said she had a really hard time dealing with the onset of a disability.  She said, “..she had been doing so well and was so bright and cheerful, and then suddenly began having so many problems.”   As her seizures increased, so did the doctors appointments.  Martin was working so Camille had to go to those alone. Something that Camille said “..it was quite difficult.”  As she was talking to the doctors, she said, “I started to think, ‘You know, this is what we’ve got to deal with, and we’ll just figure it out.  We’ll make it work.” She shifted the focus of trying to solve the issue to more of, “Okay, how can we make it better for her?” Hardest part was the best part Camille and Martin chose to have their children home with them instead of placing them in an institution.  This meant they needed to advocate for their children to get them the support and services they needed to be in a traditional school.  Camille said that they were met with pushback from the school districts. She said, “They would say, ‘Well, you’re the only parent that wants that.’  And we’d say, ‘Well, we have three kids like this, so we have three children that we want this for.’ and so by having the multiples, we had a little more push for them to consider it. “  Her advocacy for her children started to help with the organization of local programs in their city.   IDEA bill give access to services For Martin, he said that introduction of the IDEA bill made access to services easier for them.  IDEA or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is a federal law that ensures that people with disabilities get free appropriate access to a public education.   Even though this law was passed, Martin said that they were still met with resistance from the school district.  He said, “..we had to educate the local public school system as to what was best for our kids rather than what was convenient for them to present to us.”  The school would argue that they were the only parents pushing for services and other children didn’t need them. What they learned was that other parents needed and wanted services, but they weren’t aware that they could ask for them. “I think the districts were caught in the middle because they had a financial issue regards to these kinds of services and at the same time, they were obligated to take care of business by federal law.  That was a struggle too, that was difficult.” Martin said. The impact multiple children with disabilities have Camille and Martin both shared the impact having their children had not only in their life, but the life of their neurotypical daughter, and their community.  Camille said that over the years they would run into people who knew their children with disabilities and ...

Season 1, Episode 13 — 20 October 2016 About this episode Paula Wills and Michelle Phillips of Chicago's Family Resource Center on Disabilities discuss the services that are available through the Parent Training and Information Center to parents trying to navigate the education provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Prior to being the Executive Director at the Family Resource Center on Disabilities, Michelle Phillips was a skeptical parent seeking help securing her son's educational rights. She explains her journey from Angry Mom to Power Mom with the help of her Parent Training and Information Center. About the presenters Michelle Phillips (pictured above, second from the left) is the Executive Director of the Family Resource Center on Disabilities, the Parent Training and Information Center for the Chicago metropolitan area. She is the mother of an adult son with osteogenesis imperfecta and a recent grandmother to a grandchild, also with osteogenesis imperfecta. Prior to directing the Family Resource Center on Disabilities, she was a parent who learned to use the provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act from he local Parent Training and Information Center. Paula Wills (pictured above, right) is the Technology Outreach Coordinator for Family Resource Center on Disabilities Parent Information Center. Her interests include advocacy for parents of children with disabilities utilizing special education services, and technology and media management for non-profits. Transcript Announcer: You're listening to TASH Amplified, a podcast that seeks to transform research and experience concerning inclusion and equity for people with disabilities into solutions people can use in their everyday lives. Today we have two of our favorite regular contributors to our Annual Conference, Paula Wills and Michelle Phillips, both of whom work at the Family Resource Center on Disabilities, which is the Parent Training and Information Center for the Chicago metropolitan area. Paula is today's guest interviewer. She is the Technology Outreach Coordinator at Family Resource Center on Disabilities. She is also the Co-Vice President of the Illinois TASH Chapter and has been the photographer at our annual conference for two years running. Importantly for TASH Amplified, because Paula does her own interviews at BlogTalkRadio, she helped us get started when we were just trying to figure out this podcast thing. Paula is interviewing Michelle Phillips, her boss and the Executive Director at the Family Resource Center on Disabilities. Michelle will be a panelist at one of the general sessions at our 2016 Annual Conference to be held in St. Louis from Wednesday, November 30th-Friday, December 2nd. In today's interview they discuss the services available through the Parent Training and Information Centers and Michelle's own experience shepherding her son through the provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The upgrades continue here at TASH Amplifed. Starting this week we now have a regular musical introduction, an original composition and performance by Sunny Cefaratti, the Co-Director and Autistic Self Advocacy Mentor at the Musical Autist. Musical interlude Complete transcript forthcoming Announcer: (music playing in the background) You've been listening to TASH […] The post From Angry Mom to Power Mom: The Parent Training and Information Centers and Your Child's Individualized Education Program appeared first on Tash.org.

Season 1, Episode 13 — 20 October 2016 About this episode Paula Wills and Michelle Phillips of Chicago’s Family Resource Center on Disabilities discuss the services that are available through the Parent Training and Information Center to parents trying to navigate the education provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Prior to being the Executive Director at the Family Resource Center on Disabilities, Michelle Phillips was a skeptical parent seeking help securing her son’s educational rights. She explains her journey from Angry Mom to Power Mom with the help of her Parent Training and Information Center. About the presenters Michelle Phillips (pictured above, second from the left) is the Executive Director of the Family Resource Center on Disabilities, the Parent Training and Information Center for the Chicago metropolitan area. She is the mother of an adult son with osteogenesis imperfecta and a recent grandmother to a grandchild, also with osteogenesis imperfecta. Prior to directing the Family Resource Center on Disabilities, she was a parent who learned to use the provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act from he local Parent Training and Information Center. Paula Wills (pictured above, right) is the Technology Outreach Coordinator for Family Resource Center on Disabilities Parent Information Center. Her interests include advocacy for parents of children with disabilities utilizing special education services, and technology and media management for non-profits. Transcript Announcer: You’re listening to TASH Amplified, a podcast that seeks to transform research and experience concerning inclusion and equity for people with disabilities into solutions people can use in their everyday lives. Today we have two of our favorite regular contributors to our Annual Conference, Paula Wills and Michelle Phillips, both of whom work at the Family Resource Center on Disabilities, which is the Parent Training and Information Center for the Chicago metropolitan area. Paula is today’s guest interviewer. She is the Technology Outreach Coordinator at Family Resource Center on Disabilities. She is also the Co-Vice President of the Illinois TASH Chapter and has been the photographer at our annual conference for two years running. Importantly for TASH Amplified, because Paula does her own interviews at BlogTalkRadio, she helped us get started when we were just trying to figure out this podcast thing. Paula is interviewing Michelle Phillips, her boss and the Executive Director at the Family Resource Center on Disabilities. Michelle will be a panelist at one of the general sessions at our 2016 Annual Conference to be held in St. Louis from Wednesday, November 30th-Friday, December 2nd. In today’s interview they discuss the services available through the Parent Training and Information Centers and Michelle’s own experience shepherding her son through the provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The upgrades continue here at TASH Amplifed. Starting this week we now have a regular musical introduction, an original composition and performance by Sunny Cefaratti, the Co-Director and Autistic Self Advocacy Mentor at the Musical Autist. Musical interlude Complete transcript forthcoming Announcer: (music playing in the background) You’ve been listening to TASH […] The post From Angry Mom to Power Mom: The Parent Training and Information Centers and Your Child’s Individualized Education Program appeared first on Tash.org.

MI Lt. Governor Brian Calley. Michigan, like many states, has been working on changes to laws in special education to make sure that the rules are up to date and following the laws that are set down in the Federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, which are the main requirements of how special […] The post Special Parents Confidential Episode 24 MI Lt. Governor Brian Calley appeared first on Special Parents Confidential.

Special Parents Confidential Episode 17 When Schools Say ‘No’. In 1990 Congress passed IDEA, or Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which entitles each student with a disability to a free appropriate public education (FAPE) to meet his or her unique needs. Originally titled Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (EAHCA), it was based on Congress’ […] The post Special Parents Confidential 17 When Schools Say ‘No’ appeared first on Special Parents Confidential.

Attorneys Eric Harrison and Caitlin Lundquist from the law firm of Methfessel & Werbel in Edison, New Jersey, discuss the exhaustion defense and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

This week on  For the People... law in plain language with Debra D. Rainey, Esq. Navigating the Special Education minefield! Law & Resources  Parents need to know! Is your child a special needs child? What rights does your special needs child have to a public education? Did you know that a federal law, the I.D.E.A. (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) demands that All children identified as eligible for special education are entitled to a free and appropriate public education (FAPE), in the least restrictive environment (LRE)? Did you know that all children who are diagnosed with: Autism, Deaf-Blindness, Deafness, Emotional Disturbance, Hearing Impairment, Intellectual Disability, Multiple Disabilities, Orthopedic Impairment, Other Health Impairment, Specific Learning Disability, Speech or Language Impairment,  Traumatic Brain Injury and Visual Impairment including blindness, are eligible for special education services under Chapter 14 of the Pennsylvania Special Education regulations? Do you know the types of services available to your special needs child under Chapter 14 of the Pennsylvania Special Education regulations? Tonight we Navigated the minefield that is Special Education. We discussed the pitfalls of dealing with the devil that is the Public School systems while advocating for special needs children.  We learned from Debbi Weidman, Esq., Special Atorney Guru, not to let the alphabet soup that is the Special Education system, discourage or disuade.  We learned that an I.E.P is guaranteed by the law, which also gurantees our children a F.A.P.E. in the L.R.E. Don't  know what that initials stand for? Tune In to find out! Go to http://www.elc-pa.org/ or the Education la Center in your State for more information!   STUDIO HOTLINE 215-609-4301 TEXT LINE 215-435-4099 Listen. CALL. talk LIVE. DiScUsS. TUESDAY'S 8-9:30 PM (EST) Host: Debra D. Rainey, The Compassionate Lawyer Cohosts: Blaq aka the “Broke Poet” and Chamara Cotton aka "Cheddar" Executive Producer: Renee Norris-Jones aka ‘Simply the Producer’ Managing Producer: Chamara Cotton aka ‘Ladygohard’ Assistant Producer:  Robbin K. Stanton, aka “Aunt Robbin” FTP Team: Jeremy, Marlena and Keishla This episode was produced by Renee Norris-Jones and Chamara Cotton Airdate: October 1, 2013 Weekly Podcasts: iTunes & Podomatic Like us FACEBOOK    ~   Follow us TWITTER ~ LISTEN with the TUNE IN APP on your SMARTPHONE ~ This episode was produced by Renee Norris-Jones and Chamara Cotton Airdate: October 1, 2013 Weekly Podcasts: iTunes & Podomatic Like us FACEBOOK    ~   Follow us TWITTER   ~ LISTEN with the TUNE IN APP on your SMARTPHONE ~