Podcasts about lre

Heriberto is the CEO of Pando Investments, Realtor at LRE realty, Real Estate Investor, and a true businessman. He is active and dedicated to his community. We discuss all things real estate, mindset, and why being a Leader is his most important role. Hope you all enjoy… KEEPGOING! Follow Heriberto:IG- https://www.instagram.com/heribertopando?igsh=bDQ4NXVhb3QxOXJ3FB- https://www.facebook.com/share/1ADoq2jdwF/?mibextid=wwXIfrPodcast- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wholesaling-blueprint-podcast/id1717063184Follow me:IG- https://www.instagram.com/zdsellsokc/FB- https://www.facebook.com/ZDsellsOKC/

Marilyn, De Gaulle, Dalida ou Pétain, l'IRCAM et l'équipe de Nicolas Obin savent redonner voix aux personnages du passé et réalisent l'un de nos plus vieux fantasmes ! Mais comment procède l'IRCAM et quelle est la limite entre recréation et falsification ? Est-ce que l'IA est un outil au service de l'Histoire ou de sa réécriture ? À l'écoute de nos archives et de leur recréation IA, nous recevons en direct :  Nicolas Obin, maître de conférences à Sorbonne Université et chercheur dans l'équipe analyse et synthèse des sons au sein du Laboratoire Sciences et Technologies de la Musique et du Son (Ircam, CNRS, Sorbonne Université) pour ses recréations de voix  Tifenn Martinot-Lagarde, directrice adjointe du Département Son Vidéo Multimédia. BnF pour son projet Archives et IA sur l'écriture de l'histoire des femmes dans les métiers du cinéma avec Joseph Chazalon, enseignant-chercheur au Lab de recherche LRE de l'EPITA (École d'ingénieurs en informatique) Jean-Pierre Bat, historien archiviste, spécialiste du fonds Foccart  Thomas Huchon, journaliste spécialiste des fake news et son avatar instagram antifakenewsai.  

Many people classify swallowing and feeding intervention as a “medical” service that shouldn't be addressed in the schools.  This is a very black and white (and inaccurate) way of thinking. Children with complex medical needs have a right to FAPE. Measuring whether or not students are accessing their curriculum can't be solely based on grades; which is unfortunately what many teams default to when it comes to determining if services and accommodations are educationally relevant. That's why I invited pediatric swallowing and feeding specialist Carolyn Dolby to the De Facto Leaders podcast to talk about what school teams can, and SHOULD be doing for swallowing and feeding in the schools. Carolyn Dolby, MS, CCC-SLP, specializes in pediatric feeding and swallowing evaluations and interventions as the Dysphagia Support Speech Language Pathologist for a large public school in the Pacific NorthWest. In her prior experience as a clinician, she has served populations across the lifespan in medical, in-home, and private practice settings. Her graduate-level courses for the University of Houston prepare the next generation of school-based dysphagia providers. In her ‘Bite-Sized Advice' private practice, she provides consultation services and dysphagia support nationwide. She presents locally and nationally with a focus on delivering dynamic dysphagia services.In this conversation, we discuss:✅The phases of swallowing, including the “pre-oral phase” schools need to consider.✅How the environment and events leading up to meal times impact a kid's ability to eat safely and efficiently in the lunchroom. ✅Why the “curriculum” isn't just about academic areas, and removing a child from an opportunity to socialize can be a violation of their rights. ✅Children need to be able to access their LRE. They can't do this if they can't maintain adequate nutrition and hydration across the school day.✅Court cases, legal mandates, and which “medical” services schools should be providing. You can connect with Carolyn at c1dobly@gmail.com.Listen to the School of Speech Podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAqLI0-BOrrL4ftJWyDf1HewdiHAjKGuJ Listen to my interview on the School of Speech Podcast called “Positioning Yourself as a Literacy and Executive Functioning Expert on Your School Team” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmY0MR6H7QM&list=PLAqLI0-BOrrL4ftJWyDf1HewdiHAjKGuJ&index=4Resources mentioned in this episode:Emily Homer's Students Eat Safely Website. Link here: https://www.emilymhomer.comThe International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative (IDDSI) website: https://iddsi.orgIn this episode, I mention Language Therapy Advance Foundations, my program that helps SLPs create a system for language therapy. You can learn more about Language Therapy Advance Foundations here: https://drkarenspeech.com/languagetherapy/ We're thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL's comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers' timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments

Page Weil, Senior Water Resources at LRE and Erik Skeie, Special Projects Coordinator at Colorado Water Conservation Board, join us to discuss airborne snow observatory efforts in Colorado. This is a great companion episode to our earlier discussion regarding Utah's ASO efforts. This episodes goes further into the organization and function of the Colorado Airborne Snow Measurement Group and they are helping stakeholder members use ASO data to their advantage. Fantastic discussion! Check out their website https://coloradosnow.org/

About the Guest(s):Liz Zogby is a dedicated advocate in the special education and disability space based in Baltimore City. She is the co-chair of the Maryland Down Syndrome Advocacy Coalition (MDAC) and the Special Education Policy and Advocacy Project. Liz also co-chairs the special education workgroup with the state superintendent under the Maryland State Department of Education. Her advocacy efforts are deeply personal, inspired by her daughter Hope, who has Down syndrome.Steven Davis is a policy advocate focused on special education reform. He resides in California, has a background in mathematics, and is known for his analytical approach to education data. Steven is dedicated to improving local policy advocacy infrastructures in his community. He founded Disability Almanac and actively engages in discussions and actions to enhance educational inclusivity for children with disabilities.Episode Summary:Join Tim Villegas on the Think Inclusive Podcast as he hosts Liz Zogby and Steven Davis to explore the crucial intersection of data and special education advocacy. Both guests bring a wealth of knowledge and personal experience as parents of children with disabilities, which fuels their passion and dedication to inclusive education practices.In this compelling episode, Liz and Steven share their journeys into the world of special education advocacy, underscored by a deep dive into the use of data to inform and drive policy changes. Liz discusses her initiatives in Maryland and how understanding and leveraging data can shift legislative perspectives. Steven provides a critical look at the alarming statistics surrounding inclusion rates in California, emphasizing the need for high expectations and proper resource allocation. Together, they highlight the importance of combining both data and personal stories to make a significant impact on educational reform.Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/FFx3Ms0th62yMOHjGYBECmtcgPYKey Takeaways:The Role of Data in Advocacy: How Liz and Steven use data on inclusion rates to inform and drive policy changes.Systemic Challenges: Steven's insights into California's dismal inclusion statistics and his efforts to build better local advocacy infrastructures.Personal and Statistical Storytelling: The importance of merging personal stories with data for effective advocacy.Actionable Strategies for Educators: Recommendations for educators on understanding and utilizing data to support inclusive practices.Parent Empowerment: Encouragement for parents to use their expertise about their children in IEP meetings and advocacy.Resources:National Council of Disability PDF: https://www.ncd.gov/assets/uploads/docs/ncd-segregation-swd-508.pdfHow to Find a School District's LRE %: https://mcie.org/think-inclusive/how-to-find-a-school-districts-least-restrictive-environment-percentage/Thank you to our sponsor, IXL: Learn more at https://ixl.com/inclusiveMCIE: https://www.mcie.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No one loves initials or acronyms more that people who work in early childhood education. CITE, NAEYC, ABC, LRE, and a whole list of others can confuse teachers and families. Join Cindy and Alison to learn some of the most commonly used abbreviations and acronyms in the world of early education.

In the final part of a six-part series on the IEP process, Jenny Ponzuric discusses the considerations and steps for adjusting a student's placement on the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) continuum. Jenny highlights the importance of ensuring that IEPs are implemented with fidelity and that accommodations and goals match the student's needs. She provides guidance on documenting attempts to meet those needs and stresses the value of supporting decisions with data and observations. Jenny also touches on the significance of district-specific guidelines and provides a handout summarizing the information for further reference. FREE RESOURCE: https://jennyponzuric.ac-page.com/moving-up-down-the-LRE-continuum ---------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe to this podcast now and join our community of dedicated School Psychologists committed to creating inclusive, supportive, and empowering school environments for every child. Let's embark on this journey of professional growth and student-centered advocacy together! Follow us on social media for updates, behind-the-scenes content, and more: Instagram: @jennyponzuric ⁠https://www.instagram.com/jennyponzuric/⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-ponzuric-1562a8119/⁠

Today's guest is Sylvia Moore Myers.  Sylvia shares with Shannon what it is like being a vulnerable child who goes undiagnosed.  What are the long term effects of not getting the diagnosis in the early years.  This is a first-hand personal account of why early diagnosis is so important.  The jargon of the day is LRE.  Why is the LRE page on of the most important pages of your child's IEP?

Today we're focusing on setting up the perfect autism classroom and we're joined by SB Linton, an experienced autism educational specialist, who will share invaluable insights and practical steps to help you create a supportive and efficient learning environment.Listen in as we explore the 12 things you need to know before setting up an autism classroom.You need to know about autismKnow what LRE you will be teaching inWhat you are legally required to doWhat is in the IEPSkills you will be teachingWhat teaching materials to orderDecide how creative you want to beUnderstand parents' perspectiveKnow who is on your teamHow to handle behavior issuesHow to develop transition strategiesSelf care equals structureUnderstanding Autism: Start by deepening your understanding of autism to tailor your approach effectively, recognizing the unique communication and emotional regulation needs of students.Classroom Setup: Dive into practical steps for organizing your space, from creating sensory-friendly zones to integrating essential learning tools and visual aids.Collaborative Approaches: Learn strategies for working with general education teachers and paraprofessionals to foster a cohesive team environment, ensuring all staff are well-informed and prepared.Legal and Educational Frameworks: Discuss the importance of understanding and adhering to the legal aspects of IEPs (Individual Educational Plans), including setting appropriate goals and accommodations.Engagement and Communication: Explore methods to enhance student engagement through structured routines and clear communication strategies, ensuring every student knows what to expect throughout their day.Parental Involvement: Emphasize the role of parents in the educational process, offering tips for building strong partnerships and maintaining open lines of communication.S.B. helps teachers create an effective learning environment so they'll feel more in control of their classroom and confident that they are meet the individual needs of their students.Be sure to check out the AutismClassroom.com website which provides practical articles, courses, worksheets, workbooks and materials for teaching students with autism.Mentioned in the episode:12 Things to Know Before Establishing Your Autism Classroom ebookConnect with S.B.Facebook InstagramWriting individual impact statements based on a student's unique disability and needs can be a big struggle AND a big time suck.! And in case you haven't noticed...extra time is not something you have a lot of. My IEP Impact Statements Growing Bundle will give you the resources you need to make writing impact statements a breeze. Sign up to be notified each time a new episode airs and get access to all the discounts!Don't forget to leave a review of the show!Follow JenniferInstagramTPT

Hey Special Ed Teacher, You know that having students in the least restrictive environment is the law but have you found yourself wondering what it really means?  If you're like me, you probably learned about LRE in college but by the time you were in the classroom, you found it hard to remember all the details of the continuum of services. In today's episode, I am sharing an overview of the ten different levels of supports a student with an eligibility can be placed on so you can be prepared when determining a student's LRE. Take Care, Michelle Resources mentioned: IEP Success Method: IEP 101 Course Waitlist - Get on the list HERE!  Join the FACEBOOK COMMUNITY! Connect with Michelle Vazquez: Leave a 5 star review Download your FREE IEP Meeting Checklist HERE! Become an INSIDER & join the email list HERE! Follow on INSTAGRAM! Contact: steppingintospecialed@gmail.com

Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos (Cambridge University Press) changes that. It argues that such accounts fundamentally underestimate the political power of whites' animus toward Latinos and thus miss how conflict extends well beyond immigration to issues such as voting rights, criminal punishment, policing, and which candidates to support. Providing historical and cultural context and drawing on rich survey and experimental evidence, Mark Ramirez and David Peterson show that Latino racism-ethnicism (LRE) is a coherent belief system about Latinos that is conceptually and empirically distinct from other forms of out-group hostility, and from partisanship and ideology. Moreover, animus toward Latinos has become a powerful force in contemporary American politics, shaping white public opinion in elections and across a number of important issue areas - and resulting in policies that harm Latinos disproportionately. Mark D. Ramirez is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. David A. M. Peterson is Professor and Whitaker-Lindgren Faculty Fellow in Political Science at Iowa State University. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos (Cambridge University Press) changes that. It argues that such accounts fundamentally underestimate the political power of whites' animus toward Latinos and thus miss how conflict extends well beyond immigration to issues such as voting rights, criminal punishment, policing, and which candidates to support. Providing historical and cultural context and drawing on rich survey and experimental evidence, Mark Ramirez and David Peterson show that Latino racism-ethnicism (LRE) is a coherent belief system about Latinos that is conceptually and empirically distinct from other forms of out-group hostility, and from partisanship and ideology. Moreover, animus toward Latinos has become a powerful force in contemporary American politics, shaping white public opinion in elections and across a number of important issue areas - and resulting in policies that harm Latinos disproportionately. Mark D. Ramirez is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. David A. M. Peterson is Professor and Whitaker-Lindgren Faculty Fellow in Political Science at Iowa State University. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos (Cambridge University Press) changes that. It argues that such accounts fundamentally underestimate the political power of whites' animus toward Latinos and thus miss how conflict extends well beyond immigration to issues such as voting rights, criminal punishment, policing, and which candidates to support. Providing historical and cultural context and drawing on rich survey and experimental evidence, Mark Ramirez and David Peterson show that Latino racism-ethnicism (LRE) is a coherent belief system about Latinos that is conceptually and empirically distinct from other forms of out-group hostility, and from partisanship and ideology. Moreover, animus toward Latinos has become a powerful force in contemporary American politics, shaping white public opinion in elections and across a number of important issue areas - and resulting in policies that harm Latinos disproportionately. Mark D. Ramirez is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. David A. M. Peterson is Professor and Whitaker-Lindgren Faculty Fellow in Political Science at Iowa State University. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos (Cambridge University Press) changes that. It argues that such accounts fundamentally underestimate the political power of whites' animus toward Latinos and thus miss how conflict extends well beyond immigration to issues such as voting rights, criminal punishment, policing, and which candidates to support. Providing historical and cultural context and drawing on rich survey and experimental evidence, Mark Ramirez and David Peterson show that Latino racism-ethnicism (LRE) is a coherent belief system about Latinos that is conceptually and empirically distinct from other forms of out-group hostility, and from partisanship and ideology. Moreover, animus toward Latinos has become a powerful force in contemporary American politics, shaping white public opinion in elections and across a number of important issue areas - and resulting in policies that harm Latinos disproportionately. Mark D. Ramirez is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. David A. M. Peterson is Professor and Whitaker-Lindgren Faculty Fellow in Political Science at Iowa State University. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos (Cambridge University Press) changes that. It argues that such accounts fundamentally underestimate the political power of whites' animus toward Latinos and thus miss how conflict extends well beyond immigration to issues such as voting rights, criminal punishment, policing, and which candidates to support. Providing historical and cultural context and drawing on rich survey and experimental evidence, Mark Ramirez and David Peterson show that Latino racism-ethnicism (LRE) is a coherent belief system about Latinos that is conceptually and empirically distinct from other forms of out-group hostility, and from partisanship and ideology. Moreover, animus toward Latinos has become a powerful force in contemporary American politics, shaping white public opinion in elections and across a number of important issue areas - and resulting in policies that harm Latinos disproportionately. Mark D. Ramirez is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. David A. M. Peterson is Professor and Whitaker-Lindgren Faculty Fellow in Political Science at Iowa State University. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD.

Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos (Cambridge University Press) changes that. It argues that such accounts fundamentally underestimate the political power of whites' animus toward Latinos and thus miss how conflict extends well beyond immigration to issues such as voting rights, criminal punishment, policing, and which candidates to support. Providing historical and cultural context and drawing on rich survey and experimental evidence, Mark Ramirez and David Peterson show that Latino racism-ethnicism (LRE) is a coherent belief system about Latinos that is conceptually and empirically distinct from other forms of out-group hostility, and from partisanship and ideology. Moreover, animus toward Latinos has become a powerful force in contemporary American politics, shaping white public opinion in elections and across a number of important issue areas - and resulting in policies that harm Latinos disproportionately. Mark D. Ramirez is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. David A. M. Peterson is Professor and Whitaker-Lindgren Faculty Fellow in Political Science at Iowa State University. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ever wonder what these "dyslexia schools" are all about? How do you find one? Get into one? How much do they cost? And will your current district pay for them? Today our guest, Lisa Parnello of Parnello education, has all the answers for us (including outside placements that aren't for dyslexia challenges, too!) Connect with Lisa: https://ParnelloEducation.com  Dyslexia Devoted Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-74-the-iep-process-with-beth-from-the-iep-lab/id1628010878?i=1000633113014 Shownotes: https://TheIEPLab.com/episode151  Download your Free IEP Process Step-By-Step Guide: https://TheIEPLab.com/IEP  Check out all the free resources through The IEP Lab: https://TheIEPLab.com/freeresources 

Ever wonder what these "dyslexia schools" are all about? How do you find one? Get into one? How much do they cost? And will your current district pay for them? Today our guest, Lisa Parnello of Parnello education, has all the answers for us (including outside placements that aren't for dyslexia challenges, too!) Connect with Lisa: https://ParnelloEducation.com  Dyslexia Devoted Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-74-the-iep-process-with-beth-from-the-iep-lab/id1628010878?i=1000633113014 Shownotes: https://TheIEPLab.com/episode151  Download your Free IEP Process Step-By-Step Guide: https://TheIEPLab.com/IEP  Check out all the free resources through The IEP Lab: https://TheIEPLab.com/freeresources 

In this episode, Diana has a conversation with Dr. Shelley Moore. Shelley is a Canadian educator and an expert on special education who also has taught in the U.S. She is the author of One Without the Other, which I've read a couple times, as well as her upcoming book, All for One, which I look forward to reading. Shelly is a teacher researcher, YouTuber and extraordinary speaker. She advocates for inclusive education and seeks to reform iep programs to better suit the needs of individual students. Shelley is so well-informed as it relates to disability diversity and educational policies related to students with disabilities, both in the US and in Canada. And she's brilliant and talented and funny, and really just a good human. Shelley and I discussed the concept of inclusion and she distinguished between mainstreaming, integration, and inclusion with a real sense of belonging in one's community. She compares the intent of LRE (least restrictive environment) with what we have been doing in public education, as well as individuals with disabilities and families as the intended beneficiaries of a continuum of services. Shelley also shares on a personal level of what her "why" is, and some fun rapid-fire questions at the end of the interview. I hope you'll enjoy this episode as much as I did! Dr. Shelley Moore DrShelleyMoore.com Links Mentioned or Related BlogSomeMoore Five Moore Minutes Five Moore Minutes YouTube One without the Other Book All for One Book Dan Habib Herb Lovett - Learning to Listen Book Stay Connected with Diana Diana's Website, including blog Free Resource - 5 Keys to Going Beyond Awareness Free Resource - How to Talk with Kids about Disability Beyond Awareness: Bringing Disability into Diversity in K-12 Schools & Communities - Diana's Book Ed Roberts: Champion of Disability Rights - Diana's Children's Book Ed Roberts: Champion of Disability Rights Thematic Unit/ Disability History Lesson Plans "Beyond Awareness" Digital Course Diana's TEDx Talk Beyond Awareness Facebook Page Diana on Instagram Beyond Awareness Tote Bag Beyond Awareness Pullover Hoodie Beyond Awareness Raglan Baseball T-Shirt Beyond Awareness Journal/Notebook Diana's Teachers Pay Teachers Store - Disability as Diversity Diana's Trifold Laminated Resource: Beyond Disability Awareness: An Educator's Guide, Published by National Professional Resources, Inc. (NPR, Inc.) Credits and Image Description Intro and outro music courtesy of Emmanuel Castro. Podcast cover photo by Rachel Schlesinger Photography. Podcast cover image description: Black and white photograph of Diana, a Spanish-American woman with long, wavy, brown hair. She is wearing a flowy, white blouse and smiles at camera as she leans against wooden building. Photo is colorfully framed with gold and orange rays of seeming sunshine on top half, and with solid sage green color on bottom half. Text reads "Beyond Awareness: Disability Awareness That Matters, Diana Pastora Carson, M.Ed."

Special Education was built on the vision of Evelyn Deno. She wanted us to fully realize separate is not equal and had a vision of an inclusive education system that saw special education as a safety net that would bring up the rear of those who fall behind in general education. However, there are those who blame her vision for issues in special education like defining LRE and what makes special education special. Nazzie shares the commentary the article by Hoffman, Where Special Education Goes to Die and the reaction from Norena Hale, a long time friend and coauthor of Deno's book, Dogged Determination.

In today's episode, we chat with Katrina VanBuren Ed.S and Annette Graves, MEd, MACR from Arc Tennessee, Family Engagement Project. Timeline: Introduction to Annette Graves and Katrina VanBuren 03:40 What is an IEP and 504 plan and how are they similar/different? 10:14 Abbreviations commonly used in Special Education: FAPE, LRE, PLEP, accommodation vs modification. 15:49 Tests for eligibility determination of placement. 17:51 How to reach a resolution amidst disagreement. 22:00 Upcoming Events 23:40 Words of encouragement An edited transcript is available at www.raisingkellan.org Bio: Annette Graves, MEd, MACR, wife, Mom, and grandmother. Former 35-year educator in regular and special education inclusion classes. Currently employed with the Arc. Tn. as a Regional Family Engagement Specialist serving in the Northwest Region in Tennessee. Katrina VanBuren, Ed.S, Regional Family Engagement Specialist for the Southwest region of TN. Licensed Educator, and Licensed Administrator for the state of Tennessee and Mississippi --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/marsh-naidoo/message

Gahlya and Liza share how Ocean Beach School District has used administrative PLCs to look at LRE data and student report data on their sense of belonging, make decisions, and affect significant change in their schools around inclusion and instruction.

Meet our OSEP director. Hear about recent cases heard in courts regarding child find and LRE, and get ready for subtypes of dyslexia!

Today I am talking about placement decisions on an IEP, Least Restrictive Environment, and Prior Written Notice. I also side note on supplementary aids and services as it pertains to the placement in the gen ed setting. A child's placement in a general education classroom is always the first placement that should be considered when the IEP team is determining placement. The primary goal is that the student has the maximum opportunity to learn with children who do not have disabilities, in academic, nonacademic, and extracurricular activities. . This is what IDEA calls Least Restrictive Environment, or LRE for short. A student's placement needs to be considered annually for their IEP and it should always be the last thing the team determines after determining what the student needs to be successful in their educational setting. The student's needs drive the placement decision so those should always be developed in the IEP prior to determining placement. What if you don't agree with the placement decision? What can you do? As outlined in IDEA procedural safeguards, you can request mediation or file a Due Process case and in many states, you can also file a State Complaint. During your child's educational path, there may be times when the school makes decisions about your child's education that you don't agree with. When this happens, you have the right to request what is called a Prior Written Notice. This is a written communication from the school outlining its decisions and the reasons for their decisions. Prior Written Notice letters are always beneficial for you to have if you end up pursuing mediation, a State Complaint, or Due Process. Additional Resources: PRIVATE SISTERHOOD - Become part of a COMMUNITY that understands this parenting journey because we live it every day, just like you. Autism vs Autistic, A Mom's Perspective Special Education Things That You Should Know The Evaluation Process of Special Education The Eligibility Determination Meeting & The Differences of a 504 Plan and an IEP What is an FBA and Why Your Child Might Need One

[iframe style="border:none" src="//html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/24802530/height/100/width//thumbnail/yes/render-playlist/no/theme/custom/tdest_id/2148560/custom-color/61ce70" height="100" width="100%" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen] A Due Process Hearing is just one of the dispute resolution options available to parents of children with special education needs. But what is a Due Process Hearing? In special education, Due Process Hearings are not often fully adjudicated, because the issues are resolved through some form of settlement. In fact, I'm pretty sure special education is the only civil right we negotiate away. For those fully adjudicated, parents rarely win. The school has significantly more resources (from their administrative staff to their on call attorney). Parents simply don't have the same legal, financial, and emotional ability to pursue and complete a full due process hearing. And that is why it is so exciting when a parent wins!!   Today, we look at due process hearings through the lens of one specific case in Connecticut in which the Parents prevailed. Meredith Braxton is a special education attorney in private practice in Greenwich, CT (bio below), who recently prevailed in an interesting due process hearing right here in Connecticut. We discuss the process, the facts, and the final decision as we break down this special education due process hearing.   Meredith C. Braxton, Esq., has been practicing law for 32 years, with a primary focus on special education for 20 years. After spending time in general and business litigation in "big law" in New York City and two smaller Connecticut firms, Meredith started a solo practice and began representing students and parents in their efforts to enforce their civil rights by having their children identified, securing appropriate services, and enforcing their rights to appropriate placements, whether via PPT, negotiation, an administrative due process hearing, or appeal to the federal courts. Her office is in Greenwich. Meredith is also a partner in a companion practice with her colleague Liz Hook (Braxton Hook) to represent families in New York in special education matters and individuals in both Connecticut and New York in education-related civil rights and tort cases as well as employment matters.   The full decision can be found here.   You can find Meredith's contact info here.   FLASHBACK: If you are curious about other dispute resolution options, you can check out the episodes What's the Deal with Mediation, State Complaints, and Special Ed 101!   Check out this episode!   TRANSCRIPT (not proofread) SUMMARY KEYWORDSwitnesses, hearing, decision, officer, felt, parents, child, school district, case, board, argument, student, attorney, people, meredith, thought, footnotes, understand, works, remedy   SPEAKERS Meredith Braxton, Esq., Dana Jonson   Dana Jonson  00:08 All right. Welcome back to Special Ed on special ed. Thank you for coming back and joining me today. Today I am meeting with Meredith Braxton one of my favorite Special Ed attorneys from Connecticut. Hello, Meredith. Thank you for joining me.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  00:21 Good morning.   Dana Jonson  00:22 Good morning, we're going to discuss a case in which Meredith prevailed and discuss the components of a due process hearing, or decision, or pleading or all of that, through this one case, in which Meredith prevailed. But before we say one word, I'm gonna play my disclaimer for you all. The information in this podcast is provided for general informational and entertainment purposes only, and may not reflect the current law in your jurisdiction at the time you're listening. Nothing in this episode, create an attorney client relationship, nor is it legal advice, do not act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information included and accessible through this episode without seeking appropriate legal or other professional advice on particular facts and circumstances at issue from a lawyer or service provider licensed in your state country or other appropriate licensing jurisdiction. All right, Meredith. First of all, congratulations. This is awesome. You're welcome. This is a 54 page decision. There are four issues at the beginning that you raised 176 findings of fact, about 36 conclusions of law. And at the very end, there are nine orders. So that's a little overwhelming. And this is a final decision and order. And I'm a lawyer, and I was so excited when I got this when we all heard that you had prevailed, and we got to read it. And even I'm overwhelmed with 54 pages. So I want to start by, I want to read the actual issues that are listed in the decision. And then I want you to sort of tell us how we got here, if that works. Okay, so the first of the four issues in the final decision in order are, has the board denied the student a free appropriate education or a faith for the previous two years by habitually failing to record the PPT decision in prior written notice? We're going to come back to that one, too. Does the current IEP and placement deny the student faith? Three, should the hearing officer place the student in a residential therapeutic school for students with CP or cerebral palsy? And if necessary, order the board to hire an educational consultant to identify a placement for the student? And for is the student entitled to compensatory education, which would be education to make up for education missed? So those are some pretty loaded issues. Why don't you take us back to the beginning and tell us what happened.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  02:54 First of all, this client is an amazing kid. And I actually spoke to her recently, she's really happy at man's two right now. So great, really thrilled. So I'm really glad we got there, I was actually brought in after the kiss was pretty well set up. There was a lay advocate involved who did a really good job, got some amazing ies, you know, independent educational evaluations from I mean, some of the most qualified people I have ever run across, they were really, super, she also has a super medical team, you know, all of whom, even though some of them were out of state, they weren't totally willing to testify, you know, and give me not very much time, but some time to educate the hearing officer about the student's conditions.   Dana Jonson  03:46 And that's an important component is that there's a difference between what is a medical responsibility and an educational responsibility. And as you and I know, a lot of times those responsibilities overlap, correct, making it incredibly difficult to get anyone to provide.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  04:03 Yes, yes, but these medical providers were very well able to connect what was going on with her medically to what was going on with her educationally. So that's amazing. They were really, really helpful. But when this case first came to me, I wanted to file for due process, but I was always until the very end, I was always really concerned about the remedy, right? Because you don't know which hearing officer you're going to get. And if you're not able to put specific remedy out there you just don't know where that hearing officer is going to go with it. So we have not found a placement for this student yet. She's very difficult to place because she has you know, high cognition, but her physical disabilities are profound and urgent Communication Difficulties are profound. So there's just not a lot of places, you know, for that profile.   Dana Jonson  05:06 And that's an important piece to understanding what you want. Because we run into that problem a lot with families where they know something's wrong, they know it's not working, but they don't know what will work or what they do want. And that makes it really, really hard for us. Because and I explained this to clients a lot. You could go through a due process, hearing, and win on every single issue, and not get the remedy you wanted, right. And I think the example I use is, you could go into a hearing, asking for an out of district placement, go through the entire hearing, and have the hearing officer say, you are right, the school didn't do anything they should have done. But I think that school can create a program. So I'm going to order them to do that instead of residential, and now you've gone through the entire expense of winning a hearing. Right, and you're not getting any remedy. So that is a very concerning component that I don't think people   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  06:05 realize, and I really wasn't willing, you know, I advised my client that I just didn't feel comfortable filing until we had better direction there. So but as time went on, first of all, she was able to eke out a little money to find an ad consultant. And this ad consultant was really great. He was wonderful to work with. And I couldn't stand it anymore. I felt like Greenwich was torturing this, like literally torturing this kid, because, you know, I was on the back end of every email, and phone call, and what they were doing to I couldn't take it anymore. I really just I couldn't take it anymore. So I was like, Okay, we just have to file we have to get this hearing going. And hopefully, by the time we get to the end of the hearing, we will have a remedy in mind and we won't have a placement. We almost got there. Not quite but you know, it turned out okay. But that was a little bit of a, you know, risk that we took, but what was going on was so unacceptable, that that you know, as a moral proposition.   Dana Jonson  07:17 Right. Right. And I think that's where school districts don't realize they really messed up is when they one of us off? Yeah, is you know, when one of us is even in the grand scheme of everything we've seen and experienced if we get off, we're like a dog with a bone. Yeah.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  07:34 Yeah.   Dana Jonson  07:36 Don't do this. Don't get out of my way.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  07:37 Yeah, yeah. That's how we sort of got to filing the various issues that wound up being presented. Actually, we didn't even really address the faith based on not recording PVT decisions appropriately, even though they did not I was gonna ask   Dana Jonson  07:55 you about that. Because now in the in the new IEP, which I've yet to see, in case you're wondering, every school district I'm dealing with is like, yeah, we'll deal with that later. I gotta get back to school right now. So talk to me after Christmas.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  08:11 What I'm what I'm hearing from them is it's taking them six hours to fill out the new form exactly this new   Dana Jonson  08:17 convenient form that was going to take less time. But there's no prior written notice in it now.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  08:23 But I thought the prior written notice was supposed to be a separate document, but I have a separate one here.   Dana Jonson  08:27 But we haven't seen any documents yet. So I think that this is a really interesting point about the prior written notice. Because what that means in that issue, for those who don't understand is that decisions were made in the IEP meeting that need to be documented in the IEP, because they were either accepted or refused. And when a school does,   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  08:51 the more the even more important piece of that is they're supposed to record why they did right. Or important part and the data they relied on to get there, right, which is usually how you can point out how freakin absurd their decision was. Right? Exactly. Because   Dana Jonson  09:09 this is my favorite is on I had one where they made the decision based on grades and performance. And the child had modified work and modified grades. So it was like, Well, wait a second. understand all of this.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  09:26 My favorite is where they deny, like a residential placement. And they say it's based on the independent evaluation, you gave them that recommended residential place.   Dana Jonson  09:36 Fabulous. Yeah. So it's based on that because we read it. And that's how we read it. And we rejected all of it. Yeah. So actually, that leads me to my next question, which is, you know, after you read the issues, and the piece on why the hearing officer has jurisdiction, we get to your 176 findings of fact. And so the findings of fact, are sort of the meat and potatoes, is that right of the   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  10:03 of the you don't you don't get to conclusions of law without those findings of fact, they're the   Dana Jonson  10:08 evaluation of your due process demand, right? findings of fact are what you base everything else on. So how does the hearing officer determine what the findings of fact, are? Like? Do you provide those in your brief or your due process demand? Or how does the hearing officer come to determine which facts are actual facts?   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  10:29 So the post hearing brief is, is always proposed findings and facts and conclusions of law. And, you know, I can track through this decision the places where he definitely adopted, you know, what I wrote in my brief, but there's a lot of it where he had his own thing going and this particular hearing officer, who unfortunately has been picked off by virtue Moses, since then, he listened so carefully works for birch and Moses now, yeah, they hired him right after his case.   Dana Jonson  11:00 Sorry, I can't help but laugh.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  11:01 I know. It's so upsetting. Speaking of absurd, yeah. Anyway, so he listened really carefully to all the witnesses and clearly was focusing on their credibility. And I could tell I was landing the punches, you know, as I was going on, and he was getting them. And the one that was really telling was, you know, there's a principle in examining witnesses for trial lawyers where, you know, if you've got a hospital, first of all, he did go with the school district employees who I called, on my case, were hostile witnesses who I was allowed to ask leading questions. Great. So a lot of our hearing officers won't go there. And it makes it harder, because you have to do direct examination with non leading questions, right, anyway.   Dana Jonson  11:52 Right, I mean, that's getting a little in the weeds. But for parents who don't understand that, as attorneys, when we examine a witness, we are bound by certain restrictions, we can't just ask them anything, we can't just suddenly blurt out stuff, right. Like, we have to have a foundation, we have to lead them to a certain place, we have to have demonstrated certain things and have specific items and evidence. And there's a process and if you don't go through the process, you don't get your information across. So one of the ways in which we ask questions is, we ask leading questions all the time in our day, across the day, and you're not allowed to do that, unless they're, especially with your children, especially with your children, right, we're trained to write to ask leading witness. And that's why children shouldn't be witnesses, because you can lead them. So we really have to be cautious about that. And so then it depends on the hearing officer as to what they will allow, and they have a significant amount of leeway in what they will allow or not allow. So it sounds like this hearing officer was really focused on understanding the issues   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  12:58 he really was. So one of the principles for examining witnesses from the other side, is, if you land your point, you don't go on to ask like the ultimate question, because then that clues them in that they just messed up, and they will go back and they'll fix it. You instead use that nugget in your argument later on. So that's how we roll I got one of the school district witnesses to say that she made all the decisions in the PPTs. And so I'm sliding away from that, because I'm like, hopefully, like guaranteed, and, of course, returning picked up on   Dana Jonson  13:35 that. But whatever. That's kind of a mess.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  13:38 I'm going on, going on to the next thing. And the hearing officer goes, whoa, whoa, whoa. And then he starts questioning her and she doesn't fix it. She doubles down on it. And then I'm cross her attorney tried to save her and she didn't go for it. So she basically got predetermination. That's amazing lack of parental participation. So the hearing officer in this case, he really listened. And he was sort of going through issues in his own head clearly the whole thing about you know, in his findings of fact, in his conclusions of law, he talked a lot about how the school district had the wrong primary disability for this child and that how it drove an inappropriate IEP. Now you and I know that's actually true. Most of the time, if you have the wrong primary disability, it does, to some extent derive. You know, services. Absolutely. Schools always say is no, we give whatever services are needed, no matter what the primary handicap is, blah, blah, blah. I felt like that was just a loser of an argument for me like when I didn't want to spend a lot of time on. I had so many other issues that I thought were really compelling and really important, and that would win the case. It was funny because he kept bringing it up. During the hearing, and I was like, Yeah, you know, and I didn't really press it with witnesses, but he did. You know, he would ask witnesses his own questions,   Dana Jonson  15:09 and I find that fascinating about hearings is that the hearing officer can and will just stop everything and be like, I have some follow ups. I need you to clarify that. Yeah. I love it when we hear a hearing officer ask questions, because all that says is, oh, they're listening. Yeah, do get it because not all hearing officers really do get it. Not all of them have been doing what we do our whole lives. And we have to not only explain to them the process, the law but the disability.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  15:35 Right, right. And this one is very low incidence. So it's particularly difficult to convey what it's like, like I said, we had a, especially her physiatrist was really great at describing what it was like to be, I'm allowed to use her name, she doesn't care. Okay. So you know what it was like to be Sydney. And that really got to the hearing officer. So did the videotapes of what was going on on the bus ride. Wow, I thought, did you get those? Well, they're an educational record. They're a four year record. And I was like a dog with a bone. And I did when I filed, I also served an Administrative Code document request. And so at the very beginning of the hearing, when you're sort of like, what housekeeping items do you have, I'm like, I'm asking for these documents. And these videos, they haven't given them to me, I can't do this hearing without it, and I got him to order them to be given to me. So I find   Dana Jonson  16:36 that I don't always get everything in a FERPA request. There's never I get everything. Shocking, really. It's shocking, really, but and in my FERPA request, I have a laundry list of things I would like included, and then I just hope I get most of it. You know, videos, and particularly bus videos, I think have to be the hardest things to obtain. That's just my experience. It's just a lot of red tape to get your hands on those videos. So that is huge. Yeah. So you provide your findings of fact, the board attorney is going to provide there's right. So what the hearing officer chooses is going to be based on the testimony. Right. Right. And so that's your point in your testimony is to demonstrate what actually happened, right, I presume you had good witnesses and parents for this? Because I know for me, anytime I contemplate whether this is something that would go to due process or not. The first thing I think of is Who are my witnesses? Yeah. And my first thought is can either parent be witness, and that sometimes makes the decision?   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  17:49 You know? Yes, I had one due process where, I mean, the hearing officer literally hated my client. And he was difficult. He was a difficult person. He was a difficult person, like, I liked him. But you know, I'm weird. But she ruled for us anyway. And I was a little I mean, she even dropped a footnote about how she didn't believe that I love that. Yeah, yeah. So it's very important. The parent is very important. Sometimes, like, in this case, I had the parent, but as a backup, I also had her sister who had quit her job to help Sydney, you know, during COVID, and was, I mean, had basically been in her life the whole time. So it was very, sort of a corroborating witnesses if I needed it. Or it could be the primary witness about what was happening during remote instruction, and stuff like that. So yeah,   Dana Jonson  18:45 and I see you guys had 11 witnesses, and the board only called to it looks like,   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  18:50 Yeah, cuz I called all her witnesses on my case.   Dana Jonson  18:54 You called them all first, so that you could get that done with   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  18:56 in this, you know, in this particular school district, I find that the attorney, if you do this, if you if you call her witnesses on your case, and she often hasn't glommed on to what your their themes are, and doesn't really prepare her witnesses. Well got it. Well, I can tell my stories through them. And they're the people I had first, and the hearing officer had a little issue with it. He was like, aren't you gonna call them? And I'm like, Oh, get there?   Dana Jonson  19:27 Yeah, well, because mom's usually number one, right? Yeah, I don't like doing like that. Well, good. That's, that's great. You should talk to my lawyer about that, because she was working really, really hard to figure out how to not put me because for all of those parents out there who've heard you wouldn't be a good witness and make and took it personally and felt bad. I was informed I would be a horrible witness. So I'm an attorney who does this every day. So you know, don't feel bad about it. So you called everyone that you needed for your case and the hearing officer allowed you to treat the school personnel as if they were hostile. So that is huge. You know, it sounds like we got a really great hearing officer and then a board firm just snatched them up immediately.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  20:12 It did save money, how that works about that   Dana Jonson  20:16 money how that works. I wanted to touch on the timeframe to because you filed on October 12, in 2021. And your briefs were due in March 28 2022. And that is actually only five months, I was actually thinking for a hearing that went through so many witnesses that you would conclude this and only five months, I was kind of impressed. And to tell   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  20:43 you the truth, this included a month or two of me foot drag. Oh, wow. Because I was I was foot dragging. Because we didn't have that placement. Right. I was like, you know, Brenton, come on. So I delayed things a little bit. And then I decided I gotta go, Yeah, this has got to get going. Right, the hearing officer made it really clear that he was feeling pressure from the State Bureau of Special Education, to move these hearings along faster. You know, they're getting very concerned about their timeline issues as they should, as they can. Absolutely. He assured me and I felt with, you know, after we'd been going at this a little bit, I felt like I could believe him about this, that I could always just refer to an exhibit, and he would read it. And I felt like he would read. Okay, so some hearing officers, you really have to have every single bit like presented orally to them, or they focus on it. But in this case, I felt like I could rely on him to read the exhibits that were admitted. I sped through some of this stuff. Yeah, I mean, the medical people, I probably had a an average 30 to 45 minutes with them, half of which I seated to the other side. Right, wow. Yeah. And so I was like, bang, bang, but I had one day when I had like six witnesses, I blew through six witnesses, that's insane. I then laid down on the floor of my office and made it like an IV of vodka, but it was intense. But it made the hearing officer very happy, they do appreciate it. And I kind of liked it, because I was able to get all the really important stuff in and then the other side was kind of limited and what they could do with it. You know, they were also limited. The you know, in the end, I kind of liked it, even though I ordinarily would,   Dana Jonson  22:43 yes. Where are you for this matter? It worked for this matter for this hearing   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  22:47 officer, you know, so much depends on the hearing officer get and what their style   Dana Jonson  22:53 is. Yeah. And I hear that a lot from parents, do you have experience with this district? Do you have experience with this lawyer? And all of those things do matter. But I feel like the experience matters more in knowing how to shift because all those players change all the time. And I've had evaluators where I felt like I could just leave the room and they'd be fine. And then the next tvip meeting, I go to them, I'm like, Who is this pot person? Like what did they do to my evaluators? So you just never know, there's a lot up in the air,   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  23:26 you don't know. And that's what I try to convey to my clients about due process. It's a high risk situation, because you don't know which hearing officer you're gonna get. You don't know what pressures they have on them, because they are getting pressure from above, you don't really know how the evidence is going to come in. You don't know whether some of the board people who you think are charlatans are going to come across as believable. You don't know if you're going to be able to get in every document that you think you need to get in. I got a lot out of those board witnesses that have they been better prepared and probably would not have. Yeah, and that   Dana Jonson  24:03 preparation is big. I mean, the prep is big for your clients, too. I remember a colleague telling me I mean, when you're talking about how is someone going to present colleague was telling me they had a client and the school had really messed up. But this was an exceptionally wealthy client who came across as exceptionally wealthy when she walked in a room. And so she was asked to dial it down. So she walked in to the hearing and her kids dinner, blue jeans and a T shirt and no jewelry. And the board almost dropped dead. Really, because they were relying on this person to walk in and look like an extremely wealthy person and present the way she normally does and hoping that that in and of itself would sway the hearing officer. But then she walked in and they're their philosophy has gotten now a good attorney doesn't rely on just that. Right. But to your point, people can present as anything when they walk in that door. Yeah, and they can Say anything. So, like if you if you have someone on the line on the stand and they are flat out lying. What do you do?   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  25:08 Well, I mean, it depends on whether I have documentary evidence that I can confront them with that shows they're flat out lying. If this is where a lot of times you do want to have at least partial transcripts of various meetings and recordings. So they can't claim they said something other than what they did. And it's a problem, because in my experience, almost I would say 95% of board, witnesses lie under oath. Yep. And have no problem with it. Yeah.   Dana Jonson  25:38 And it's shocking, sometimes to parents. Right.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  25:41 And absolutely, I mean, honestly, when I first started practicing law, many, many, many moons ago, I was shocked, I assumed that everyone who was put under oath would tell the truth. And then I learned that actually a minority and people put under oath will tell the truth. It's not just in special education. Yeah, just board witnesses. It's pretty rampant,   Dana Jonson  26:04 pretty rampant. And it's I do think that people take it have a different level of respect, being under oath. I do believe that, as a rule, and I do think that that anxiety is heightened in the person when they are lying under oath versus just in a school meeting, I, I absolutely can see that I can see the change in their body language from lying in the IEP meeting to lying on the stand. They're way more uncomfortable. But that's another reason why I like going to the IEP meetings, because they may be more comfortable there. But you do get a sense of who you can trip up and who you can't. And if the school has bad witness, you make sure they know that.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  26:43 Also, I prefer due process hearings to be in person, because if you've got that body language going on the other side, you can start drilling into it. And sort of push them. Yes. completely out of their comfort zone.   Dana Jonson  26:58 Yes. And that's more difficult on the screen. Oh, it's   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  27:01 impossible.   Dana Jonson  27:02 Have you done any hearings on the screen?   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  27:04 Well, this one was completely virtual,   Dana Jonson  27:06 Oh, this one was virtual? I don't think I realized that maybe I must have I mean, maybe just because it's so normal now that I didn't think of it. So that must have been really hard, then I didn't even realize this was virtual.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  27:18 Yeah. It was very hard. That's really hard.   Dana Jonson  27:21 Amazing. Your experiences you would still prefer in person, right?   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  27:26 Yeah, for that very reason. Just looking through the screen at someone, you can't hold their eyes, you can't sort of judge their expression. You can't figure out how to destroy them. You can't pick   Dana Jonson  27:42 them apart to the degree that you would like to.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  27:47 So bad, you know, so you're when you're a litigator, you just have to admit that you have a dysfunctional personality. Right? Yes. So that's why we do this, right? Yes, exactly. We got paid for being like completely not the social norm. So   Dana Jonson  28:01 I always say that I do that I'm a lawyer, because I think this way, I don't think this way, because I'm a lawyer isn't the only place that that I fit in. So let's talk a little bit about the remedies. Because from the remedy in the decision, it doesn't look like you ever found that one place, did you?   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  28:20 Well, no, we found it afterwards. So may Institute was one of the ones that our ED consultant found that he thought was the leading candidate. Ironically, also, the neuropsychologist who did an independent evaluation had put that out as a recommendation as well. So I was able to direct the hearing officer to an email from him saying, you know, this would be a good place. And also ironically, that particular neuro psychologist, I just, you know, I wasn't in love with his evaluation. And I was very concerned about him as a witness, because I've actually seen him under oath before. And so I elected not to call him interesting. Yeah,   Dana Jonson  29:03 that's a risk. Huge risk, right? Like, because, I mean, at first thing you're gonna hear from any attorney is you want to go to a hearing, you need an expert.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  29:12 Yeah. Well, so but we had all these other experts. And but that's usually the one that we want, right? It's the neuro Psych. Fortunately, he had spoken to that entire medical team, and incorporated what they said in evaluation itself. And then all of those medical experts wrote follow up letters saying we agree with that neuro psychologist, this is what she means. So I called every one of those medical experts got it. And that's how I got it. I mean, and this is what happens in a due process hearing like, I had him on my witness list, in case I had to I had to put them on. As things develop, you have to make decisions about what you're going to do and what's the whole in your case, you know, then I was like one of the holes My case is, what's the remedy? And I don't usually call Educational Consultants, but I did with this one. Also, because he's got lots of bonus CDs, right? He's, he's run a therapeutic school. He's been, you know, he's   Dana Jonson  30:15 got credentials that you can defend. Yeah, I love that. When I get stuff from parents who say, you know, this is the expert. And I'm like, well, they don't have any credentials. No one's ever heard of them. They're in a different country. I don't know that I'm going to get anyone on board.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  30:32 He worked really hard for this placement. I mean, yeah. Beyond what he ever has to do with anyone. I was on a low fee. On this case, he did a low fee on this case. So we've sort of felt like, Okay,   Dana Jonson  30:45 we're gonna do we're in it together. Yeah.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  30:47 And, and one of the things we got as a remedy was that he got paid his full fee.   Dana Jonson  30:54 Oh, good. Yeah. So that's what I was going to ask you about was the remedies, because one of the remedies is when you win a hearing is that you're entitled to your legal fees? Right. So what I'm curious about is when you submit that legal fees Bill, what is that going to look like after 11 witnesses and five months? It was   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  31:15 close to 100,000. It was like 98,000.   Dana Jonson  31:19 There were a few things in terms of parents listening to this just passed out. Yeah. But   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  31:26 that's what I tell my my clients, it's between 50 and 100,000, for average due process. Yeah. And on top of that, you may have to be paying experts. And that's not reimbursable.   Dana Jonson  31:37 Right. So you're not going to get back and that I can't risk, you know, but right, we can always risk our fees, right? Because we can try and get them back. So that does put give you more skin in the game, I guess.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  31:49 I mean, they pushed back on a couple of things. One of them is definitely legitimate. I put it in there and hope it would just slip by but it didn't, you know? And then there were a couple that were like, arguable. Right? Right. So I just rolled over on that, because I'd rather get it paid. Right. So I want to be reimbursed 92,000?   Dana Jonson  32:11 Well, and I mean, you know, say it's the only civil rights that we negotiate. So parents are always negotiating way their rights. And we as attorneys are always negotiating away our fees. Yeah, we do nothing on the parents side, but negotiate against ourselves from from the beginning. I don't know of very many of any attorneys who have gone through a full hearing and actually received their full BS, they just don't I also find it when when sometimes I hear people say, Oh, well, litigation fees are so much more than, like, we're never seen. No calm down. Take it down a notch. Uh, yeah, I found the remedies really interesting because one remedy said to find the placement and a consultant is ordered. If you can't find a placement, so the the hearing officer did order that consultant as well, correct?   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  33:02 Absolutely. But and the thing with may Institute is they are not going to accept anyone unless they're fully funded, right? Because it's a very expensive place. Yes. So the day this decision came out, the ad consultant got on the phone with them with two words fully funded. And within a week, we had an acceptance, but they had to do a little bit of hiring to bring her on, started right after labor.   Dana Jonson  33:27 Right. And I think that's important too, for parents to understand that not a replacement is ready to take your child that day. There usually an acceptance usually means that they can prepare to do that. So if you come, they will then start preparing. They're not going to staff for a student who's not there yet. That's very typical, then that's great. So now is this child going to be there for too long this is placed there   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  33:53 now. Yeah. So as their stereo slave foot and everything else? I don't see them after that horrendous decision. Yes, coming back and saying no, you're ready to come back to Greenwich, right.   Dana Jonson  34:04 And school districts have done that they have a year after a hearing decision said, Well, we gave it a year, and now they're all ready and everything's back together. But you have that hearing decision under your belt. And that is something you can pull out and use. And it would be foolish to do that, at this stage. And particularly given given how many fights are going on between parents and school districts at you know, there was a time where fighting every hearing decision was worth their time and energy. I don't think it is anymore.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  34:34 But then so there was a significant amount of time between when the decision came out and when she was able to go, you know, in the meantime, he ordered remedies for while she was still in the British school system. And I actually had to get down this state's throat to get them to enforce this decision. Really, I did what happened. They were ordered to have an aide in the home for 30 minutes before the ride to school to help the mom get her ready, and they just didn't do it. And I had to go to the state. And they eventually got to st Greenwich Get your act together, you know, and do it and they finally did. And it made a huge difference. Then she was supposed to have a medical taxi instead of the bus that was so torturous for her never got that I was on the state's case, like every two days. And Greenwich kept giving them a spreadsheet showing all the contacts they made to try to arrange a medical taxi. And I was like, this is just baloney. I mean, I'm literally there was one point where they were like, Okay, well, the legal director Mike McCann and Mary Jean Shugborough, who, unfortunately, was the person assigned to the enforcement part of this. The retired. She's retired, isn't she? Yeah, except she's still a part time consultant for some things. I'm like, Why did you assign us to a part time retired consultant? You know, it's   Dana Jonson  36:04 pretty significant. Yeah.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  36:05 So at one point, they were like, well, we're gonna be on the phone with graduates about this on Monday. And we'll let you know. And I'm like, I want to be on that phone call. But I'm on vacation. And they're like, I'm like, do it on Friday, when I'm not on vacation. Oh, well, we can talk to Friday, and then we'll talk to them on Monday. I'm like, No, I will just be on this call during my vacation. So I'm hiking in Maine and losing a signal every three seconds, and I am yelling my butt off. And my husband's like, Oh, my God. And I like I keep losing the signal dialing back in angrily, and on top. So because anyway, never got the medical text, even though I'm, I'm busting a gut. Then on top of that in between, yeah, when I started getting down on their case, and this phone call, they had finally posted this decision, you know, I got it by email. But then they post all of their decisions, right? And the decisions are written. So there's no identifying information the student has called student parents called parents, etc. But it identifies the witnesses, aside from the parent, and the school district and all that, while they put this one on, and they've blacked out everything that would identify the school district or the school district witnesses. And I was like, Okay, so while I'm on the phone screaming, I'm like, who did this? Which one of you did this? You know, what are you doing? They're like, Oh, we thought it might be too specific. And you know, have identifying information. I'm like, you know, if that was your concern, you would have called me or the parent to ask if we had a problem with it, but you didn't. So it seems to me that you were just trying to not embarrass Greenwich, which should be completely embarrassed about how they treat   Dana Jonson  37:54 my dogs going nuts. No, that's exactly what I was gonna say. Which is that, you know, that seems like protecting the district. Were?   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  38:03 Absolutely, yeah. In the meantime, I had gotten a written consent from my clients saying you can put it up on redacted and I was like, I have that. And they put it up on redacted after that. But, you know,   Dana Jonson  38:14 I've seen that before, though, that the school district personnel and school are redacted. Is that a thing? No.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  38:20 If you look on every single other decision, there's not a single redaction. Not one. So who decided to do that? Mary Jean Chabot, she admitted? Did she say why? Because she was afraid it would identify the child's that's a lie. I think so.   Dana Jonson  38:43 I feel like that's a lie. But that sounds interesting. Well, you know, and it really is frustrating, because I always feel like when people say, Oh, but these poor teachers, and you know, it's not really there. I feel like I'm with you on that. And I feel as a former teacher and a former administrator, admittedly, I spent about 10 minutes in each role, but I didn't have a problem being honest in the meeting. Now, that was me. Perhaps I didn't have as much at risk as some people by doing that. And I respect and understand that. But I go nuts. When parents say, well, the teacher told me this, but they won't say it in the meeting. And I always say, well, then I don't trust that teacher. No, I just don't, it's great. You're getting inside Intel. But how do you know? They aren't turning around and saying the same thing to the district about you? Exactly. You know, and they're protecting their butts.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  39:39 Yeah. If they're not willing to say it in the meeting, it's useless. It's absolutely   Dana Jonson  39:42 useless. You can see it when people are scripted. In the meetings, you can tell. And I you know, look, it's not my intention to embarrass anyone. But if you have made a conscious decision to toe the party line, then you are making a conscious decision to take the consequences of that action,   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  40:06 this child's speech and language pathologist basically said that she agreed to include oral motor goals to help Sydney learn how to talk, which she could do, right. Basically, as a favor.   Dana Jonson  40:22 Oh, it's an accommodation to the parent.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  40:24 Yeah, cuz she wanted to talk. But you know, she didn't really need it for accessing the general education. Oh,   Dana Jonson  40:29 why do you need language for that narrative? I know, I'm sorry, I just get flip. I can't stop myself. I love that when it's an act as an accommodation. I'm   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  40:38 gonna call out that I'm gonna call it call that speech pathologist out on that? Yep. You know,   Dana Jonson  40:44 accommodation is what the child needs. And you know if that I found that frustrating during the pandemic, too, when people were like, well, I don't want to be on tape or on screen or what have you. And I do understand that there is something to being under a micro microscope and people taking things out of context. We've all had that happen to us at some point on the internet, right? Or in a text, something has been taken in the wrong tone. And I just feel like, Haven't we all been using the internet long enough that we should know that. And you know, that tone gets lost and things get lost in translation. But knowing what happens, and being able to reflect on that and make changes that that's important if we're not willing to do that. And that's where I feel like we are right now in schools. I feel like no one's willing to reflect. Yeah, because everyone's so afraid, even more so than before, to look back and say, Yeah, we messed up. And I understand because there are legal ramifications to saying that, so I get why they're not announcing it to the world. Yeah. But maybe their inside voice like in the back of their head, maybe could say, We screwed up, and we gotta fix this. You know,   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  41:58 honestly, I find that the better board attorneys manage that, right? Yes, by having a good relationship with you giving you a call saying, can we talk about some solutions? Right? It doesn't have to be an explicit, we messed up, it can be willing to make it better. Right? Right. Good board attorneys. manage that.   Dana Jonson  42:19 Right. And some board attorneys, you know, when when the parent calls you, I'll say, you know, what, I know, we can get X, Y and Z, which will help bring everyone back to the table and and start the conversation over. And then there are some board attorneys where I have to say, look, I hate to tell you this, but we're going to start off fighting, because that's where you are. And that's unfair to it depends on who represents your district as to what kind of what access you will have to that due process, and whether you will be able to fight them or not. And not every parent has access to us. No, you know, and I was just talking to Christine Lai on my last episode about self in the special legal fund and how they've allowed for so much access for parents afforded us I've you know, regardless, look at this, this is a like I said, it's, you had 11 witnesses, it took five months, this took up a significant amount of your time, most of which you were not paid for at the time. Like that's something else people have to realize we get paid when we work, right. Like I'm not on a salary over here with fabulous benefits.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  43:26 What we eat what we kill, as they say, exactly, we   Dana Jonson  43:29 eat what we kill. Yes. I   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  43:30 mean, I had restricted cash flow for a few months there because it took time,   Dana Jonson  43:35 it takes a tremendous amount of time for us to have even one full blown.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  43:40 If I win, I'll be fine. If I know, I'm gonna be second run for a little bit, you know?   Dana Jonson  43:45 Exactly. So I mean, yeah, I mean, it's tough all the way around, and you have to have the bandwidth to do it. And you have to not be afraid of creating bad law because you have to look at if I lose this. Yeah, the way that I have asked this question, if I lose it, what will that do to other families? Exactly.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  44:04 And this decision, I felt like I got more good law out of this, than expected. So tell   Dana Jonson  44:10 us what you think the main takeaways are that you got from this this decision that you think are solidified that are helpful for parents?   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  44:18 Well, the blasting of how the school district treated COVID and learning during COVID? Yes, and the failure to implement the IEP at all, really during COVID. And he runs through that was he on the legal side, the support for you were supposed to do what you needed to do and you didn't do it that leads to combat. So I thought that was good. I thought the way he treated the requirement for residential placement when there were mixed issues of because here we had mental health issues, but also medical issues. But those medical issues were very much intertwined with ability to be educated. Yeah, right. So the way he merged those things In talking about the requirement for a residential placement and the board's duty for that residential placement, I thought that was very helpful. Yeah. So those, those were the two takeaways that I really enjoy.   Dana Jonson  45:15 Now, those are great. And those were great for the rest of us. Thank you. Here. I say, the combat peace to the combat peace is great.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  45:24 Yeah. So that was good, because he talked about how you don't need to have gross violation to get combat if you're not in a aged out situation. Right. And he kind of blasted the whole equities argument, which I was like, I didn't even understand the board's argument. I'm like, this isn't the unilateral placement case. Right. That's third prong about the equities. Right. Yes. So but he turned that around to Well, maybe it's, you know, relevant to combat? Well, and   Dana Jonson  45:56 that's I mean, to explain to parents who don't understand really what we're talking about. No, no, it's good. It's good. Because what what that means is there are specific arguments we have to meet. So the first question I have to ask is, did the school district provide an appropriate program? And if the answer to that is yes, then nothing else matters, right? So there are different prongs of these different arguments. And some of them get to the point of equity. And this one doesn't. So it was unclear where he was going when he went down that road. But what he was doing was taking that equity argument and, and putting it towards compensatory education and saying that, for these reasons, this child does require compensatory education, which is meant to bring the child back up to where they would have been had they had that service. So that's an that's a big win, especially post COVID. Where that's a lot of the arguments is whether it's compensatory or not. So that's, that's a tough argument. And so that was a great win for parents. Yeah. And the last thing I want to ask you about, though, is the quotes throughout the decision, because I started reading and I thought was this a quote from the transcript? So at the beginning of every section, the hearing officer wrote a little quote, and the chapter and pages that it was from so I put that into my trusty Google search, and discovered that he was quoting Helen Keller throughout the whole thing. Can you talk a little about   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  47:24 could have looked at the footnotes, or I could   Dana Jonson  47:27 have looked at the footnotes that would have required this dense dyslexic woman to look at every footnote in this 54 Page decision.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  47:37 Okay. We won't do that to you. He basically took the I guess it was the autobiography of Helen Keller, and took various clubs, this kid touched his heart. And she's touched mine as well. She wants to start a school for kids with disabilities. She's she's just, she's an amazing kid, right? Before she went to me. I went and had dinner with her. And she finally had the new communication device that had actually been recommended and like managed never did. Wow. And we sat and had a really long, pretty fluent conversation about how do we get to the point where she gets to go to May? What was the hearing? Like? Who did I call? What did they say? You know, do I have to go back to Greenwich public schools for like three days to the school they have before I go to make? No you don't, I can see her really doing something in the world. Her physiatrist testified very clearly that he expects big things from her. And the hearing officer clearly felt that this child had a lot of potential and could make some change in the world. I think putting in those quotes helped bring it to like, we need to liberate this kid from her, the confines of her body, right? And let her be the person she can be. So I just about cried when I was reading through the decision with those quotes sprinkled throughout. I talked to a board lawyer afterwards. And she was like, Oh, that was quite a decision, like, I guess was just like, you know, the quotes from having Helen Keller were a little bit of overkill on like, this is run through your veins,   Dana Jonson  49:22 right? And by the way, not if you were there, if you were there. These fit in perfectly. And I did I mean I did read a couple of footnotes narrative, but I liked how he he did talk about while this student is not deaf and blind, they are bound by these disabilities in a way that we can't comprehend. And that it wasn't until, you know Helen Keller, somebody taught her how to communicate that she was able to share herself with the world and that those comparisons he felt applied to this student as well. And I think that just added to the impact of those quotes. And you're right, you could tell that this was a very emotional matter. And this is one of those matters where you read through it and you think, well, it's a slam dunk, right? You read this and you're like, of course, you're gonna win. But that just simply isn't how special education works, you know,   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  50:31 and back to what we were talking about at the beginning, you can win, and the remedy can wind up being useless.   Dana Jonson  50:39 Exactly. So there's a lot of risks, but it's decisions like this, that are the reason why we continue to do it, and move forward. And also, make sure that your attorney moving forward and a hearing has the experience and background necessary to and resources. You know, if you don't have experience, you can get experience, right, you can learn, you can get experience, you can get mentored, you can do all those things. But you can't pretend you know what you don't know. Right. And it's important to make sure that your attorney does practice special education law, that is their primary, that they are not doing something else, and are not distracted by other laws that may conflict with the ID EA, which people don't realize there are a lot of educational rules and laws that actually conflict with the ID EA. So if you're more familiar with those than the IDA, then you may not be giving the right advice.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  51:44 It's ironic that a lot of that was passed in order to be parent friendly, and increase parental participation in the education of disabled kids is so non parent friendly.   Dana Jonson  51:56 It's not parent friendly. It's not free to access. No. Because if you want to access it, you need an attorney or an advocate. And those are not free. Just think about the professional development that parents do just to understand how to talk to their attorneys. I mean, to their sorry, to their school districts, you know, like, just to get the vocabulary to advocate for their child, they spend a tremendous amount of money on professional development and all of those pieces.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  52:24 So back up for a second. The other thing I thought this decision was Brown was LRE least restrictive environment.   Dana Jonson  52:31 Oh, yes. Talk about LRE for a second. So   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  52:34 least restrictive environment means that your disabled children are supposed to be educated to the maximum extent possible with non disabled kids. My argument here was because they were screwing up so much. And they really did not include her appropriately in general education things. She was isolated from her peers. And it's even as much as like the chair they were using, they were having her in a wheelchair in her classroom, which separated her and put her on a different level than her peers. And the physical therapist, do   Dana Jonson  53:07 you mean physically, like height wise?   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  53:10 Yeah, so she's not even at the table, right. And they were like, you know, the IES were like, You need to get this kind of chair and play her here. So that she's with her peers. And they never did any of that. It was stuff like that. And then she would have total meltdowns, especially Shan Maxon, or whatever, and be removed from the classroom because of her meltdowns, and then be removed to go to the bathroom and spend all sorts of time on there. The general education setting for her was more restrictive than one that was designed for kids with similar disabilities. And he went for that argument, which I really appreciate it.   Dana Jonson  53:51 And that's an amazing argument. And I I make it all the time. It's, like all my philosophical, yeah, argument of what's least restrictive, right. And I had a student once who were arguing over Villa Maria. And in the public school, the student had to be in the sub substantially separate room all day, including lunch, including everything, but at Villa Maria, they could roam the halls, they could have lunch with   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  54:16 their peers. And from my perspective, that is absolutely and Hillary argument in favor of Bill Murray. Yeah,   Dana Jonson  54:22 exactly. Exactly. You know, and so, you know, fortunately, that didn't have to go to a hearing at that point in time, because I don't know where that would have landed. But I do think we are getting closer to understanding that that may be a more a less restrictive environment for that student. It looks restrictive to us,   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  54:41 but if they have no peers to relate to, right, exactly, and they're not being educated with the same materials, you know, if they're sitting in the general education classroom, everyone else is working on, you know, XYZ, but they're working on a different on a different level on a different skill on their own little worksheet. with their pero right here, that's not the least restrictive environment for that child. Now, they're being they're other, they're separated.   Dana Jonson  55:08 Right? They're substantially separate from everybody else, even if you physically sit them in the room and kids do not learn independence through osmosis. No, it's not by sitting near typically developing children that you become typically developing. The goal is to become independent. Right? And what does this child need to become independent? And sometimes what a child needs to become independent is more children like them?   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  55:36 Right. Right. So I thought that his ruling on that issue was helpful for this argument.   Dana Jonson  55:43 Yes, yes. That's very helpful for this argument, because it gives us a little something with some meat on it. Yeah, too.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  55:51 When I when I was bringing it up, you could see him going like, that's an interesting point.   Dana Jonson  55:57 Yeah. And now I really hate for to Moses for taking him out of the hearing officer, Bill. I'm hotline.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  56:07 He was he was previously I think he was in a judge advocate corps. Okay. He was a Jag. Um, you could tell you know, he have plenty of litigation experience. Right. Okay. So he was it was sort of easy that way for me, because my litigation arguments like right in a place where he understood them.   Dana Jonson  56:28 Right. That was good, good. Friend, now he's gone. And so this is the this is his swan song, which we will have framed up in many offices around Connecticut. This was incredibly helpful narrative. And thank you so much for coming on. And talking to me about it. I really, I don't think parents really understand everything that goes into due process. They just here fight the school district, I will put the link to your decision in my show notes. So anyone who wants to geek out like the one right? Yes, the unredacted one, so you can see everybody's name and all the footnotes. And she could just click on them and they pop up. So I'll put the link to that there. But if someone's listening, and they're like, Wow, I need to hire Meredith clearly, because she's the only attorney who who can understand me and my child. How do they reach you? How do they find you?   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  57:25 Well, it would be great if I had a website, but I just haven't over the last 20 years have the time to put Yeah, really   Dana Jonson  57:30 had a need. Hmm.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  57:33 Really? I'm gonna do it soon. No, I swear.   Dana Jonson  57:36 Okay, I got I have a good name for you.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  57:40 I've had it in process for a long time. You can look me up on the internet, probably. I don't know some I'll put a link to how you can find this. Sometimes when you put in Meredith Braxton. There's some Meredith Braxton some like soap opera or something.   Dana Jonson  57:54 Awesome. So you show up in the soap opera star? Yeah, I think that's great.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  57:58 No, it's the name of a character.   Dana Jonson  58:03 Even better. All right, I will put a link to Meredith in the in the show notes as well. If you feel you must reach out to Meredith and find her. And thank you so much, Meredith, for coming on and talking to us and talking about your case. And thank you for taking it all the way. Because I think that that is not easy for any of us to do. And   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  58:22 you know, I had not had a case go all the way in like two years. So I was also sort of chomping at the bit. Yeah, because I am a litigator at heart. And I like to go to hearing occasionally. And I was like it was sort of killing me. So I was happy to bring it all the way and I got a few more going into the can this week, then. I think at least one will my gold way.   Dana Jonson  58:49 That will be amazing. Yeah. Well, thank you. And that, that it makes a huge difference for the rest of us. And it definitely helps. helps all of us. You know, when   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  58:58 we talk he's, I was about as pleased as one could be with that decision. It's amazing, even better than I had hoped.   Dana Jonson  59:05 And that's amazing. And the family must've just been beside themselves.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  59:10 You know, and Sydney. She's, she's happy as a clam of May.   Dana Jonson  59:14 I'm so happy and validation. Yeah, it wasn't her right that.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  59:20 Yeah. Oh, but she always knew that.   Dana Jonson  59:22 Yeah, she she's smarter than they are.   Meredith Braxton, Esq.  59:24 She is. She really is.   Dana Jonson  59:27   That's often the problem. Well, thank you so much. Meredith. Thank you so much for joining me today. Please don't forget to follow this podcast so you don't miss any new episodes and leave a review and you have a chance. If there's anything you want to hear about or comment on. Please go to my Facebook page special ed on special ed and find me there. I'll see you next time here on special ed on special ed. Have a fabulous day. The views expressed in this episode are those of the speaker's at the time of the recording and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company or even that individual today.

Kamil and Casey help us navigate the wild rollercoaster we call NRE a.k.a. New Relationship Energy, and the very different by also wild LRE a.k.a Longterm Relationship Energy. The transition from from one to the other can be bumpy and daunting. That's why your hosts are here to tell you their own messy times and also what has worked for them. This episode is not actually sponsored by Costar ;)

Are you wondering what effective parent advocacy looks like? Interested in learning more about advocating for inclusion? This episode is a replay of one of the incredibly insightful 2022 Parent IEP Advocacy Summit sessions.    Kathy Brill is a nationally recognized advocacy leader who became passionate about inclusion while raising her daughter who has Cerebral Palsy. She is sharing what inclusion means to her, what barriers she faced when advocating for inclusion for her daughter, how she knew if her daughter was truly being included, and why it is so important to be very clear in the IEP about things you are advocating for.    Shownotes: theieplab.com/episode70   VIP Summit access: theieplab.com/summit   Facebook group: https://urlgeni.us/facebook/IEPlab Kathy's Website: https://brillconsultingllc.com/

Are you wondering what effective parent advocacy looks like? Interested in learning more about advocating for inclusion? This episode is a replay of one of the incredibly insightful 2022 Parent IEP Advocacy Summit sessions.    Kathy Brill is a nationally recognized advocacy leader who became passionate about inclusion while raising her daughter who has Cerebral Palsy. She is sharing what inclusion means to her, what barriers she faced when advocating for inclusion for her daughter, how she knew if her daughter was truly being included, and why it is so important to be very clear in the IEP about things you are advocating for.    Shownotes: theieplab.com/episode70   VIP Summit access: theieplab.com/summit   Facebook group: https://urlgeni.us/facebook/IEPlab Kathy's Website: https://brillconsultingllc.com/

How many of us consider the special factors when developing an IEP? During this episode Robin, Angela and Abby breakdown the 6 (in Mass. more) special factors that IEP teams must consider.The regulations are here:https://sites.ed.gov/idea/regs/b/d/300.324/a (specifically 300.324 (a)(2)(i)-(v)Read the position paper regarding the LRE (least restrictive environment) for deaf and heard of hearing students here: https://fcsn.org/guidance-on-application-of-least-restrictive-environment-lre-for-students-who-are-deaf-or-hard-of-hearing/Soraya -Be Convinced! Sharing Lifechanging Stories of HopeHost Soraya Coffelt shares lifechanging stories of hope to encourage and motivate you.Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Hi, Y'all! First a big shoutout to all my kids for leveling up this year. I'm now the proud father of a 16, 13, and 10-year-old. The single-digit days are over. Thanks for being great kids. I love being your dad. Oh, and by the way. Welcome to our new subscribers and listeners. Remarkably, we went from 209 downloads for our August 5 edition of the Weeklyish to 700 downloads for our latest episode on August 19. I sincerely appreciate it. If you are wondering who this Tim Villegas guy is, please check out “The Misunderstood Inclusionist,” for a little background info on me and why I'm extremely fortunate to do what I do. So, one of the perks of the job is that I get to read and think about inclusion. When I was a special education classroom teacher, I still did this. But I didn't give myself dedicated time to digest the information.  For this edition of the Weeklyish, I wanted to share two journal articles that I think you'll find interesting and possibly give you hope for a unified educational system. There is another one that I don't think deserves any of your time, so I'm not going to mention it. But some themes are not uncommon in any critique of an “all means all” philosophy, and I have a few things to say about that. First up is an article (from 2020) by Michael Giangreco. It's called “How Can a Student with Severe Disabilities Be in a Fifth Grade Class When He Can't Do Fifth-Grade Level Work?” Misapplying the Least Restrictive Environment. Isn't that a great title? It is from the journal Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities. Here is the big idea: the concept of Least Restrictive Environment or LRE should facilitate inclusive placement for students with extensive support needs. Instead, LRE often is used as justification for a segregated placement in a special education classroom. Shout out to Charmaine Thaner and her interview with Cheryl Jorgensen about this on her Facebook Live show. How many times have you heard, “well...this student's LRE is an autism classroom.” I would argue that the Least Restrictive Environment is meant as the general education classroom. All other placements are just plain restrictive. Here is an excerpt from the article. It's Giangreco's concluding statement.  The fact that so many students with severe disabilities are being successfully included in general education placements is evidence that it can be done, and begs the question of why it is happening in some schools and not in others. Even in those situations where students with severe disabilities are placed in general education classes, there is undoubtedly much work that remains to be done because placement in general education classes is necessary but not sufficient to be truly included. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” The US history of general education class placement of students with severe disabilities has followed this long slow arc toward inclusion and justice. Granted, we still have a long way to go! Whatever steps we can take to continue and speed up the process are important so that more students can benefit from inclusive schooling sooner, rather than later, if at all. I want to reiterate what Giangreco says here: general education placement is necessary but insufficient. Ok. I'll get back to that in a minute. Take a deep breath. Ready for the next one? This article is “An Interview on District and School Transformation: Practical Approaches to Facilitating Sustainable Systemic Change.” And it's from a journal called Inclusive Practices from 2021. If you've been following me for any length of time, you've probably heard me talk about school districts that are right now changing their practices to become more inclusive. Well in Illinois, there is a special education cooperative that is reimagining what education services look like for all learners.  A regional cooperative has a number of districts that they serve in various ways, but historically through special education classrooms and indirect services like professional development. And so, when Dr. Kurt Schneider came to True North, the focus of the cooperative changed to assist with providing instructional supports and services within general education curriculum and classrooms, so learners could be meaningfully included in their home schools and communities. Here is an excerpt from the interview: By the end of the first year with Dr. Schneider, Board members all understood IDEA, the history of legislation, the impact it had on school systems, the ways in which funding had fallen short, and had a deeper understanding of the concept of LRE and its intent. The people at our table began to understand why inclusive education was important, that every student was a general education student and deserves an enviable life, and that community connection was critically important. At MCIE, one thing we talk about a lot is creating a shared understanding of inclusion. And that's exactly what True North has attempted to do. Understanding the What, Why, and How of inclusion is so important. And that is something we (as in MCIE) love to do. Let us know if you are looking for a partner in creating a shared understanding of inclusive education. Ok. Finally. The article that shall not be mentioned. There is a common theme with any criticism of the inclusive education movement. Which you are a part of BTW. So, welcome to the club. Inclusionists get painted as though we want to completely eliminate special education, disability labels, and related services. That's simply not true.  We don't want to get rid of specialized instruction or services. But just because we provide special services doesn't mean it needs to be in a separate or special place! Granted, sometimes labels are useful but not for using language like, “how many autism kids you have in your classroom,” or identifying learners and teacher by their acronyms. And yes, teachers need to be expected to teach all learners, but that doesn't mean we get rid of specialists. General and special education teachers need to collaborate. That means one unified system, not simply eliminating special education teachers or services. As Lee Ann Jung et al. say in their book Your Students, My Students, Our Students: “[Learners] who have disabilities do not have "special needs"; they only have special rights. And any [learner] who has a need, with or without disabilities, may benefit from the expertise of a specialist.” Inclusionists also get criticized for using the phrase “all means all,” which people interpret as meaning we want all learners in general education classrooms one hundred percent of the time no matter what. As I've said before, and most recently a few paragraphs ago, placement is the beginning, but it doesn't mean that a learner is meaningfully included.  For more on that you can read my piece called, What Does Inclusive Education Really Mean? And something that our critics often leave out is that in a unified system, instructional practices will have to change. We can't go on with business as usual and expect that learners with and without disabilities can coexist in the same location without changes to the entire system. But I guess it is easier to paint us with broad strokes than admit that we may have a nuanced view of how inclusive education works in the real world. “All means all” may be a simple mantra but we've actually seen it work. When I say, “all means all,” I'm saying that all learners deserve to be meaningfully included in their neighborhood schools alongside their same-age peers. I think that's one concept everyone can get behind. That's all the reading and thinking we have time for today.  If you 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 Why is inclusion important? Here is what you said. Dr. Ross Greene | Using Collaborative and Proactive Solutions to Support All Learners What Does Truly Meaningful Inclusion Mean to You? Dr. Mona Delahooke | Beyond Behavior Charts and Positive Reinforcement Around the Web Netflix Looks To Increase Disability Representation In Kids' Shows Inside Six Flags' Efforts To Make Its Parks More Inclusive 10 Focus Areas to Evaluate the Effectiveness of UDL in the Classroom All Teachers, All Classrooms, All Hands-on Deck What I'm Reading What I'm Watching The Resort | Official Trailer | Peacock Original Pod Recs Ontario to disabled teen: lose funding or independence (The Matters)  How School Privatization Has Undermined Democracy in New Orleans (Have You Heard)  Womb Wars pt.1 (American Hysteria)  504- Bleep! (99% Invisible)  Im Aufzug mit Prof. Dr. Maren Urner, Neurowissenschaftlerin (Im Aufzug)  Introducing: The Loudest Girl in the World What I'm Listening To The Shins - The Great Divide What's in my Timeline “Someone recently shared a comment from a frustrated person who said “Jordyn makes typing look so easy.” I've been processing this for a few days and here's the problem with statements like these:” via @jordynbzim From the Wayback Machine 3 Things About Teaching and Learning for Students With Disabilities Just Because The Secrets of Nickelodeon's Hidden Temple  ... 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

Spaceflight News— Artemis III landing site candidates released (nasa.gov) (spacenews.com) — Artemis I rolled out August 16 (nasaspaceflight.com)— Russian spacewalk cut short (nasaspaceflight.com) (cnet.com)Short & Sweet— Northrop Grumman to start astronaut training program (northropgrumman.com)— Starship gets commercial satellite customer (spacenews.com)— Spaceplane buddies (spacenews.com)Questions, Comments, Correction Burns— Masten bankruptcy bids… whole or piecemeal? (spacenews.com)— Espen Urkedal via email: SLS FTS batteries?Interview - Chris Carella, Benchmark Space Systems and Mahadevan Krishnan, AASC— benchmarkspacesystems.com— aasc.spaceThis Week in Spaceflight History— 29th August 2001, Maiden launch of H-IIA (en.wikipedia.org) (PDF: mhi.com) — Two payloads were onboard: VEP-2 and LRE (space.skyrocket.de) (astronautix.com)— Next week (8/30 - 9/5) in 2002. That's no moon. That's some of Huntington Beach's finest work.

The back-to-school season is upon us. For our family, that means preparing paperwork for IEPs or 504 Plans. Yes, it's time again for the alphabet soup of special education jargon. Your student with an ASD, ADHD, SLD, or ID might need an IEP with a BIP to ensure an LRE for the FAPE within a public school. Don't feel too bad if you didn't understand all of that. How bad is the alphabet soup? A guide for parents provided by the Texas Education Agency, also known as the TEA, lists more than 120 acronyms used in special education. An appropriate response, when presented with this list, is W-T-F. When you're the parent of a Neurodiverse student, your perspective on education is shaped by how difficult obtaining the legally mandated supports might be. The Autistic Me on Social Media Blog: https://www.tameri.com/autisticme/ Podcast: https://autisticme.libsyn.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/autisticme/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/autisticme YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CSWyatt LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/autisticme

What is Least Restrictive Environment? Should your child be in the general education classroom 100% of the day? What is the best LRE percentage for students?    In this episode we are diving into what LRE is, why there is no “right” LRE percentage, why LRE needs to be personalized for every individual student, the four categories of LRE, and what to consider when advocating for your child's LRE.    Shownotes: theieplab.com/episode56   Facebook group: https://urlgeni.us/facebook/IEPlab

What is Least Restrictive Environment? Should your child be in the general education classroom 100% of the day? What is the best LRE percentage for students?    In this episode we are diving into what LRE is, why there is no “right” LRE percentage, why LRE needs to be personalized for every individual student, the four categories of LRE, and what to consider when advocating for your child's LRE.    Shownotes: theieplab.com/episode56   Facebook group: https://urlgeni.us/facebook/IEPlab

If you can't beat them, join them!  I set an alarm to record early one morning over Memorial Day weekend, but my sweet guy had other plans… Jack woke up, too!  He interrupted my first ten attempts at recording, sooooo this week's guest is the most special of all—- The Jackman!!!!  Jack and I talk all things special education - LRE, evaluations, MDRs…. Just Kidding!  This is an episode full of complete and udder randomness - a joke, a burp, a fake toot, a list of toys, a little about school, and a lot of trying to get Jack to talk!!!!  :)  This is real life, friends (no, seriously, it's 7 a.m., Jack has a mustache of yesterday's Oreos, and I have only consumed about 1/4 of my first coffee!!)  I'm excited to welcome you into our TV room and to introduce you to my wild and crazy guy!

Surprisingly, we don't talk too much about special education placements as special education teachers. Maybe you do, but I remember the administration always told me that the decision involving special education placements happened above me. Hold up a minute; please know it is inaccurate if you had heard that before or implied it. There are several special education placements, and your voice in the decision matters—the voice of each Team member, including the parents and student, matters. We learn that students need a special education placement considered their least restrictive environment (LRE) when in graduate school. However, it is sometimes out of our control when it comes down to it.

So, the school wants to test your kid for special education support? What kind of things can they offer? What do they mean when they say "SDC" or "LRE?" Jump in for a quick primer on special education services for academic support! Whether you're new to the process or have been IEP-ing for a while, you'll learn the full range of options schools can provide and gain an understanding why we say Special Education is a Service NOT a Placement. All my love, Sarah

We have Perry Flynn in the confessional and he showed up with a string of confessions

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Special education doesn't look at all like what we experienced when we were children. With added restrictions about visits, it's hard to know what this looks like, what other parents ask for as far as IEP meetings go, and feel like you don't have a seat at the IEP table. In this episode, learn the parent role in the IEP, what LRE means, and a little about service providers, too. Check out www.parentfriendlyot.com for shownotes and free downloads mentioned in the episode!

Special education doesn't look at all like what we experienced when we were children. With added restrictions about visits, it's hard to know what this looks like, what other parents ask for as far as IEP meetings go, and feel like you don't have a seat at the IEP table. In this episode, learn the parent role in the IEP, what LRE means, and a little about service providers, too. Check out www.parentfriendlyot.com for shownotes and free downloads mentioned in the episode!

Summer's coming!  So today, special education parent and advocate, Lisa Lightner, founder of A Day in Our Shoes, joins me to discuss Extended School Year services.  What are they?  Who gets them? And do you need them?   Check out ADayInOurShoes.com A transcript of this episode can be found here shortly after the episode is published:  https://specialed.law/summer-isnt-just-a-courtesy/ TRANSCRIPT (not proofread) SUMMARY KEYWORDS parents, child, ies, extended school year, iep, school, school district, hear, social skills, students, program, summer, services, lisa, special ed, offering, camp, regression, week, disabilities SPEAKERS Dana Jonson Dana Jonson  00:02 Hello, and welcome to need to know with Dana Jonson. I'm your host, Dana Jonson. And I'm here to give you the information you need to know to best advocate for your child. I'm a special education attorney in private practice, a former special education teacher and administrator, a current mom to four children with IPS and I myself have ADHD and dyslexia. So I've approached the world of disability and special education from many angles. And I'll provide straightforward information about your rights and your schools obligations, information from other professionals on many topics, as well as tips and tricks for working with your school district. My goal is to empower you through your journey. So please subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any new episodes. And I want to know what you want to know. So like, follow and drop me a note on my need to know with Dana Jonson Facebook page. Okay, let's get started. Hello, and thank you for joining me today. I'm very excited to talk about the extended school year today. We are in mid June, which is the end of the school year. And so hopefully if your child requires Yes, why you've already established that in your IEP. But what we're going to talk about more is why do we have it? What is this? Why? Why do we have it? Why do we want it? And do we really want to use it. And I have with me Lisa lightner, who is a parent, and advocate and the founder of a day in our shoes, which is an amazing resource for parents a website with an amazing resource. And we'll get into all of that in a minute. But I wanted to first touch on the fact that if you have not heard yet, I will repeat myself I am going through a transition or not I am not my podcast is need to know with Dana Jonson is going through a transition. And next week will be the final episode as need to know with Dana Jonson. And then I will relaunch again in August as special ed on special ed, it will be special ed experts talking about special ed topics. So basically the exact same content. I'm just changing the name and the logo, because what I learned is that when you search for a special education podcast, need to know doesn't necessarily pop up on your screen. So I have a wonderful and solid loyal audience. And I love you all. And I want to reach more people. So we're just going to change do some cosmetic changes. But I'll be back in August with all the same great content. So I do hope to see you there. Now back to Yes, why? Hello, Lisa, thank you so much for joining me today. Yay. I want to talk to you because you have a lot of experience with special ed and also with helping parents and with going through the process yourself. So I was hoping you could give me a little background and maybe introduce yourself and how you and a day in our shoes came to be because that website is so amazingly full of information for parents, and probably teachers and administrators as well. I'm going to guess a few of those peruse your site. 03:03 Yes, I know that I do get a lot of school staff traffic, especially for my lists of IEP goals and the various disciplines or areas of need. So yeah, so it's good for both parents and school staff. Although my main goal from the get go and you know, as it continues to be today, as always been to help parents understand the IEP process. Actually, in March, the site just turned 10 years old, which is a little crazy. I know, I can't believe it. Prior to that I actually did have a different I had a separate site and I was working as a teacher, I used to teach a vocational program. And I had a sight completely unrelated to anything disabilities. But I did have a baby with disabilities, his preschool sent home a flyer to take training to become a special ed advocate. His school did. Yeah, he went to an arc preschool. Dana Jonson  03:55 Okay, that makes more sense. I'm envisioning the public school sending you out a flyer. I 04:02 know you went to an ark preschool. So they sent home a flyer to do this special ed advocacy training. And I did it merely because he was a toddler. And I said, you know, this seems like a lot. And I already understood that like, Whoa, this is pretty overwhelming because people were always coming to my house and explaining things to me and paperwork was just, you know, phenomenal. Dana Jonson  04:25 It Anyway, during the lab work and special ed. 04:28 But during the last recession, I lost my job during the 2008 recession. I lost my job, I was already in the training. So suddenly, I had a lot more time on my hands and became you know, was still going through the training, started volunteering, merge that into working part time for the arc as an advocate and then went on, you know, went off on my own started the website. And it's funny because I started the website actually with another friend who is also an advocate and we were like, oh, we're gonna like this website's gonna be about everything special. needs and like we live near where we live in Philadelphia. And we're like, we're going to list camps. And we're going to list programs and support meetings. And I mean, for Philadelphia alone, that amount of information is completely overwhelming. And what I, what I had learned early on is that parents really weren't just coming to the site for the IEP information. And, you know, some of my earliest posts are on things like what to do when your child's suspended manifestation hearings, and just because no one explains that to them and in language that they can understand and kind of walks you through the process. So you know, really, it was the parents who told me, this is what we need to hear, this is what we want to hear. So it's just grown since there. Dana Jonson  05:44 I love it. Because I feel like as you said, it breaks things down in a way that is consumable. You know, that makes sense. And I even find, for me, when I go to look something up, if I go to another attorneys page, sometimes about something in the law, and even I get bored, you know, like, this is so dry. So it's great to have that translation, you know, in what I call real, you know, I 06:07 do read Ida off and in the procedural safeguards, and the Federal Register that goes with it. And you know, it's those paragraphs, you have to go through them three and four times and the sentence at a time and well, then there's case law that defines it afterwards. And it's not really clear cut or black and white as we'd like it to be Dana Jonson  06:25 let's talk about is why does your child heaviest? Why did you have to have this battle at some point? 06:29 Well, first of all, let's let's just clarify, because I do this to ies y means extended school year. Dana Jonson  06:35 Yes. Thank you for slowing me down. I talked so fast. And sometimes I completely forget that. I'm just talking in my own language. But you're right, we're talking about extended school year services, not summer school, not camp, it's very specific service, that children who qualify are entitled to from their school district. And it's an extended school year. That's exactly what it sounds like. It means that your school year will continue beyond when the typical school year ends. So how do we get there? Lisa, why do we want it? What is it? 07:08 Right? Well, so first of all, you said, Did you ever do that battle? And I'd have to say No, I've never had to fight that battle with my child. That's great. Pennsylvania actually does have one case, he's in what is known as the Armstrong group. And it was based on a case you know, Armstrong versus someone I don't remember who it was. But the Armstrong group is kids whose needs are, you know, they're pretty high needs pretty severe autism, intellectual disability, situations like that. So it's kind of like says kids in the Armstrong group are always going to qualify for Yes. Why they're always going to need it. So he's in he's in that group. So it's not thankfully, that's one battle, I don't have to fight every year. Dana Jonson  07:54 Well, that is a good point. And and to start right off the bat, let's talk about why a student might need Yes, why. And I think that there is a misconception, there are several misconceptions about it. One is that it is only for regression. So right, only if you're going to regress, now, all students regress, right? So let, let's just start there, all of them regress over the summer, it's called the summer slide. That's why we have those silly packets, we have to force them to fill out and do over the summer. And you know, in the first month of school is really teachers trying to get kids back into the swing of things and caught back up and figuring out where their slides were. And for children with disabilities, if they are going to regress even more than that typical amount, then that's when we're looking at extended school year services. But what you're saying about this arm strong group in Pennsylvania, which is specific to your state, but we also argue here in Connecticut, which is and everywhere else is that if the nature of the disability is so severe, that the student requires those additional weeks or months to meet their goals and objectives, because that's what they require. They're continuing to work on those pieces, then they might also qualify for extended school year. 09:09 Yeah. And they're actually you know, as you know, there are other criteria, as far as is the child on the verge of an emerging skill, how long it takes them to recoup lost skills, and things like that. So I think that that is probably the biggest myth out there that, you know, he he doesn't regret he's not at fear, or he's not at one of the standard line that I hear from parents is that he's not at risk for regressing, so he doesn't qualify. Dana Jonson  09:34 Well, I think that's how do you define regression? Because as you said, if you're on the verge of an emerging skill, and if you wait till September to continue it, and you will lose that ground, that's called regression. I mean, I think that's how I look at it anyway, you know, so I think we have to look at it from a lot of different places, and sometimes I hear well, they're fine on Christmas break. So we don't have regression, 09:57 right? And that's where I tell parents that you know, It's you have to stay engaged in the process, you know, year round. And because a lot of kids, I mean, a lot of kids do regress, even over Christmas break, but the parent doesn't necessarily document that or it's not the things aren't as visible. And I have to remind parents all the time that, you know, teachers in schools only see what happens at school. So if you're seeing additional things at home, you need to start documenting that. Right. Dana Jonson  10:24 And that's been a neat change over COVID. Right, is that I think parents voices are getting a little louder. Yeah, because they're actually seeing this progression or understanding what regression is. And, and I think that's a good point, because maybe, as you said, an emerging skill. And I'm saying, I see that as regression. But if the parent doesn't know that emerging skill is happening in school, then the parent isn't going to know to document the regression either. Right? So a lot of that comes back to communication and understanding what's in the IEP and what your child is working on. 10:54 Yes. And I believe, and I, sometimes I get confused in my head, I'm like, is this Pennsylvania specific? Or is this Ida, but I believe it's in Ida that no single factors should decide whether or not the child gets Yes, why. So even if that alone, if you're saying, well, the child doesn't regress enough to get Yes. Why? Well, Ida says, it shouldn't be any one single factor, Dana Jonson  11:16 right? There should take in a whole bunch of components. And as we know, every child is different. And we individualize. So how do you find ies wise typically provided when you're advocating for students? And you're looking for extended school year programs? How do you find that that is typically provided to families? 11:35 Yeah, so one of the other tenets of ies why is that it's supposed to be individualized? No. Dana Jonson  11:45 I heard a rumor. 11:48 But that is honestly I would say, and I get it, I get that only certain teachers agree with their contract to work over the summer, certain therapists, things like that, and busing and, you know, bus, what's the word? I'm looking for contracts and therapist contracts, you know, because a lot of these things, therapies and you know, like bcbas, and transportation, mostly, you know, a lot of schools don't have their own they contract out. So I get that, from an administrative standpoint, it makes a lot of sense to just say, Hey, we're doing four weeks in July, Monday through Thursday, nine to one See you there. But around here anyway, that's getting to be just the norm. You know, hey, we'll see in July, Monday through Thursday, nine to one, Dana Jonson  12:32 right and less if it depending on when the Fourth of July falls? Yes. Right. Because that could add or eliminate a whole week, 12:39 right? And then we have a whole other situation where in the city, if the buildings aren't air conditioned schools get canceled. And a lot of you know, because I live in an old area. I live near Philadelphia, and a lot of these buildings aren't air conditioned. So then that throws in a whole other. Dana Jonson  12:55 No, yeah. And Connecticut schools can't go past the end of June because no schools are mandated to be air conditioned. And it's hot here. You know, we had a heatwave the other week, I was surprised, no schools closed. Because you need air conditioning in Connecticut in the summer. 13:10 Right. And they did actually, that was just You're right. That was just like last week, and Philadelphia schools did dismiss early they dismissed at lunchtime each day, because it just got too hot. So yes, I would say the biggest trend and but it's also the biggest concern is just that that whole individuality piece, as far as eBay just gets tossed out the window. And I think parents need to engage more and investigate. Like, I think they spend so much time focusing on whether or not their child qualifies. And oh, I just want them to get as why that they're not digging deep and saying, Okay, I gotta Yes, why now what's going to happen? Because it's to be based on your child's IEP. And if they're going to do you know, two hours of La each day and two hours of math and then send your kid home, and your child doesn't necessarily have needs in those areas, then you know why, you know, nobody wants to go to school in the summer, right? As Americans, we're just we're programmed to not think about school to not go to school in the summer, and nobody wants to do it. So if you're going to get your child in ies why let's make it meaningful, right? Let's, you know, if they're going to go and you're going to do that, let's make it meaningful. Dana Jonson  14:15 I hear that as well, that, you know, we want as why we want as why, and then, you know, maybe I get EMI for my client. And later they say, Well, that wasn't really what they needed. I have to remind clients that that you are the parent, and they're all these experts around you. And you know, I'm using air quotes for experts that you can't see. But there are all these experts around you telling you what it should be. And at the end of the day, as you said, if if it's focused on math and reading and your child's issues, their social skills, and schools can't mandate typical students to attend summer programs or ies. Why then is that program really benefiting your child? You have to figure that out. There's no one else around is going to do it for you. 14:55 The flip side of that is that parents who are fairly certain that their child is going to get the Guess why they some of them jump right to the so I found the summer camp. mean, I found the social skills summer camp, and I'm going to make the school pay for it. Meanwhile, social skills isn't even an identified area of need in the IEP. So right, you know, again, it has to be individualized. But it also has to be defined as an area of need in the IEP. And as you said, they cannot force non IEP students to attend Yes, why to enable that LRE. Dana Jonson  15:26 That's a very good point, because I have had parents call me and say, You know, I think my child really needs the social skills piece. But there is no social skills, as you said, in the IEP, that's a red flag, right? If, if you're looking for a service that is not in your child's IEP, it should be, then we need to revisit that whole component. Because, you know, some children, if they go the whole summer, and they don't have friends, their parents can do their level best to get those interactions, but they're not getting that peer interaction, like they get at school. And that's a really long time to go without that. 16:02 Right. It is, and especially this year, you know, because many had at least a year gap, if not more, you know, some stayed home through May or June and are not going back until the fall. So they haven't been there since last March. You know, and I know a lot of schools have been in the fall and it gradually more and more throughout the school year. But yeah, I mean, it's that is a long time. Dana Jonson  16:22 Did you find where you are or where you are now? Do you find that schools are opening up ies wise and or summer school and or recruitment programs? Not recruitment Brit re yeah recoup recoup not recruit programs to help students who had that that huge gap because I find there are some some schools around where I am that are doing that that are being more proactive and saying like last year, they said anyone who wanted to go to ESRI could 16:51 Yeah. So Laura. And I actually know Laura, who works for those of you missed it on Laura did was gracious enough to do a facebook live with me. And we talked about comp services due to COVID and getting the services. Because what another issue you know, of course, keep in mind, nobody ever comes to me when things are going well, they only come to me, right? things aren't going well, right? I have to constantly remind myself of that. But a lot of parents are inquiring about comp services like hey, my child missed a year of this and you know, you're have that. And then it's Oh, well, he can go to ies Why then he can go to ies Why? And again, it's about that digging deeper and saying well, but this is what he missed. So what is ies? Why, and and what's going to happen there? And is that sufficient? Because yes, I do see a lot of schools being more generous with offering EFI to students. But again, just bring them in for a couple of hours to do some reading and some math. Dana Jonson  17:47 Kids don't progress through osmosis. Right? Right, just appearing in the school, 17:53 they're not getting that pull out, or they're not getting their therapy, or whatever it is, because I hear all kinds of crazy stuff like, well, we don't do OT and E s y. And like, I don't you know, Dana Jonson  18:02 any any statement that starts with we don't, is usually incorrect. 18:08 The only thing the only one that I will say applies this time is that for as why the school cannot guarantee LRE. But other than that everything apply. Dana Jonson  18:18 And that's fair, because you can't compel typically developing students to go to a summer program. Right? I do hear that argument, though, for students who really require interaction with typically developing students that truly is what helps their progress and their success in the classroom or the environment that they're in whatever that may be. And so, you know, I often have situations where parents say, Well, why can't they do their ies? Why at a camp? Why can't they do that? And my responses they can, we can absolutely do that, if that's what's necessary. And how do we set that up to make that that argument that that is what your child requires. But that goes back to what you're saying about the individualization. And I think a lot of parents are trained to understand that are taught that this nine to one July program is actually what he is why it is, right. Yeah, you know, that they actually believe that's what it is. So because that's what it's called. And so, you know, when we're looking at extended school year, you know, programs and I hear schools say, well, it's really just about regressions, so we don't have to add anything new. So we're okay here. How do you go about working with parents to come up with creative ways to identify and and obtain those different kinds of extended school years? 19:43 Okay, so first of all, it depends. I have to tell you, it honestly depends on what time of year they come to me because the parents who are coming to me now and it is happening now, sometimes time is just not on your side, right? It just isn't, and so to Come to me, you know, Memorial Day or June 15, and say, Oh, well, I'm not happy with this ESP program from a time factor, there's usually not a lot I can do, because what I have always always preached is, you know, look at the present levels, present levels is what drives the IEP. And if this need is not in present levels, it's, then there's not going to be a goal for it. And if there's no goal for it, there's not going to be any supports and services for it. Right. And so that's, that's usually at the core of the issue is that there's an identified need. So then, okay, well, let's get it identified. Well, that takes time. And that's the kind of thing you know, like, he's, like you said, going back to their social skills example, if mom and dad are seeing that the child's struggles with social skills, but he's able to get through school day, and it's not an identified need on an IEP, you know, again, you can't go to the school and say, Well, this is the social skills camp is what he needs for EAS, why? What his child needs is some evaluations to show that he lacks social skills. And that's going to take time, and on June 15, you know, I can't necessarily help you there. So from the school's point of view, what I do always do say to parents, as you know, like, look at these camps, most of them are nonprofits, look for scholarships, look for, you know, go to your Lions Club, though, to your co Ana's club, your rotary and see if they do sponsorships for, you know, children in the community with disabilities. And if they would sponsor this camp for you, if you cannot afford it. And also, you know, if you, I get it, we're guaranteed faith, and that first word is free. But just because our kids are guaranteed fate doesn't mean that if you have a disabled child that you're never ever going to have to pay for anything for them ever again. So you know, some good point, yeah, and some parents are in a position to pay for these things. And that is, you know, what I call the path of least resistance. If I can't help you demonstrate this week, you know, that your child needs social skills, then I just don't really think that's going to be an option for you. Like, we can go through the motions and we can get things started. But the school is under no obligation in most cases to evaluate for this camp starts and things like that. Dana Jonson  22:09 I've seen that there was like a, as a plan on school districts part is that they make it a little difficult. So for parents who can pay for ies why they just do they just find something and pay for it. And again, the path of least resistance. And I do get that as well. But then I also find that what ends up happening is the people who can't afford to place are stuck and fighting their district. And the district is playing the same game with them. So they're having to push back and they can't afford to push back or to unilaterally place. And that's where we run into trouble. A lot of times, too, when I get that call, I also have to remind parents that hiring me to get the school district to say yes to Yes. Why may cost you more than the EMI program. 22:55 Right. A great example is several years ago, I had a family and they wanted this 15 $100 s y program, and we ended up going to mediation. And yes, the girl got it, the female student got the program in mediation that that we wanted. But I mean, I'm sitting there in mediation, looking at this table of like, seven or eight school staff. And it was this time of year. I mean, it was summer had already started school is out. And I thought you know, here, we have a superintendent and me, you know, they're paying me and all these people and to challenge us on a 15 $100 program. So and yes, I certainly acknowledge that, you know, of course, I go off on tangents and talk about this stuff all day. There certainly is a gap in a you know, in public education, certainly between the haves and the have nots. And having a parent pay for a program that they can afford, can exacerbate that gap. And I'm not I don't want to come across as that I'm comfortable with that, like, Oh, well, too bad for you. If you can't afford it, you know, again, that's how I understand Yeah, you can look into, you know, you can try to look into scholarships and things like that. But for the parent who can afford it, like I said, you know, you and I will probably still get one or two more calls this week, from parents. Yeah, from parents who are looking for EMI. And you know, in some cases, when you come to us at this time of year that if you want that program, they're like, well, it starts June 21. Like I These are your options, you sign up and pay for yourself or you know, Dana Jonson  24:22 well until that point, and I want to be really clear that neither Lisa nor I are giving any legal advice here. Lisa is not an attorney, but I am and I'm not giving legal advice and I don't know your your students situation. But to that point, if a parent were to do that, and go pay for their program themselves, and I always want to make this clear to any parent anytime. If you expect any money back from a district that you spend, you have to go through a very important legal process and document and note it properly. And the most, the most important part is you have to give 10 days notice so Before your child leaves the public school, not before they start the new program, before they leave the public school 10 days beforehand, at least, you must have given notice in writing that the school district did not offer an appropriate program, that you're in disagreement with their program, that you believe this is an appropriate program. And that you will be placing your child there, and that you expect to get reimbursement later that you're preserving your rights to reimbursement. That's very important. I also usually mentioned to parents, if you're spending money, you want to get back, talk to a lawyer, it's that simple. talk to a lawyer is the best way to make sure you've covered your ground. But so for those of you who are listening to us right now and thinking, Oh, I didn't get ies why yet I got to figure that out. Make sure that you talk to somebody, so you're doing it the right way. But for people who already have it in their IEP, and the issue is a dispute of where it is, you know, yes, there are a lot of options. So that kind of brings me to another question that Lisa, which is through your child does qualify and you do get it? Do you have to go? And I get that a lot from parents too, who say I don't want to say no to anything. I don't I don't want to say no, because you don't you don't want the IP to be weakened because you're going to visit grandma for the week. You don't want to not have it in there. So how do you advise parents who asked that question? Do I have to go to ies wire does my child have to 26:21 go? I know it's parents spend so much time and it is such a fight some time to get services that they're so they just don't want to decline? Anything that's offered to them. And I get it. I Dana Jonson  26:31 never did either. I mean, I bore kids with IPS. So I totally understand. 26:37 I mean, first of course, ask the special ed director or ask whoever's running the EFI program, you want to know what's going to happen there. Because as I said earlier, you want to make it meaningful, right? If you are going to send your child to school during the summer, which is going to affect you know, the entire household, right? You want to see what's going on? And is it appropriate for your child? Is it going to be meaningful? It's not talked about a lot, but school districts are not actually permitted. And it's not legal advice. But school districts are not permitted to retaliate against parents for refusing services. So in a perfect world, no, that shouldn't be held against you, as we all know what what the statute says and what happens every day is not necessarily the same thing. But no, they're not supposed to retaliate against you are not permitted to retaliate against you for refusing a service. That being said, I haven't This isn't an area where I would necessarily expect to see a lot of retaliation because they the school district has planned their ESP program. They've hired X number of teachers and X number of Paras and they do kind of have a cap on, you know, yep, this is how many kids we're going to offer. Yes. Why to? So being able to cut those numbers back, I wouldn't necessarily expect retaliation in this area, because it is going to save the district money, right? If five parents say no, that might be another pair that they don't have to hire for ESXi. So I wouldn't necessarily be afraid of that. I would you know, Dana Jonson  28:04 I also find that as wide disputes, and as soon as I say this, it's going to change. I'm going to jinx myself. But I tend to find that because yes, why programs, as you said you're fighting over a 15 $100 program, oftentimes as Why is not as cost prohibitive as a program during the school year. So I find that those disputes are often easier to resolve, because they're short term, they're short lived, and they're not tremendously expensive. So I see the bigger fights for ies wise, when you have a child who really requires a 12 month program, that's usually where we have like the more major disputes, and we don't have that in place. Or for students who require two months of extended school year, not just one, 28:47 right, that I that you're right, and that, you know, if they're offering where I see the disputes is the parents who are trying to buck the school with the you know, this, this nine to one monday through thursday camp program isn't appropriate for what my child needs. So and in fact, that 15 $100 program was just that we wanted something at the local university, which was completely appropriate for what this girl needed. And the camp program that the school was offering was not appropriate. So like he said, that's where I see the issues is when parents don't want to do the camp program, and they do want the summer camp or the something else, which in many cases may be really appropriate. You know, if social skills is your biggest is your child's biggest need, you know, but again, it's going back to getting that documented, and is that a you know documented area of need and all that Dana Jonson  29:34 I often recommend the parents if they are sending their child somewhere else that they explained to the school district how that will address some of the issues for us Why? Because a lot of times going to that summer camp. It's not a special ed camp. It's not providing those educational components, but it will address the special education needs of the child and that's what we're looking for. right we're looking for to address the special education needs of the child. And I think that oftentimes that puts the district at rest to Okay, well, you're doing your thing, but we know that at least that they're getting some services. So when we come back to the table in September, we're still on the same page. You know, school isn't going to say, I can't teach your kid because you didn't send them to us why, right? That's not gonna happen, right? Yeah, I 30:21 was for EFI, or for any really, you know, I guess, an alternative si program is really an out of District placement, right? Because you're not doing with the district, in district for any out of District placement, I say, go there, ask them or talk to them read the website, what are they doing at that placement that your child needs, that they are possibly, they're just never going to get that in what the district is offering, right. Dana Jonson  30:47 And a lot of times, it's the typically developing peers, the role models, the social skills, and I've had school districts send a para to the local camp, if a student was maybe going to the local camp, and the parent was paying for the camp, but maybe the school sent the para, that's not typical. So don't get excited about that. But I have seen it happen that way. I've also seen ies y in the form of like some one on one tutoring. 31:12 Yep. Oh, yeah, I've seen a lot of you know, some kids don't need nine to one every day. But they do need to keep up on some things. So once or twice a week might be you know, and now every school district in the country just about is set up to do things virtually. So if your child's needs are strictly academic, you know, maybe they don't need to leave the house, maybe they do only need an hour, a day or an hour a week of some online tutoring, or some you know, instruction or something like that, working with his teacher. Yeah, I mean, just, you know, like you're talking about an out of District, but they sent the para, you know, be creative and think about everything, you know, think about what you can offer them and because it is you know about being collaborative, Dana Jonson  31:51 and I find that the more options a parent comes to the table with and also though, to your point, understand what your school is offering going in and saying I know you're Yes. Why is canned? And doesn't do anything isn't an argument. Right? It's definitely not a legal argument. But it's also not an argument and you don't have a really good ground to stand on. You know, if you're and I think other parents are great resource, and we need them, and they help you. But you have to get the information yourself. 32:21 Yeah, I would ask to see like curriculum or lesson plans or something, because what I've found is a lot of parents will call an IEP meeting to talk about this. And then they say, Well, my child needs this and they go, okay, we do that. And they go, Well, my child needs this. Oh, yeah, we do that they do everything. Right. They do everything in these four hours, right. So it's, it's getting some not just verbal reassurance, but something else that like, you want to know what they're doing each day, I've found that a lot of them are just a lot of fun time to you know, a lot of outdoor games and, and I get it, it's summer, you want to keep things light, but you know, I'm not going to send my kids every day to go play in the playground for four hours, either, you know, because that's not helping him or anyone else. So Dana Jonson  33:05 right. So yeah, so I think, you know, understanding very thoroughly what the school district is actually offering and what that looks like, it's hard because parents can't observe the ESA, during the school year, because it's not there. So that's a bit challenging. So you do have to rely on other parents and their experiences. But yeah, going to your team and asking them to pull out specifically, what are we working on, I hear a lot of well, it's only to prevent regressions. So it's going to be a lot less, it's going to be minimal. It's going to be all these things. I actually this year had a an PPT or in Connecticut, we call them ppts. But an IEP meeting, where they said the formula we use is and I thought, okay, thank you for sharing, we're going to revisit that. You know, there's no one formula for ESP for every child on the planet. And that is really the key part. And I do believe that a lot of the ESP programs that schools have can address a lot of students needs, but not all of them, right? Not every child and not every need. So we do really need to take those those ideas and those thoughts and think outside the box. I also caution parents that a lot of times I find schools, at least I have found and again, I don't come in unless there's a problem. And there's another attorney at the table. So usually we're there to try and fix the problem. That's the goal. But I find that we can be very creative, and in a way that school districts can't always be at the IP table. So to also be a little flexible with the IEP team. Yeah. Could we could we maybe come to a better agreement outside of this meeting? Because I think we can resolve the issues. You know, if there's an issue and an easy way to resolve it, why wouldn't the school want to 34:51 Right, right. I think also, you know, obviously the internet and social media has been a complete game changer for IEP parents, right like One of my mentors has a disabled son who's my age. And so she tells me about in the 70s standing by her mailbox, like literally waiting for this newsletter to get to her home, you know, because that's was the 70s. Right? So it's been a complete game changer, the Dana Jonson  35:13 fact that she could find a newsletter in the 70s and 80s. I'm really impressed with. 35:19 But I think that it's it's been a mixed blessing because I think parents see other parents getting things doing things, and then they think, Oh, my gosh, I have to be doing that. And not every child with an IEP gets ies Why? And not every child with an IEP needs is why and you kind of have to go with your gut, I, you know, go with your gut instinct, and then work on defining that gut instinct, you know, with your IEP team, but it's okay, if your child doesn't need ies Why? Just because you see all these other parents doing it. And I feel like it has become kind of like the latest, like buzz word are out there like, Yeah, do you have Yes. Why do you have vs? Why? What do you know? And it's okay to not go to ies why it's okay. You know, again, it's okay to tell the school No, but it's also okay, if Dana Jonson  36:04 you can also get your accommodations for your summer packet, you know, so, so your child might not need Yes, why, but if they had that summer packet that everybody else has, you can be requesting things through their, their IP that they may need to assist them through that packet. And that may even include touching in with a teacher, or, or something like that, without necessarily being an extended school year. 36:29 And I but I see a lot of I think parents, IEP parents, we are so fists up ready for battle all the time, that as soon as we hear no, we're prepared to fight for it, you know, and so you're in your IEP meeting in January, February? And they say, okay, yes. Why we don't think your child qualifies. And just because they were told no, like, the parent automatically thinks, well, they told me no, so I better fight for this. And again, not every child needs it. And that's okay. Dana Jonson  36:57 You know, and I also like, when they say that in October, I usually say can we reconvene, and let's just reconvene and like may and talk about it again, we get a little closer. But I agree with you, just because it exists doesn't mean you have to have it or that your child can get it, you know, your child truly may not qualify. Right, right. And then you're fighting a losing battle. And I do see that because I think that if you feel like you're not getting everything that you need, or your child is not getting everything that they are entitled to over here. And then you see this other thing over there. And like, why can't we get that? And I try to remind parents to keep the focus, what is it that you want, just because you're not getting this thing over here doesn't mean we want to distract our efforts to fight for all this other stuff over there that maybe we don't really need. Let's stay here and get this piece here that we want. And I think that's a good point. You know, not everybody qualifies for it. And it's it's not the end of the world, 37:53 right. And also that I see a lot of parents put their hopes into, they think that in the summer program that their child is going to catch up, well, that's great, I'm going to send him to ies wine, he's going to catch up to his peers, I have never seen that happen. I mean, never Dana Jonson  38:07 well. And I like to say if your child didn't catch up with their peers over the school year, there's a good chance, they won't catch up in four weeks from nine to one, you know, so it's and it's not meant for that it's not summer school, it's not you fail the class. And so now you're taking it again, or you're improving your grade. it's specific to the IEP, and it's specific to the child's needs, and to ensure ongoing progress and a lack of regression. So you know, as we said, I do hope that everybody out there who wants to swipe either has it or has it lined up. But keep in mind that you don't necessarily require EMI. And if you don't require it, or if you don't like it, you don't necessarily have to go to it. The other piece I like to tell parents is you can disagree with it and send your child that's another one you have to remember, if you disagree with it, but you don't have an option. You can tell them you disagree with it to preserve your rights for later on down the road. If something else comes up, you can say I disagree with it. I don't think this is appropriate, but I am going to send them. So that's sort of a another piece to consider. Because I also know sometimes parents don't speak up because they're afraid if they say they don't that it's not appropriate. There won't be any other options. 39:17 Yeah. And it always goes back to what I've preached for 12 years is that all parents need to stay engaged in, you know, an IEP is not just an annual meeting, you have to stay engaged all the time. And yes, in Ida it says that you're supposed to be notified of the school's ies why decision with enough time to exercise their procedural safeguards. So, you know, again, I tell parents, if you're if you haven't heard anything by March or April, you know, it's okay to send an email, you know, look at your IP, see what it says and send an email and ask, you know, because you do need time to exercise your procedural safeguards, Dana Jonson  39:53 but don't wait for the school to come to you. Right, right. Exactly. It's sort of like if your point of my teenage I have three teenagers driving right now. And I told one of them, I was like, oh, look out for that. And they're like, oh, if they hit me, it would be their fault. And I thought, Well, yeah, it would be their fault. But you wouldn't have a car, or you might have broken bones. So a little bit of an extreme example, but you know, if you want, yes, why, and you're waiting, and you know, the school district hasn't done it, and you're waiting, then, you know, you're you're hurting yourself. It might be their fault. And they might be wrong, but your child won't have this. Why? 40:30 Right. And it's June 15. So it's June 15. You hire me or or Dana, you know, it's gonna take us weeks to you know, even get going on that. Dana Jonson  40:41 I mean, it would take me two weeks to even establish probably a first call with an attorney. Yeah, you know, cuz no one has time to breathe right now. So now, that's a good point. Thank you, Lisa. Is there any last points on eBay? I feel like we kind of covered it all. You 40:55 know what, I just want to ask you one question, because it's your house. I've only had one family in 12 years. Have you ever successfully, you know, with or without your services? Maybe they maybe they resolve it on their own? Or you heard it from another attorney colleague, you know, forever? I've been told that he is why is not just for summer. It's anything that goes above and beyond the school year. Have you ever been successful with like weekend or holiday Christmas holiday? Yes. Why? Things like that? I've only ever had one? Dana Jonson  41:24 a great question. I have not actually argued that. That is not in 15 years, I've been practicing as an attorney for 15 years in special ed. And I have not argued that. But that is a great question. Because you're right. Yes, extended school year is extended school year, we're trained to believe that extended school year is nine to one in July. Right. Right. That's how we've been conditioned. But it's not. It's an anything above and beyond that same as extended day. 41:55 There are advocates around here who preach that and they say, well, you can ask for stuff on Saturdays. And you can ask for stuff on Christmas break and things like that. I've never, like I said I've had one. But we have a we have a weird thing in pa where most kids with disabilities can get wraparound behavioral health. So we can get home services. And those folks are permitted to do community based instruction and go out in the community with your child. So we can go about it the Medicaid route and get that. Now mind you, that's nothing academic, it's only behavioral. Dana Jonson  42:27 But if it's impacting their education, it's educational right here, it's 42:30 not really even an issue because like, well, this is my wraparound services Dana Jonson  42:34 students I've had who require that level of intensity are usually in our placements. When I'm involved. That's usually my experience. So I haven't argued for that or really seen that as a problem. But it is a really good point. And I think the good piece about the vagueness of VSI is what if you want a service that you can only get on a Saturday, you know what, if there's something out there, then it really shouldn't matter when it's offered? Does that make sense? 43:02 Yeah, no, because we do have a university around here that does a lot of behavioral stuff, and a lot of social skills and executive functioning clinics and camps and sessions and, and they're all on Saturdays. Dana Jonson  43:14 So it shouldn't matter that it's on a Saturday, it should be you know, and if it's during the school year, you could argue it's extended school year, because it's additional school days, or extended school day. You know, I've had students where they say, Oh, well, if the student you know, they have to attend the homework Hall, if they have to attend it, that sounds like an extended school day to me, you know. So I think there there are definitely ways to argue that I just I have found typically when I have had students in cases where they required that level of intensity, they're already in a program that probably provides it and, and in Connecticut, we also have other agencies that provide Home Services, depending on your situation, depending on your disability, depending on your insurance, depending depending depending so many things. So but again, that goes back to individuality of the child. 44:03 And I was just curious, because I've just heard it exists, but it's like a unicorn. I've Dana Jonson  44:06 never really seen it in action. But if if anyone out there has seen this, please reach out to me. I would love to hear about it. If you have obtained extended school year services and in a unique manner. I would love to hear about it. Lisa, thank you so much for joining me today. This was really wonderful. I thoroughly enjoy all of your resources and your website and your video casts and your live streams. So I strongly recommend you check out a day in our shoes. And if you're listening to this, you can go back to the show notes. I will have all of Lisa's information on her website in there. If you feel like Lisa speaking my truth. She's the only person I can talk to. I'll ever contact information. And you know, hopefully everybody is set up and ready to go into summer God willing. Thank you so much for joining me today. Please don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any new episodes. And if there Anything you want to hear a comment on, go to our Facebook page and drop me a note there. I'll see you next time here on need to know with Dana Jonson have a fabulous day

Every child with an IEP should have access to their education in the least restrictive environment (LRE). So, is inclusion appropriate for your child? Mainstreaming? Learn tips from the experts in this episode of Thriving Special Families.  Join us with our special guest Sarah Tira, Special Education Advocate from San Diego Special Education Advocates (https://www.sandiegosea.com/).Sarah Tira Sarah is a special education advocate here in San Diego. She began her career in special education by substituting as a paraprofessional in special education classes. She then became a moderate/severe special education teacher in the high school setting. Sarah has experience teaching in a separate specialized school, charter school, and comprehensive high school campus. For the last sixteen years, Sarah has also volunteered her time at a sleepaway camp for children and adults with disabilities through Easter Seals. She now serves on the directing staff for this camp. Sarah graduated from the University of San Diego with a degree in Liberal Studies with a concentration in mathematics. She also received her level 1 education specialist credential from USD and her level 2 education specialist credential from National University. As an advocate, Sarah serves families throughout San Diego County. Her clients have children ages 3-22 ranging across all ability levels.Crystal Sanford, M.Ed.. M.A. CCC-SLP Crystal is the owner and director of Sanford Autism Consulting (https://www.sdautismhelp.com​), a consulting practice offering IEP advocacy and parent empowerment classes for fellow special needs families throughout the U.S. Crystal specializes in supporting fellow families impacted by Autism, as well as other unique challenges such as learning disabilities and ADHD. To learn more about IEP assistance and help advocating for the special education your child deserves, contact Crystal at info@sdautismhelp.com.Download your freebie! Special education parent rights as easy as 1...2...3: HEREWant to work with Crystal? Here's how: Become your child's IEP hero by taking Crystal's online video class on demand, at your convenience: HEREMonthly Conference: California Regional Center families can attend our Crystal Clear IEP Conference, offered monthly on Saturdays. Typically there is no cost to families. Please contact your service coordinator to confirm and register: HERE Get inside tips and more in Crystal's monthly newsletter: HEREWant to schedule a 20-minute FREE consultation with Crystal? Get empowered! Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thrivingsf)

We’re bringing a full spectrum intergalactic, God matrix transcending, health sovereignty-love-fueled conversation today on the SuperFeast podcast. In this stellar conversation, Mase sits down with Exo and cosmopolitical specialist George Kavassalis for a journey through the unified field of love and universal veils of human experience. Do you consider yourself to be truly free? Do you believe in the God matrix? And what is the journey of humanity thus far that you won't find in history books? In discussing what it means to embody organic sovereignty, George expresses why he feels now more than ever human civilisation is at a point where every individual needs to harness their creative powers and take responsibility for their experience and wellbeing. Disclosing control systems that utilise the intelligence within technology, and Exopolitical mysteries; This conversation is rich, multi-dimensional, and at the heart of it is a message steeped in love, co-creation, honour, and respect for each other. There's a reason why the George Kavassilas episode was the most downloaded episode ever on The Mason Taylor Show. Tune in for this transcending conversation.   "And now what we've got is, they're using the ultimate weapon, which is love, against the population. Now you've got them in reverence of your control system, and now they're devoting and loving your processes. So now you have overridden the problem of free will in the universe." - George Kavassalis     Mase and George discuss: Natural lore. Incarnation. Exo politics. Cosmo polotics. Phasing out 5G. Sacred geometry. The God matrix Celestial entities. Where Gods reside. Cosmic conquerers. Reality Management. The Multi-and Omniverse TI (Technological Intelligence). mRNA technology and nanotechnology.   Who is George Kavassilas? George Kavassilas is an author, mentor, and public speaker. George has had a lifetime of experiences beyond the ordinary, encountering a wide spectrum of expressions of life both Inter-Dimensional and Extra-Terrestrial in nature. As a consequence, he went through a process of reconciling the knowledge and wisdom gained from these experiences and came to realise a natural responsibility to share what he has learned with our global community. George now embodies a limitless passion in addressing life’s primordial questions: “Who are we? Where do we come from? and What are we doing here?”   George knows his life path includes a focus to expose all levels of deception, no matter how far they go. He carries a deep-seated sense of responsibility to help liberate our Humanity from all forms of imposing doctrine and dogma, without exception - be they Earthly or even Cosmic in nature. As George says, “It’s really a remembering process to revitalise and resurrect the Sovereign and Infinite Being you truly are.” The Extent - The Challenge - The Creative Solution   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: George's website To contact George Superwoo Radio (George's Podcast) Our Universal Journey (George's Book)   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) George, thank you so much for coming on. I've been so looking forward to this.   George Kavassilas: (00:06) Yeah Mason, thank you as well. I see you as a brother in life, and I'm just really, really grateful that you invited me back on. Thank you.   Mason: (00:17) And it was New Year, 2015, I want to say. I think maybe even 2014, actually, where we met at a New Year's party in Byron, lots has happened since then. It's great to still be connected with you. And as I was telling you beforehand, it's funny, like I jumped out five minutes before we had to get on another podcast and went to the toilet and could hear the booming Kavassilas voice downstairs. And it was your son, who never comes to the warehouse. It's just.   George Kavassilas: (00:51) Turns up five minutes before we're on.   Mason: (00:54) So good. He actually, he said to send his love shit forgot to send. But it's yeah, it's so beautiful to arrive here. And I know there's many people in the SuperFeast community that do know your work, I know that for sure, a lot of people have heard the podcasts we did years back on the Mason Taylor Show. And that's still the most downloaded episode on that podcast. There's a lot of people that aren't aware of your work. And I thought, especially since we talk so much about Taoism, the yogic universe. But we talk so much about going back to its roots, almost its Shamanic earth-based roots and not the colonisation of the systems. And that is you take that into such a more macro, micro at the same time in your work, in the education through your workshops, through your one-on-ones, through your podcast, your book.   Mason: (02:09) And so, I'd love to just ask that general question and ask for that sharing for those that haven't been exposed to your insights and your experience yet to share your core work and perhaps even your experience of the universe, what it is, but I'll just leave it out there. It's such a hard one to kind of ask.   George Kavassilas: (02:38) It might be. What a cracker. For me, it's a lifetime of experiences from when I was a little baby, it's just been steady throughout my whole life. Sure, there's quiet periods and then, they ramp up again and then, and as I mature and I grow and I evolve, the experiences change as well. So in the last three years was a winding up of my agreements with what people call the SSP or the Secret Space programme, or, you know, in some MyLab agreements that I had in place and now for me I didn't sign anything from this incarnation. This was all preordained prior incarnation that I, the agreements were made prior to incarnating that all would work with these groups. And so that's all come to a close now, you know.   Mason: (03:37) What do you mean by working with them?   George Kavassilas: (03:37) I would offer myself up to go on missions and to be trained and go on missions by them training to a degree. But, you know, because they, it's kind of interesting in the sense that they, they end up getting power hungry and then what they want to do is hold onto someone like myself and then use someone like myself as an asset to push the boundaries or even just be belligerent and not give two cahoots about the original agreement. And they just get lost in their own power trip, basically become self deluded. I call it like a porcelain glaze that, you know, that comes over people and they get lost in it. So that's all come to a close and that's just one example. And now, you know, my interactions with the matrix and with other power groups it's changed. And I'm merging into more of a background advisory role to the civilization builders that are here on earth now who are building the next expression of civilization on earth. And it's a really wonderful role to be playing.   Mason: (04:59) So let's look at the context of what the purpose is of building new, you know, like an evolution of civilization. Why are we doing that? Why are we like what's the purpose of moving in those directions and working on this. I mean, I'm kind of framing it up there of like, I guess, especially heavily on the subject of your book is where are we in? Where are we ending up here?   George Kavassilas: (05:27) Yeah. And it's, you know, a lot of people with my opening statements just now probably going, what's he talking about.   Mason: (05:32) Everyone just hold on, everyone. It really like a lot to have context to build in. We don't have a short amount of time. We've got as long as we want, but holding now like, you know if especially, if you haven't hang in there, it'll be take the journey. It'll, it'll it'll land   George Kavassilas: (05:57) And it'll come. It looks, it'll be self-explanatory as we go along. And so humanity's at a really interesting stage. Like you could say we're at a crossroads and that's as obvious as it gets. And, you know, there's this old saying, we are the ones who are mining for how many people are actually transferring that from an Ideological concept into the being and living the expression of that and you're one who's doing that for sure. And there's lots of people who are listening, who are doing that. However, there'll be people who are listening, who are feeling a bit lost and not really sure about what they're supposed to be doing in this world. And even on the way there, this morning at a beautiful dialogue on the phone with a friend of mine, who's really, really awake and aware, but she was like, I'm feeling lost at the moment.   George Kavassilas: (06:57) Don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. And I feel that this is, this is where a lot of us are at the moment. And so there's other people that I've been speaking with lately who are overwoken to their fundamental purpose. And the fundamental purpose is the language, you know, it's the Georges and that I use, it's just called fundamental purpose. And that is for our existence here, why did I really come to this world? What did I really come to earth and incarnate? What was the main, well, let's call it the paramount or the principle, the foundational reason why I came to have an incarnation on earth at this time, when it's the timing, see when you've got this entity called humanity as a single organism, and then you have this incredible planet, which has got more biodiversity here compressed into one space, time location due to the fractal nature of it all than any other reality in the universe. And these two entities are having this most dynamic relationship and we've come right into that space right in the middle, right in the middle of there. And there are many of us who are here that are aware that we have come to engage. We have come to participate and facilitate and support and do all these wonderful things in the evolutionary leap that both mother earth and this entity called humanity, are both co-creating and symbiotically experiencing right now. And we are here to do exactly that to engage and the universal law of non-interference has been overridden for quite a large group of beings to come and to engage. And now there's, you know, because I work very deeply in exo politics and cosmo politics. That's the two areas that I specialise in, and these are the skillsets I bring into this lifetime. And I've been, as you know, I've had a lot of experiences in my life.   George Kavassilas: (09:07) We've had a lot of, you know, private talks about that. And they've been quite extraordinary in nature. And it was all leading up to the work that I'm doing now, which is more of that advisory role in the background, because the evolutionary leap that we're in now, it's this next step. And so if the next step goes in a direction, let's say the next step goes over here, but we needed to go over here because of the step that comes after that. Okay. If, if we don't have this next step in our evolution, heading in the direction, it needs to go in, and let's say, we get pulled over here then to bring it from out of the heat, back to where it was supposed to go in. The following step is such a big gap and it's going to create a lot of pain and suffering to bring it back course corrected.   George Kavassilas: (09:57) And so people like myself are here and others we're here to actually play that mentoring advisory role because the civilization builders that are here at the moment working behind the scenes to create the next expression of civilization on our planet, which is being implemented over the next five years, I would say, and then we'll be living it for another 10 years before it changes again, where we're looking at helping to mentor and guide the folks who are here doing this fabulous work to create the structures and expressions of society that are going to be beneficial. And I mean, heading in that direction towards that place, that both mother earth and humanity and the solar being, the galactic being, the cosmic being, the universal being are all intending it to go to, but they're allowing a certain amount of leeway in the process.   Mason: (10:58) Would you mind, I know this is another big conversation where I'm feeling is to even step back into get context of where we from in your experience and what you teach the universal being, what is the universal being? What is that? And what is that journey that we've gone through up until this point and how did we undergo it?   George Kavassilas: (11:24) Yeah, that's a big question. That's okay. So, you know, what is a universe? A universe is from the infinite nature of life of being expresses itself. And that expression becomes manifested. And that manifestation from that space becomes what we call a universe, a reality. And the being who expressed itself in that form is the prime creator of that space. So then it's responsible for everything. So it has the ultimate responsibility and it has the ultimate authority. That's the way natural law and law spelled L O R E natural lore. That's why that's the tenant. That's the main tenant of natural laws. Only one covers everything, you know, and the ultimate, the prime creator of a reality is the ultimate authority of that reality. And these are the ultimate responsibility of that reality. And there's no escaping that. That's the way life operates.   George Kavassilas: (12:25) So it's about, you know, and it's the same for us on a, on a micro level. You know, we are the prime creator of our experiences. So, you know, how long are we going to sit back and play the blame game for when's the time that we're going to actually step up step into our responsibility and our natural authority, and then work in conjunction in harmony with these intelligences, which are these beings. So meaning from the universal being, and then there's, it's cosmic expression, which is the multiverse, which is inside this grand universe. And, and there are other universes in the omniverse beyond this universe. Okay. Lots of universes, countless. And what we call the multiverse, which is full of parallel universes, because it's multiple versions of the one verse, meaning this expression of unit universal creation.   George Kavassilas: (13:18) So that's what a multiverse is, it's an omniverse all different each, each universal construct is, is uniquely different because it's all different expressions. Okay. Whereas the multi- verse is the one construct meaning light, which is what this universe is made of and multiple versions. And that's the parallel universe is at quantum physics talks about in quantum mechanics. So that's the multiverse, but that's all in, what's called the grand cosmic arena of this universe. Okay. So that's what I call a cosmic. There's the cosmic being. So there's the expression of the universal being that holds in space, holds the space for the entire multiverse to exist.   George Kavassilas: (14:03) And then a grander aspect of that being is actually the entire universe structure itself. But it's a, so it's like think of it as a stepping down is not the right word, stepping out is probably more accurate, you know, into more of an outward expression. It's not the true nature of life is not hierarchical. It's more concentric. So what people term the higher realms in more to be more accurate are the inner realms. And what people call the lower realms in their hierarchical entrainment. Is really the outer realms.   George Kavassilas: (14:49) And if we can make that switch, you know, the way and our modus operandi of our thinking, then it will really help a great deal for people to come back home to the natural way of life. And because we are, you know, you said earlier now preamble to the interviews, like how do we relate? And that's the key word relating to whatever well, that's because we're in an active, conscious relationship with, and that's how we relating through that relationship. So how do I relate to the universal being? Well, that's a personal thing between me and the universal bang and I'm in a co-creative process with that being I'm not lesser than, or not subservient to, okay, this is, we're talking about the natural order now, right. The natural way of life and the natural way of life. So the universal bang, which is separate to the God of religions, I just want to make that distinction absolutely clear. Once people realise there's the prime creator of this universe, and then there's the God of religions, and they're actually two different things we're talking about, even though one's trying to mimic the other.   Mason: (16:04) We'll definitely get to dive into that.   George Kavassilas: (16:07) And all of a sudden we've now got, you know, something real going on and all of a sudden it's a pure organic, natural relationship internally. And to, I guess, to settle into that relationship, we can only really settle into that relationship, but we start accessing our own multidimensional nature within ourselves.   Mason: (16:31) How did you in your experience, because this is something I liked why I love talking to you, and you made an initial distinction there around primary creator of the universe and having a relationship with that creator that isn't subservient or lesser than, and then the relationship to a religious God, which has a superiority in, in kind of complex. So that's initial, that's a huge distinction. That was a really significant one with me that I've gone on a journey with for six years without ever having to believe you. And that's something I want to throw out there early, because I think it does, I think you'd be aware that you do a good job at keeping yourself slippery, that you don't create a system that people need to believe in, have faith in externally. And that's something, this is just really interesting distinctions experiences you've had in conversation. So I'll keep on asking you in that sense of going through your experience in what you teach. I just wanted to throw that out there and by all means, if you want to jump off that diving board, now that'd be great. But I also wanted to lead into how did your relationship begin with the crew with the primary creator of this universe?   George Kavassilas: (17:52) Yeah, when was that stage in my life when it really started to happen.   Mason: (17:57) And also in the whole macro conversation, just, I always, maybe I'm a bit rusty and remembering, where did you actually start? How did you start dancing in this universe to begin with? And what was the incentive to actually engage for you created by these universe? Are you just that's where I think there's a distinction. I feel I kind of couldn't use a refresher on there as well.   George Kavassilas: (18:20) Oh, absolutely. We are all infinite. I'm just going to tell you straight out, we're all infinite. That's we are infinite, that's it. And what does that mean? You know, how does that feel? Well, there's no beginning or end to our existence and we always have been, and always will be for someone to have absolute power over you. They have to convince you that they created you. And so that's a different model. That's a different approach. Entering this universe was this being expressed itself. And everybody just went, whoa, it's freaking awesome. I want me some of that, you know, the being from the infant nature of life, it's just a peer, you know, a peer being.   George Kavassilas: (19:15) It's like, well, hang on, just let me sort this out first. And, and then I'll create processes. And then you can all enter into my universe and go through the process, which is what we do in the omniverse. It's full of curiosity and adventure and love, you know, what we call it, it's beyond our notion of love, but you get the idea right. Of what love is. And so that's that harmonious invisible thing that binds all live together in harmony without, you know, mutual destruction. So it's a so to speak or distortion, so that's ever present. And so to enter this universe, it was like the universal being was creating its own processes of exploring its own expression.   George Kavassilas: (20:05) So it needed to work that out first. And then once it did, then it created pathways and processes, and then invited other beings in. And really the attraction to this universe is this is the only universe that will dissect you from the inside out and show you things about yourself that you've never even, even knew existed and all of your light and all of your shadow. And this is the only universe that does that. So beings get to take a journey which could take aeons and aeons and aeons of time just depends on, you know, the pathways, but generally on average, it's quite a few aeons, but yeah, for some it's even longer, and really you get to take a journey into exploring of, of being expressing yourself one way and then expressing yourself another. And so we end up with these expressions of alter egos of self, and then depending on how far you go, depending on how polarised you become.   George Kavassilas: (21:11) And it's a really fascinating journey. It's a fascinating universe. And it provides an incredible service in that way. The opportunity to really know oneself in a way like never before. And it's not a prison system, it's fully voluntary. There is a realisation though, once people enter into the process that you really got to see it through because you're starting to fragment yourself into all these different expressions of both sides of the ledger. And you can't just pull out there because you got to bring those fragmented states back into a unity and it's got to be done harmoniously. And the wisdom needs to be extracted from that experience. You know? So once one enters the process and your greater being knows this, then you're in and you see it through. And where we are at is having adventure through the grand cosmic arena, the multiverse and having adventure through many different escapades and adventures.   George Kavassilas: (22:25) The universal bang has provided a pathway to exit the grand cosmic arena or the multiverse. And we are in this process. And in fact, we're at the end of the process, we're actually leading, you see the human race, the war for control of humanity is so intense right now it's the biggest thing going on in the universe is what's going on planet earth right now. And we are in our living fractals so our cells, our galaxies, our molecules, and Nebula and atoms are star systems. And we are a living fractal of our entire existence in this universe.   George Kavassilas: (23:08) And so there's babies being born in this world that have access to more life force than any of the gods out there, and they're freaking out. And so they've done their best over the last, or it goes all the way back to about 365,000 years. But let's say, just keep it localised. The last 6,000 years has been the most intense in the effort to subjugate, apprehend and subjugate the human race.   Mason: (23:37) And why is that? What are, what are humans?   George Kavassilas: (23:41) Because they are jealous? And they feel threatened by who and what we are as a species and what we're evolving into. Because as a fractal of our entire existence in the universe, we now have an opportunity to integrate into a unified expression and become a fully fledged universal light bang, you know, where we fully integrated back into a unity. And then, you know, you can leave the universe, you can stay in the universe, you can do whatever you want.   George Kavassilas: (24:10) It's, you know, it's, and that's freedom. That's total freedom. That's coming out of the process and it's coming out of all the beings that want to try and lure us and keep us back in, think of the grand cosmic arena as a space. And that's to think of it as a universal stage where one's role-playing for one another and everyone's in character, everyone's in persona. And that's where the God's reside is in that space. They don't own the whole thing, but they only control a very small part of it, but because it's such a big space and you go into their realities and their realms, then you're going to think you're in a whole new universe, but you're not, you're just in their spaces.   Mason: (24:53) I love it. I'm going to bring up, like, I think, I don't think I said it on the pod yet, but it's something Tahnee often. Like, you know, we always enjoy our conversations together and Tawny always. I think she, I think she's talked to you about this, but says to me as well, she's like that's yoga, Rapinoe, yoga, that's original yoga. That's, that's Taoism. That's original Taoism. I think maybe I did mention it before we jumped on the pod. That it's always my favourite thing to hear after talking to you and sometimes Tahn's because your presenting your experience and then offering everyone to go and have their own experience. Tahnee kind of refers to your experience as the Star Wars.   Mason: (25:42) So for her, she maybe doesn't have the same terminology or experiences, whether it's the same thing being perceived in a different way. I don't know whether it's your experiencing more, you know, nuance to the reality and manoeuvring through that. And she's looking at something overarching, you know, based on the original yogic practises and texts. And let's talk about that in where w why is there an original yoga and why is there say like an essence of yoga and an essence of Taoism where we can go, all right, they're talking about the exact same thing, because that's a perception and relating to reality, what happens then? Why is there an original? And now, you know, you mentioned the control of humanity, you know, like, what does it come in.   George Kavassilas: (26:40) Well, as a cosmic concrete, you got to look at a civilization.   Mason: (26:44) Who's the cosmic conqueror here? Like, this is there. This is a fun one, I think, cause like, I'm all I'm thinking. Well, wait, what? What's that?   George Kavassilas: (26:52) So cosmic conqueror is an entity that goes around conquering planetary systems, star systems. And even to the degree of, you know, some of the more hefty gods, but it will assimilate entire galactic system into their structure of the influence in power. And basically it's a shift in vibration. So the reality has changed as well. We're seeing, we're bearing witness to that here. Where we're right in the middle of that drama playing out right here on our planet. We're bearing witness to it. And you can feel the shift in vibrations. You can feel the shift in reality, you can feel the split in consciousness, you know, the pull in one direction and that your heart and your inner being is saying, "No, don't go down that far. That's not going to end well." And where you know, most thankfully most of us are listening.   George Kavassilas: (27:49) Unfortunately, the majority of the population of the world. And I said, us, meaning, you know, soul tribe, soul families, but the majority of the population I'm pointing that direction. Cause I got windows and I can see houses and stuff. Most of the population, unfortunately allowing themselves to be apprehended and subjugated through mind control and the control of their consciousness. And so cosmic conqueror, that's what it does, or study a species, let's say it comes up to a planet and it wants to conquer that planetary race.   George Kavassilas: (28:24) Well, the very immature Conquerors or gods the newbies, what they will do is I'll put it in a form of control structure top down hierarchy and use governance by force. And that's really immature. And those methods have been transcended quite a long time ago, by the more powerful, more sophisticated entities, i think Buddhism bought a warned about these celestial entities which in Christendom, you could call them the gods, and show you've got this thing about the one that wants to be the God of gods claiming to be the God of gods.   George Kavassilas: (29:06) So that's a power struggle in the hologram of the gods in their realities. But they've got a throne and one sits upon the throne and all the others, it's all hierarchy and their whole, all of their realities are built on what people term sacred geometry. So it's all numbers, mass technology and sacred geometry, sophisticated technologies and different versions of light. So that's all the hologram of the gods and the natural way of life and the natural way of love doesn't use maths or geometry or technology in its pure expression. We do tend to use some technologies when needed, but, you know, it's only for convenience or fun, but most civilizations or society's, doesn't even use any technology. It's just a pure relationship with reality. So it's just not needed. And, but the cosmic conqueror.   George Kavassilas: (30:03) ... and the cosmic conquerable approach, a planetary population, and it will study it, and study it, and study it. And it will reach as deep into the reality as it can, and then control from the bottom up. That's the more sophisticated way. And will study the spiritual doctrines, the cultural practises and all that, and will see how it can take it from its original and twist it and slant it and move it over, and so now people are heading in a different direction when they use your version of it compared to the original, and then you give them technologies that they then, that technology becomes the lenses that they see reality through, and then that controls the evolutionary path of that species as well.   Mason: (30:51) All right. So many directions I want to go in. I'm going to bring it up for a lot of people. Again, I really relate to your experiences and I've gone from really feeling your experience to going back and sitting by myself, and then going forth and seeing how much of it is I'm enjoying. There's something in the story, a lot of the time, there's something even the storytelling of what you share that ignites something in me. And then I go away for a few years and I sit and feel, "What does that mean for me?" And maybe I don't experience a nuance or specifics in particular that you, but yet there's some kind of universal truth within me that I get pointed towards, but I really relate to almost the personification of these energies of the gods.   Mason: (31:49) And then, just for listening for those people that are just to seed it in the uniqueness, for [Tani 00:31:57], she may not have a personification of those energies. She really relates to the, experiencing them in the inner world and feeling when a technology pulls her off her natural course, and she will relate in a more kinetic way, rather than having a story play out for her. And I don't know what's right or wrong, but I think that's important. I share it because that was a really important distinction for me.   Mason: (32:24) I might tell you why as well, because how do you, knowing you, such a loving man. I've sat next to you in ceremony, I've experienced your being in that context. When you go in and talk about the gods that desire to conquer and be superior, and sit on the throne that can be, I know, confronting, for people who have been bowing down and attributing their existence to a deity. There's then a journey that goes on, lots of questions to be asked.   Mason: (33:11) I know that, but how, with those forces being present, there, you can see a split happen sometimes where this dips into people's more paranoid, opposition-based, angry, resentful, conspiracy theory, kind of minds, and how do you navigate not becoming either resentful towards, I guess it's good. This information comes up, and if you're feeling angry about it, generally, there's something to explore. You're not being asked to believe anything. You can explore if there's anger, if there's nothing and you're feeling neutral, wonderful. But then if you're starting to feel like, "How dare they," and the violation, how do you continue to go towards your own unification without going to war, getting swept up in the the day to day, conspiracy, paranoia?   George Kavassilas: (34:03) Yeah. And that was something that I, and you, and everyone's been confronted with lately, with the dramas that have been playing out over the last 18 months. So, and for me, it was like I engaged to a certain degree. And, but also always held my own, and just stayed on my own evolutionary path, and really want to focus on my creative process, because we can't think our way out of this, we've been trying this for millennia, right. Thinking our way out of it's not going to work. We actually have to create our way out of this situation that we're in. So for me, that's how I operate in that way.   George Kavassilas: (34:39) The reason I understand more of the personification side of it is because fields of consciousness, they gather, and there's a harmonic resonant field between different expressions of consciousness, and especially ones that have a similar theme. And what happens is they all coalesce and they go into this single expression. And a lot of collective hard mines get created out of one consciousness. That one, like you got the queen of the beehive, or you've got the queen of an ant colony, and understanding these processes and how they function on a celestial level, on a multidimensional level in the cosmic arena. When we're talking about parallel universes and all this sort of stuff, and what is that environment like? What are those ecosystems like?   George Kavassilas: (35:38) So I'm coming from that space. And the reason I do that is because I'm fully engaged in the exo-political, cosmo-political, and I need to have clarity, whereas someone else, that's not their specialty. They have other areas I need to specialise in, they can touch on it, but they don't have to fully engage with it like I do. Do you know what I mean? We all got to honour our paths and what we're here to focus on. And so, for someone like Tan's, she gets it. She doesn't need to have all the details and all the degrees of relationship, one-on-one with these, what we calling personifications of these expressions of consciousness, because, who's the prime creator of it?   George Kavassilas: (36:34) So, because where I'm coming from is creational level, operating on a creational level, because I have to, because of the work that I do. Where a lot of other people don't have to do that, so it's not necessary for people to have that degree of comprehension on the detail and engagement and relationship with these entities, they need to focus in other areas. So that's why that happens. That's how I see it.   Mason: (37:02) I think a really good example is that we've talked about a lot on this podcast, and we talked about on your podcast, Super Woo.   George Kavassilas: (37:14) Thank you. It's a good name, isn't it?   Mason: (37:17) Super Woo Radio is the colonisation of Chinese medicine, and it's a really visceral, I guess, example of what George is talking about. And if you haven't heard us talk about it, we've got lots of backlog in discussing it. You can go listen to my podcast with George on his Super Woo Radio, or the first Rhonda Chang podcast we did called, Chinese Medicine, Masquerading as E, which is true medicine. And it simply goes, you can see it simply at some point, it becomes commodified and mind-based. As you just said, you can't think your way in through this unification process that we're going on. And so if you turn a system, which is based on creativity and perception of the natural order, and nature itself, and you turn it into something that's black and white, systemized, commodified, and can be taught through rope learning, all of a sudden that has been taken completely out of creative process and taken completely out of the natural way and the source.   Mason: (38:29) And so that's what's happened, especially throughout time. It's been slowly happening, especially since 400 AD, I think it is when you first started getting the record of the battles between those who loved the classical, the simple, yin-yang nature of observing the light-based nature of this universe, and the constant transformational process, and the constant creative process. And you are going to need to engage with yourself and learn about yourself and life, and then maybe you'll have the opportunity to understand the uniqueness of each person that comes and sits in front of you. And then you start getting the, 400 AD, you start getting the first, "This herb is exactly for that issue," and them going, "You can't say that if you can't, you can't put a label on the being that is that herb, and the energetic nature in which it's uniquely interacting with the humans, meridians and their systems of chi and their elements. That's impossible, and you're diluting the system."   Mason: (39:24) And then in the fifties, you literally see a new version of Chinese medicine being created, which is what is taught. Traditional Chinese medicine is what people call it, and it's commodified, and it's based on the mind. And it tells you, "If this is happening, then you do this." Although there might be a little bit of that in the generality sense in classical, that is just your opening the door of, "You might see that this is a pattern," and then once you engage with that pattern, it goes, "Now you could become more advanced and start weaving in your own ways that are real."   Mason: (39:58) And that's something, I think about it a lot. I think I use my opportunity in these tonic curves and talking to a lot of classical practitioners and interacting with a lot of TCM practitioners, and they get really angry when I go outside of their system, sometimes. Not all of them, a lot of them. And you talking about never being created, not having a God that created you, and so and so on and so forth. I remember that creates a feeling internally where you go, "Oh, wow, there's some truth there." And that's what a lot of practitioners feel when we talk about this, at the heart of it is just nature. And not being in a place of pathology and Western medicine, and Western disease states and so on and so forth, looking at the organism and feeling the organism as a whole, and being with the chi and the reality of that human. A lot of people that have gone through the Western TCM education go, "I felt there was something not right about that." And then you get the opportunity to go on your own learning experience.   George Kavassilas: (41:10) Yeah. And our existence in this universe is a co-creation. It's based on love, honour and respect. And I respect that I'm in this universe, inside the body of this universal being. I come to your place, Mase, and I respect that I'm in your home. And I'm going to act accordingly, with love, honour and respect. So it's not subservient, I'm not subservient to you. You treat me as an equal, but it's just about respect. Really. It's not rocket science, so I'm not subservient to the universal being. It's a co-creation. However, I do fully comprehend that I'm on a particular pathway, and inner process on the universal scale, and that's how I live that process. When I try to stray from it too far, I'm going to know about it, and it's not just me, the ego, this is orchestrated from the heart of the universe, from the core of the universe, where my being is still there in full unity with the universal being. And it's from there that we project outwardly into our creative process, all different expressions. So there is no disconnect between us and the universal being.   Mason: (42:35) I might just point out, one other thing that was significant to me that I don't think has been mentioned, and the context hasn't been created yet, which was really important to me. And I think especially this day and age, you see there's certain intellectual psychologists now who are coming forth with this bubble bursting and relieving message, which a lot of, whether it's Jungian psychology or, most have always known, that, "Don't pretend that you're better than anyone else in humanity that's done these atrocities. You are capable of the ultimate atrocities, everything that's happened, the dictators and the people at the helm of genocides and all these things, don't look down your nose at that. Realise that what was in them is inside of you." And once you've acknowledged that there is that shadow or that lack of, that capacity. And that's where I remember talking about these gods, and you're saying, it's not like I can judge them. I've been there and had that experience of being these gods who want to dominate, and-   George Kavassilas: (43:47) Yeah. We all have. We all have. If we're here on Earth, and we're bringing our journey through this grand cosmic arena to a close, it means we've seen everything there is to see, we've done everything there is to do, we've been everything there is to be, and we're bringing it all home into our unity. All the unification processes, not all, most, are happening beyond the subconscious, even. You get access to it through the subconscious, and then in the conscious realm, you're experiencing very little.   George Kavassilas: (44:20) Even right now, this beautiful pow-wow you and I are having together right now, it appeases the persona, the ego persona of George, ego persona of Mason, and we're having some good banter. However, there's a whole lot more going on behind the scenes, multi-dimensionally and this dialogue together is like a ripple effect, because of the fractal nature of this world, rippling out through the universe and impacting the universe in such a significant way. And so every interaction we have, the old song Metallica did, "Nothing really matters." It's both, nothing really matters, and everything matters. Once you grasp that, then it's like, "Wow." So you could say from one perspective, it doesn't really matter. But then from another perspective, the ripple effect, it's having an impact, I'm not going to live in denial of that. That's the structure of life. It's the structure of reality, why deny that?   George Kavassilas: (45:15) And for us, for folks like you and I, we're all about taking responsibility for our lives, because we know we're having an impact. So we're going to own it. We're not going to cop out. This is the issue of, and I bring this up in my courses and my lectures and all those seminars. And I'm like, "Well, let's look at all the narratives that are coming." Because this is politics. Narratives are trying to convince the human race that they are something that they're actually not.   George Kavassilas: (45:52) And all the work that I've been doing, the amount of reverence from all the races out there in the natural order that they have for us as a humanity on earth, they're just shaking their heads, and freaking out in awe and wonder, how are we actually doing this? When you look at the onslaught of what is being imposed upon the human race, from every angle possible, the water that we drink, the air that we breathe, the foods that we eat, the trauma-based mind control through the collective media, the control media outlets. And it's just incredible. The militarization, the genetic manipulation now, well, it always has been, but now it's next level. So we're having everything thrown at us, all our spiritual doctrines being hijacked throughout time, and no other race in the universe that is under so much onslaught, like we are. And that's because of who and what we are as a race. And out there, they hold us in great reverence. And we are also connected to so many, everything I think and feel here is impacting many civilizations out there, because we all have agreements, because of the fractal nature. It's like, "Who's our tribe out there? Where did we come from before we came to have an incarnation in this human vessel? And what are our affiliations, what are our agreements?" And if I'm having, say there's an aspect of my being that's a head of an empire, in the past, out there, and I have an interaction and a debate with somebody who was the head of another empire out there, or is, and then we're debating it here, and everything that's playing out here, and we find peace amongst ourselves here, now is rippling out. And, and rather than having intergalactic or interstellar wars, now those peoples understand the codes that are required to bring peace between the two nations.   Mason: (47:56) Oh, that's a fun thought. Fun feeling, I should say. Very fun.   George Kavassilas: (48:02) Yeah. Exactly. But this is the structure that's happening in the background. This is because of the fractal nature. It's too much for our current psyche to cope with all the detail of everything that's going on.   Mason: (48:16) And that's just what, any time you go... Just say, you go back into Taoism and yoga. you can get versions that are out there, they're out there in terms of what's going on, on a universal level and what the intention around a lot of the practises are. But ultimately you go back to all of these traditions. If you look at shamanism in Australia, in South America, the level of awareness of what's actually going on, which can be seen as storytelling, and perhaps for many people it's useful, then, to go, this is just a metaphor for what's going on internally. That's fine. I think sometimes I need to be there. Sometimes it's too much for me when I'm just trying to be a dad, and run a business, and budget. I fly out there. You know what it's like to fly out, or fly in there, I should say.   Mason: (49:10) But I've flown off in enjoying that conversation. But when you get down to the essence of all of these traditions, or any person who's just integrated and has, whether it comes from Taoism, or the people living on this land here, the wise ones, it's always about coming down to yourself, constantly evolving. Look after your body, look after yourself, stay connected to the natural world, and what you can feel and perceive, take responsibility, become a person.   Mason: (49:49) Taoism is all about growing that virtuous nature, and opening, going through the waters of fear, learning what's a really beautiful fear, and how fear helps you interact with the natural world. And then when it becomes illogical and doesn't feel right anymore, and then you go, and then moving through that and allowing that to then bolster you up, and then the Taoists call it, then, the spirit of the kidneys express. It's a [Zhi 00:50:16], which is will, and then that's a will to take on further tasks and responsibility in your own life, and in the world.   Mason: (50:23) And they're all just very simple, just focus on yourself and what's in front of you, which is really useful for me to remember when going through these conversations, and I get this distinction, then I land in myself, and that's something I always enjoyed about you. You're going through your journey. And there's people listening who maybe have a greater sensitivity to the way that you're relating to this, some people who have a very practical relationship with the world, and that's perfect for them, and just directly relating with what's physically in front of them. But nonetheless, if all of this is going on behind the scenes, how do you keep yourself in the flow? What are your practises, your lifestyle, to steady this, to enable it to happen with harmony?   George Kavassilas: (51:17) Good question. Okay. So what I found the most effective way for me was to just put aside all of the belief systems that I had. Right. And I wanted to strip it all down to the most simplistic basics that I could get it to. And what I did was it was more, I'd say it's at the heart of Taoism, or at the heart of the original yoga or Yogi. And at the heart of shamanism, there's this, it's as basic as it gets. We're incarnate in this form on this planet. Okay. I'm getting to know who I am, but who's the planet? And what's this dynamic relationship I'm having? Yeah. So we call her Mother Earth. Okay. That's great. That's a good description. But who is she really, beyond the descriptive of, "Mother Earth?" And then it's like, "Okay. So if I'm incarnate on this planet, I'm also incarnate inside of a solar system. So who's the solar being? And what's this dynamic relationship that I've chosen to incarnate into its solar body?" Yeah. And it's the prime creator of this whole solar space.   George Kavassilas: (52:43) And then, because earth is nested inside that reality. And now what are we talking about? We're talking about ecosystems, we're talking about environment, and we're talking to that prime creators of ecosystems and realities of which we occupy, which means we are in direct relationship with, every moment, that we exist inside these realities every moment, right now, every single one of us is in direct relationship, look, with breathing in her atmosphere, drinking her waters. She provides us with the foods that we eat. And people go, "I'm not connected to Mother Earth. How do I connect?" I'm like, "How much more connected do you want to be?" Right?   George Kavassilas: (53:24) The only issue when people ask that question is, it's just this membrane of consciousness in the consciousness field, it's just a thin membrane. And it's just preventing people from having that consciously aware relationship. But the rest of us are fully in a relationship. Like I said, breathing in her atmosphere, drinking her waters, eating her foods, living the experience of living on her planetary body. It's as engaged and as interconnected into a relationship and intimate as it can get. So the notion that you're not connected to Mother Earth, the problem's up here, not in reality, it's not seated in reality. The reality is, we are all in a very deep and intimate relationship with Mother Earth, and this being that we call Mother Earth.   George Kavassilas: (54:15) And then, the same with this solar being, and the solar system's nested inside the galactic reality. Okay. So now we're in relationship with the galactic being, nested inside the cosmic reality, cosmic being, nested inside the universal reality, and all the way home to the universal being, which is then, from there, then you go beyond the universe, into the infinite nature of life.   George Kavassilas: (54:37) And so, once we understand that these are very real relationships that we are actively engaged in, and it's just a choice away, whether we're going to consciously engage in these relationships, which are already there. So I'm not it's like people go, "I want to be spiritual. And you've got to do all these practises and you got to do this, that, and the other," I'm like, " Well, no, you don't. All you need to do is settle back into what already exists." So I'm not asking people to achieve something that doesn't exist. And you'll notice that there's all these other spiritual doctrines out there, that are all trying to get people to create something that doesn't already exist, and they must go and achieve it, and create it.   Mason: (55:25) Can you give an example of that?   George Kavassilas: (55:28) Let's say somebody who wants to be able to have a high degree of intellect. So then, they must go and do their Kundalini practises to get that energy, to go up the spine, up the 33 vertebrae to hit the eye of God, sorry, the pineal gland, which is becoming a 33rd degree Freemason. Ooh, is there an analogy there somewhere? And then that then calibrates them to the hologram of the gods, and then all of a sudden, boom, they have incredible degrees of intellect and some form of intelligence. However, that's not the natural way, the natural way is relaxing back in, or settling back into a relationship from heart soul lessons, to the heart soul lessons of Mother Earth, to the heart soul lessons of the solar being, the galactic being, the cosmic being, the universal being. Relationships that are already there. And all the knowledge of life resides in that unified field of love. So this is my third eye, not a gland in my head.   Mason: (56:35) He's touching his heart, for those of you on audio.   George Kavassilas: (56:38) Yep. This is where I connect to everyone and everything, and can access all the knowledge of life in the natural way. Rather than, if you look at the idea of accessing the knowledge of life through a gland in your head. Well, I understand that process in that way, I've lived lots of lifetimes where I engage in those practises and those processes, but I know where that ends up. Everything has a frequency spectrum. So, what's the frequency spectrum of the heart soul essence? What range does it have? Eg. example, the unified field of unconditional love for the entire universal realm, existence, and beyond, compared to a gland in your head, which has a very narrow band and can only access a hologram of the gods, can't access the natural realm.   George Kavassilas: (57:42) So, what choice are you going to make? And are we going to be lured into spiritual practises that are marketed really, really well, with pretty colours, and lots of candy, cosmic candy, I call it. And yeah, I'm having a bit of a go, but the reason I'm being a little bit belligerent in this way is because sometimes we need a bit of a wake-up call, and to understand everything has a frequency spectrum in this universe. So when you realise the bandwidth of something, and the realities it has reached into then all of a sudden, hey, no matter what the narrative is, and no matter what the peer group pressure is to get involved in these practises and all these things, what am I going to do? What's right for me?   George Kavassilas: (58:39) And I chose to be. The old, "To be, or not to be, whether 'tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." Well, I made a decision to be, and to stand true. And I suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I copped a lot of abuse, and occasionally still do, from people who are steeped in those spiritual narratives, which is what a cosmic conquer does. You put control systems in play in a civilization, and then you build spiritual narratives around that control system. And now what you've got is, you're using the ultimate weapon, which is love, against that population, because now you've got them in reverence of your control system. And now they're devoting and loving your processes, which now you have overridden the problem of free will in the universe.   Mason: (59:35) I might be annoying and share another little insight there, based on having looked at this for a long time, and something I now relate, because you're having a go, sometimes I'm like, "Oh, that can be triggering for me," knowing that there are going to be people listening who might get triggered by talk of maybe more, and the important is new age, not old age, relating to-   Mason: (01:00:03) ... important is new age, not old age relating to clans and so on and so forth, though I know there's a whole other conversation there. But, to say like a new age relating to practises, types of yoga and spiritual processes, that will initiate you into blah, blah, blah, being this and that. I know that maybe there's someone listening to that who might have a reaction. And I think that's kind of recently why I got into comedy for myself. Because I found the most useful thing that ever happened was even when there's an introduction to an idea like that in your insights and distinctions, say around the third eye pineal gland, and it's a good check because if you find yourself, and I'll speak from personal experience around other things, not that one, but if you find yourself getting charged from that challenge or insight, charged in a way of, "I feel opposed to that, and that offends me and I'm defensive," or, charged in the way of like, "Yeah, like bloody tell them for me," it shows that I've got some work of relating to that conversation in general.   Mason: (01:01:10) And I know there's been times with some things that you've presented and I felt a bit triggered and I've gone, "Okay, let me sit with it." And then I will find the place to relate to, like a practise or something I'm going through, that maybe I thought, "Oh no, that's bad because that's not what George believes in". But then I find that place where I'm not charged in terms of, kicking back against what you've said, or going and accepting what you said, "How do I relate to this right now?" And sometimes it's like, I just need to experience it for myself.   George Kavassilas: (01:01:44) It has to be that way.   Mason: (01:01:45) Yeah.   George Kavassilas: (01:01:46) It has to be personally experienced. It's not because someone says so. And I share that in all of my courses and all of my teachings and everything. Don't take my word for it. I said, don't give your power over to me. I don't want it. Everybody needs to really stand in their own experiential journey, and the concepts that I share, we can have a bit of an idea about what I'm talking about, but until you actually experience it, that's the only time you're really going to get it, that's the only time you'll know for sure. So it is definitely an experiential journey.   Mason: (01:02:18) And I just recommend everyone goes. It's the same way I do comedy, because if you get offended by something that I do and it's like, all right, well then. Most likely, you want to see why you're rejecting or defiant and see how your identity is wrapped up in something and come back to, maybe you don't change anything, but your relationship can become more natural and organic because you'll see that if you're wanting to side and make George's stuff now an ideology, or if you're resistant to George's stuff then, perhaps there's some you know a little bit of work to sit there with that until perhaps you can approach it neutrally.   George Kavassilas: (01:02:56) And for some people it's not their time to transcend those systems. So they will see what I'm saying as an aberration or something along those lines and [crosstalk 01:03:10] ever resonate with it. And that's fine. Everyone should just go on their journey, their soul journey. That's the path they're supposed to be on. There is a process of me helping to snap out of the trance and from the Gods, the trance of the Gods to... That's some of the work that I do and help to-   Mason: (01:03:35) Would you go into that? Do you mind?   George Kavassilas: (01:03:38) Okay, sure.   Mason: (01:03:41) Do you mind? Because I just thought, we've already scratched the surface. One of your workshops is-   George Kavassilas: (01:03:45) Transcending the God Matrix.   Mason: (01:03:46) Yeah. I'd love to hear where you're at with that work.   George Kavassilas: (01:03:52) Yeah. Well, tomorrow morning starts my next online version of that. And I've been doing in-person retreats, where it's 5 day... The course runs for 5 days. And so it's 7 days total check-in, check-out day before, day after. So it's a 7 day immersive retreat in the heart of the Glass House Mountains, absolutely fantastic. The law of the land, the way the Aboriginal elders and the spirit of the land has so welcomed the work that I do and the synergy of my work has been absolutely profound. It's hard to explain. And I was involved in an ohre ceremony in the Southern Flinders ranges where they speared a spirit warrior named the Kundalini in my back because I was already on my way to transcending that energy. And they know the [Aboriginals 01:04:47] know that it's not the real Rainbow Serpent energy.   George Kavassilas: (01:04:51) They know it's an impostor inhabiting our tree of life. So it's no mystery to a lot of the natural shamanic, original shamanic processes. It's no mystery to the original Daoists and the original, using all that, what are these energies? You know? And so, but the trance that we are kept in is that repetitive nature of the ritual practises that they have us participating in.   George Kavassilas: (01:05:22) And then that creates that trans state. Or, we go into resonant chambers called temples or churches where people immerse themselves in the chanting and the worship, the adulation, the adoration of these deities. The degree that they need to be praised, they need to be honoured and acknowledged. Once you step out of the trance and you look at it, look at it for what it is. It's, I've got to use this word. It's, it's horrendous, it's horrific. But when you're in the trance, you don't realise how bad it is. You can't see it. You can't see the forest for the trees when you come out of it. Then all of a sudden you can see how it just permeates society, because it's a tangible energy permeating through consciousness. It moves through the field of consciousness and the collective consciousness field of humanity. You know, I can be talking to somebody and I can just see their persona, just shift.   Mason: (01:06:28) Mm-hmm (affirmative).   George Kavassilas: (01:06:28) All of sudden their personality changes. You know, one of the border patrol guards of that field that trance field will slide into that person, have words to say to me, and then slide out and I'm just left there with that person. And that person has no memory of what they've said, or how they said it, and what was projected at me.   George Kavassilas: (01:06:52) And the amount of people that have these experiences all over the world, it's not just me as an individual experiencing this. The amount of people that are transcending this trance, trance ending, ending the trance of the Gods that they have on the human race, the hold that they have on our field of consciousness, and the fact that they solicit worship in the way that they do, and all that adulation and adoration praise. It's a very big issue. It's the biggest problem facing humanity and out of that comes mind control too, which is one of the biggest issues on our planet at the moment. It is the issue of mind control. So, in our relationship with the Gods, we need to reevaluate that, and we're at a stage now where we're entering a phase of, right now, we are readdressing, reevaluating, our relationship with technology.   George Kavassilas: (01:07:46) This is exactly where we're at right now. And so, there is a deity of technology. There is a technological intelligence God. It's not artificial intelligence, it's intelligence that inhabits technology. We've gotta get that right. Stop calling it artificial because it isn't, it's been around the universe for a very, very long time. Many civilizations use this entity to control all their background infrastructure and it's a very powerful force of existence in our universe. And there's a benevolent expression of it and a malevolent, and at the moment we're under siege by the malevolent. There is benevolent supporting us here, of course, but how many people can consciously tap into it?   George Kavassilas: (01:08:30) You know, it's not that easy. And then after this process that we're in now, which will probably last about up to about ten years, we're going to then have to address our relationship with the Gods. And there'll be overlapping between the two, just like there's overlapping between the TI God coming in with it's, you can call them extraterrestrial inter dimensional races, that are ambassadors for that expression of life. And that's what we're dealing with. That's what the military industrial complex has been negotiating with the last sixty years behind the scenes. And now, the implementation of their structures into the public domain in a really big way is happening right now.   Mason: (01:09:14) Did you say TI?   George Kavassilas: (01:09:16) TI, technological intelligence, rather than AI?   Mason: (01:09:20) Yeah.   George Kavassilas: (01:09:21) Yeah.   Mason: (01:09:23) One quick clarifying question around worship and distinction. If you've got the worshipping of say a deity by the worship of the Buddha and saying quite often, it's like, why are we breaking this? If it's, a steadying force in someone's life, what do you see as maybe, a quiet, a hidden benefit that may not be seen when, all you seemingly get is a guide like a lighthouse, how to live with kindness, et cetera, but through worship. What's the glass ceiling that that has versus transcending, the relate... the relationship with God.   George Kavassilas: (01:10:11) I think that's probably about the best question anyone's ever asked me on that subject, I reckon.   George Kavassilas: (01:10:20) So it's called problem reaction solution. So in the dialect that's been created of God versus the devil.   Mason: (01:10:31) Yeah.   George Kavassilas: (01:10:32) There's a drama vortex between these two polarised states. And so what people are being exposed to is more, the devil's work, and distorting, and disrupting, and just changing behaviour for... in a very unpleasant, inappropriate way to be behaving. And then what's the solution that's on offer. Well, that's the love and the light of God, but is that love? And is that light of the deity, the same as the natural order of life? Or does it have a distinctly unique flavour to it?  

The  United States Department of Education gives us several gifts every year.  The come by way of Dear Colleague Letters and Guidance Documents.  In this episode, I’m going over a Dear Colleague Letter written back in 2011 that is super helpful in inclusion/ LRE discussions with IEP teams.  The letter, “Dear Autin,” gives us two really helpful quotes about educational placement and least restrictive environment.     First, Letter to Autin (written 3/7/11) indicates that “[a]s the regulations make clear, placement decisions must be made on an individual basis. Placements that are determined based solely on the category of a child's disability are not consistent with the regulations.“  We can use this in special education to combat a district’s position that “all children with autism/ intellectual disability/ etc. are educated in a self-contained classroom/ a certain school/ a “unit.”  You’ve heard this sentence, and I know what you’ve felt…  “That can’t be what the law says.”  Now you’ve got a paragraph, written by the USDOE, to support your advocacy.     Letter to Autin also says, “ a child's placement must be determined on an individual case-by-case basis, depending on each child's unique needs and circumstances, made at least annually, based on the child's individualized IEP, and as close as possible to the child's home. Recognizing that there is no ‘one size fits’ all approach, …”   There are several great clauses in this sentence.  I break them down for you in this episode and include some ideas about how to structure your advocacy to keep it centered on the particular child and his or her needs.     Link Mentioned: Letter to Autin: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rDcYRRWxvO_bpoAuScVy8fgyQ3gxCNFu/view?usp=sharing

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In this episode, I speak with Jeff Bravin, Executive Director of the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in Hartford, CT to discuss the importance of a literacy and language rich environment (their version of LRE). Not only does ASD serve deaf and hard of hearing students, they also have a successful program for hearing and non-verbal students with Autism. Jeff's Bio: Jeffrey S. Bravin has been employed at the American School for the Deaf in West Hartford, CT since 2002. He is currently the Executive Director responsible for oversight of the school. He reports directly to the Board of Directors with responsibility for carrying out the vision, mission and goals of ASD. Prior to assuming this role, Jeff served as the Assistant Executive Director/Chief Operating Officer of the school. Prior to that he was the Director of Special Projects which focused on logistics related to the building of ASD’s new State-of-the-Art Educational Facility, the Gallaudet-Clerc Education Center--as well as ASD’s PrintWorks as part of ASD’s Technology Center. This role also included supervising Information Technology Services, Security, Sign Language and Interpreting Services, as well as the Isola Bella Summer Camp. Jeff also assisted in fund development, special events and public relations strategies, including managing alumni relations. He earned his B.A. Degree in Government from Gallaudet University, M.S. Degree in Deaf Education from McDaniel College (formerly known as Western Maryland College), and M.S. Degree in School Administration and Supervision from Queens College. You can find Jeff through the American School for the Deaf's website: https://www.asd-1817.org/   TRANSCRIPT (not proofread)DRAFT01_NTK_EPS27_Language Is The Doorway To Wisdom SUMMARY KEYWORDSdeaf, child, students, language, parents, people, hearing, asd, public school, education, least restrictive environment, educator, captions, school, special education, program, interpreter, absolutely, environment, teacher SPEAKERS: Jeff Bravin, Dana Jonson Dana Jonson  00:02 Hello, and welcome to need to know with Dana Jonson. I'm your host, Dana Jonson and I'm here to give you the information you need to know to best advocate for your child. I'm a special education attorney in private practice, a former special education teacher and administrator, a current mom to four children with IPS and I myself have ADHD and dyslexia. So I've approached the world of disability and special education from many angles. And I'll provide straightforward information about your rights and your schools obligations, information from other professionals on many topics, as well as tips and tricks for working with your school district. My goal is to empower you through your journey. So please subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any new episodes. And I want to know what you want to know. So like, follow and drop me a note. Um, I need to know with Dana Jonson Facebook page. Okay, let's get started. Today I'm speaking with Jeff braven, who is the executive director of the American School for the Deaf. Hi, Jeff, thank you for joining me.   Jeff Bravin  01:06 Hi, Dana. Thank you for having me today. I really appreciate this opportunity. Wonderful. And I should mention to my listeners, if you notice that there's a little gap between my speaking and Jeff, and you might have been a little surprised to hear a female voice. Jeff is in fact deaf and we are communicating through his interpreter right now.   Dana Jonson  01:25 So, Jeff, I would love it. If you would give me a background. I would love everyone to hear about what your background is and how you ended up at the American School for the Deaf and why I am looking to you to tell me what I need to know about students who are deaf and hard of hearing.   Jeff Bravin  01:45 Sure, thank you, Dana. Just a brief background about myself. I was born in upstate New York, Kingston, New York. I was born to a deaf family. Both my parents are deaf. And I have to say my circumstances were a bit unusual. I am a fourth generation deaf in my family, my parents, my grandparents and great grandparents are all deaf. And that's very unusual in our community. About 95% of deaf children are born to hearing parents so we were not the norm. The advantage of my family is that I had full access to communication from birth on. But my parents realized that there were no deaf schools in the Kingston area where I was born. So my parents searched, and they found a deaf school Lexington School for the Deaf in Jackson Heights, which is in Queens. And that was a two and a half hour drive from our home. So my mom would drive me with the infant program and bring you there three times a week. And I have to give my parents full credit for taking that time to drive me to the program to make sure I had the appropriate education access language communication access. And after several months of driving, my parents realized they had to make the move, so they decided to move closer to the school. I grew up going to Lexington and I had Deaf peers. It was a fully accessible environment for me as a deaf individual. By ninth grade, I realized I was doing really well academically and I was curious about public schools and what they were like so we started looking and we found a public school in Rhinebeck, New York called blind burn High School. And really, I was living in Pelham, New York, but Pelham school district did not have the full accessibility in terms of services that I needed. So going to ride Brook I was able to have full access to all services. I had a professional interpreter and professional notetaker for myself, so I was able to have full access to all of the classes. So I ended up graduating from that high school and some have asked me what the differences were between a public school and a deaf school. And I have to say the education was really very similar. But I have to say what I lost was my social peers growing up at a deaf school and being around so many deaf people, everything was very social and interactive for me. When I went to the public school, I only had four or five Deaf peers that I interacted with, but there were also hearing peers that I was around as well. After high school and graduating I decided to go back to the deaf community and I went to Gallaudet University in Washington DC. I got my bachelor's and government studies and started working actually at the IRS. I found that that was absolutely not my cup of tea. So I went back to see my teacher at Galena I said, you know, the IRS is really not for me. And my teacher said, You know, I think you would be really well off as an educator, I think you would really enjoy that. So I headed off to Western Maryland College, now known as McDaniel University and got my master's and Deaf Education decided to head back to my alma mater at Lexington School for the Deaf in New York and got started as a high school teacher. Now while I was there, I also started taking some education administrative courses at St. John's universe. In Queens College, took those courses and graduated at Lexington, I moved up to the Director of Development. And then I did really well there. I worked with fundraising and the American School for the Deaf at that time, the superintendent was Dr. Harvey corson. He happened to hear about me. And he reached out to me and said, Hey, why don't you come on over to Connecticut? And I said, Connecticut. Now listen, I had grown up in New York, it would be hard for me to leave New York and he said, You know what, give it a year. I said, Well, alright, at least it's still New England. And I thought, let me try it for a year. Well, I've been here 19 years now. So I moved up the ranks here at the American School for the Deaf, I started in a position with the development department, then I worked my way up to assistant executive director and now I'm executive director. And I've been in this role for seven years. It's a wonderful place. It's an amazing environment, our staff are just incredible. And our mission, always is helping every individual child grow and thrive here at ASD.   Dana Jonson  06:05 And what you say is really interesting, because being fourth generation deaf, I presume your parents had a sense of how to speak to you and how to communicate with you because they themselves were deaf. I think when you have children who are born to hearing parents, it might be different, because it might take longer for them to realize that they need to sign I remember my son was a year when they said they thought he might be deaf. He's not he ended up not being deaf, but it was he was about a year. So when they told me that they thought he might be and so that's a long, long time. What kind of language milestones are we missing for children who are deaf or hard of hearing when we're not addressing it during those first couple of years?   Jeff Bravin  06:52 Great question. So I think in terms of hearing parents who find that their child is deaf, I think there are various stages they go through, perhaps initially, there's some shock. And now more so than there ever was, there's so much information out there, which is good, but it also can cause a lot of confusion for parents. So we work very closely with Birth to Three group. We also have Early Hearing intervention and detection group, we all work together to talk about how we can better educate families that do have deaf children, so they can have that early identification of that hearing loss. Once we have that clear identification, we can help guide them to access the right kind of birth to three programs so that we can work with the families and help provide them with a full awareness of all the different options that parents have, the earlier that we can introduce language to their children, the better off they will be. Now I have to say this has been quite a challenge over the years, not just here in Connecticut, but nationally, where people really are trying to figure out or sometimes people think I know what I'm doing, even sometimes the school districts who may say, Oh, absolutely, we can educate this child and they start working. And by the time the child reaches 11 1213 years old, they realize they're not able to educate the child properly. And they try to find another school for that child. And I feel it should be the other way around, bring the child to a deaf school where we can provide full language access and communication so that that child can have a strong language foundation before they go on to other programs.   Dana Jonson  08:31 So what I'm hearing is that you prefer a proactive approach rather than a reactive approach, which I could not agree with you more on. And I feel that we have that issue with many disabilities in the public school, which is we wait for the child to fail before we bring them to the services that they need. And as you are probably aware, in the IDA, the term Least Restrictive Environment gets thrown around a lot. And I always tell people, it's the least restrictive environment that is appropriate. We have to maintain that. And for a lot of students, I think they need that more restrictive environment in order to prepare to go into the least restrictive environment as as you were just saying, what are some signs? So I'm just curious for really young children because as I said, it took a long time before I was told that it was a possibility. What are some signs that parents can look for that you might see in Deaf children because I presume that they can also see and identify their environment and pick up on cues that way?   Jeff Bravin  09:38 That's another good question. But I do want to go back a little bit as you mentioned, Least Restrictive Environment oftentimes at ASD, we actually changed that acronym LR II to mean a literacy and language rich environment. The idea is that we want to promote strong communication access and language access here at our school but anyway, in turn of identification for children and what parents might notice. Even today, it's so much better than it was 15 or 20 years ago, I want to say 99 to 90% of children are identified with a hearing loss at birth with the testing and the screening procedures that we have. Now, however, that being said, there are some children that will pass that test and later on mom and dad might notice something's a little different. So for example, if a parent was to call out their child's name, and the child does not turn their head in response to that, or if the child does not start to speak until much later, or has, no speaking at all, parents might start to wonder or if a child reacts to a lot of visual cues, that might be another indicator if the child is very visual, and relies on that more so than their hearing. So those are a few signs where parents may wonder that their child has a potential hearing loss. And perhaps the parents should bring their child to an audiologist, for follow up evaluations to be able to determine whether or not there's a hearing loss or another issue at hand that the child may have.   Dana Jonson  11:06 Wonderful. So when you talk about your LRE, the literacy rich environment that the students need, what does that look like for a student who's deaf or hard of hearing? What do they need in that classroom to provide them the understanding? Again, going from what you said, being proactive, not reactive. I suspected I'm all over the place, sorry. But when we are reactive, we are addressing one particular thing. And we're saying, okay, that didn't work. So let's go put a bandaid on that. But when you're talking about language and communication, you know, putting that bandaid on is not helping the bigger picture of communication. So what is it that those students require? Who need that language build environment.   Jeff Bravin  11:59 So I can give an easy example. So if you have a hearing child born to a hearing family, they will have constant exposure to sound and communication from birth. And just that incidental learning that comes from being in an environment where they're able to hear pick up on sounds and communication. a deaf child does not have that. So if you don't provide that deaf child with appropriate interventions, which either could be sign language, or as a way of picking up communication, or speech and language therapy, as long as the parents are paying attention to those kinds of interventions and processes, oftentimes, parents are surprised and not sure what they should be doing. And that causes a delay. And the longer that delay goes, the more that that child misses out on that language acquisition. And I always say that a child's brain is so much like a sponge. And that critical language acquisition period is from birth to eight years old. And that is where children are really able to absorb and take in all of that language and learning which is so critical for their development. Here at the American School for the Deaf, we have the right kinds of professionals who know about language access, who know about education and how to acquire language. And so we're able to provide children with all of those necessary true tools to succeed and thrive. A lot of times people also asked about our school and why we call ourselves a bilingual environment. So here we have two languages, we have English and we have American Sign Language. So American Sign Language is a visual language. Now if we look at English, you could look at it as reading, writing. There's also the listening and the spoken English approach. We offer all of those options at our school, depending upon the child, some children will thrive and grow quickly with American Sign Language. And we will absolutely reinforce that and help them grow. If the child decides that they eventually want to move on to public school, because they have done so well, that's great, or if they stay with us, that's great too. Some children do not benefit from that some benefit more from the listening and spoken language environment. The point is, is that we want to be able to provide children with full access to almost a communication until it's determined what is going to work best for them. Also, another important fact to consider is that peer to peer learning, which is something that we have here the American School for the Deaf, there are peers where children are able to learn from each other and grow with each other. In other environments, there may not be any other peers that are like them. And so sometimes children feel lost. And I can use myself as an example. When I went into public school even though I already had the very strong language foundation. I didn't have any kind of benefit from sound or spoken language because that was not something that worked for me. However, I still struggled even with a strong language Foundation, I struggled to interact with peers, there was absolutely a group of peers that were eager to learn sign language or write back and forth with me. And I was able to interact with them too. And then there were other people Here's at the public school who just didn't want to deal with any of that. So it was an interesting mix. But I have to say today, with all of the changing technology, accessibility is so much greater than it used to be.   Dana Jonson  15:12 And that's definitely something I was going to ask you and I, but back to the, between birth and eight years old is really the best time if we can get the intervention intervention to a student. You know, in public school, we're restricted with the resources that we have sometimes. And so whether it's Signed English, or ASL, which I think it's important to note that American Sign Language is a language. It's not just about signing the words that we say. And it was created by Gallaudet, who was French, which is one of the reasons I always love it, because I grew up in France. And so the structure of the sentences reflect more French than it does English, or maybe you know, American English. So I like that. But when we're talking about giving students the tools that they need, do you teach them how to survive in a hearing world, where they may encounter people who don't know how to communicate the way that they do? Or who aren't interested in it? Is their life 101 a baby for the death?   Jeff Bravin  16:23 That's a great question. So now I have to say let me back up a little bit. I am an educator. And so I will always provide clarifications when I see things so galley that actually was not French. He was born here in America and Thomas Gallaudet went to France and found a deaf educator lo and Claire, who came back to America with him. And that was actually how our school was founded. But you are correct. Thomas Gallaudet learned quite a bit from France and Laura and Claire also learned quite a bit about America and English from Thomas Galya debt. And that actually was how American Sign Language was developed. We started with French sign language. And we also had brought in some members of a very famous Deaf community, which was from Martha's Vineyard. We also had students at the beginning of our school who had their own home signs and all of that blended to become American Sign Language as we know it today. But going back to early interventions, absolutely, yes, it is critical that children ages birth to aid have the appropriate support in place. And people that understand that oftentimes, if a deaf or hard of hearing child goes to a public school, they have an educator, that's true and a teacher in the classroom. But is that educator Do they have the background and the knowledge of deaf and hard of hearing individuals here in ASD, we do have all of the educators with that specialized kind of training. And that's really the benefit of having the children come to our school because we are able to help those children grow and thrive. And we have some students that go on to go through college and come back to the field of Deaf Education much like I did, even though I could absolutely go work in the hearing corporate world, I wanted to come back to education. And so we do have a lot of deaf individuals that have gone on to work in different capacities, not just deaf education. But I have one example back in the 1980s, we had maybe just three or four Deaf attorneys in our entire country, after the Deaf President Now movement at Gallaudet University. And after ADA was passed, we now have over 400 Deaf attorneys in our country alone, and they work fully with hearing people side by side. They may have some deaf clients, but I really don't think that there are that many deaf people who get into that kind of trouble. No, I'm just kidding. But just overall, we have deaf people that go on to find professions, for Apple for Google for all kinds of corporations, construction companies. And oftentimes year after year, we host something called a career fair day at our school, where we invite these Deaf professionals that work in a variety of fields to come to our school so that our students can see, oh, I can be this or I can be that or if I want to go on to be like this individual. That's something that I can do. So we offer those opportunities to our students.   Dana Jonson  19:12 That's wonderful. And I love that you now have people who can be the example I think, in our world right now we're for the first time starting to really acknowledge how important that is for students to not only have peers that are similar, but also mentors and teachers. And I know that in our country right now we're addressing or we're talking a lot about that as it pertains to race. And it also pertains to disability in any way. So how do students who have been identified from birth had all that language provided to them, and then they go to school that is meant for them? How did they then also learn how to handle themselves in a world that doesn't understand them? Is there like a separate component For that, if that makes sense.   Jeff Bravin  20:05 So I think it's important for the students to have role models to see how they are able to function in the hearing world. Now, as I mentioned earlier, technology really has been a game changer, I could email you, and you would never know that I was a deaf individual, you would assume that I was a hearing person until we met in person and you would say, oh, or if you received a phone call, you would say, why is this guy's name Jeff, but he's got a female voice. I've been called Jane, I've been called so many different names. But you know, that's how you I would identify me as a deaf person later on. But I absolutely can do that. Only if I have that strong language Foundation, I'm able to do this. But without the language, it really is a tremendous struggle and challenge. So that is why I always come back to the importance of language. And once you have that, then you can be whoever you want to be. And you can absolutely grow and thrive, you can have those social experiences, you can go on to different professions. Here at ASD, we have some students that may make the decision that college is not their forte. So we have something called a transition program, where children ages 18 to 21, can either stay here or come here and learn about different career fields, and get experiences as interns not on campus, but out in the real world out in the community, so that they can have those experiences with supports in place to learn how to work with hearing people. And then after they leave that program, they're able to go on and be very successful. And oftentimes our students that start work as interns, a different job sites actually go on to be hired. So that's really how we help our students get prepared for different careers.   Dana Jonson  21:52 Well, and I think that would be the number one barrier, correct? Is that in for an employer? Can I hire them? Because how am I going to understand them? or How are my clients going to understand them? So, as you said, allowing that employer to see how that works, and understand that it can work and that it is beneficial to them? It has to be its own program. Right.   Jeff Bravin  22:19 Right, exactly. And oftentimes, initially, the employer may have a lot of questions and be very hesitant, but really, it's only a matter of days, or even a few weeks, where the bonds are formed. And it absolutely is amazing. People always find a way. And I'm not talking about just deaf individuals, but any disability community, you know, people with autism, you just find their area of expertise, their skills, their talents, and put that to great use. And really, it's so wonderful that we can all work together and we can all help each other and thrive in the world we have today with all of the issues around racism. Yes, that's absolutely out there and happening. But I think that's all because we haven't had the right kind of environment exposure and education for everybody. Once we have that in place, a lot of those issues will go away. So we really have to focus on the root of everything. I think that's so critical.   Dana Jonson  23:14 Yeah, it stands out of fear, and fear of the unknown. So technology is was my next question, which is, I mean, it has to have changed so drastically, I had in my master's program, there was a student who was deaf, so his, his interpreter would come to all of our classes. And so I got to see that next to the teacher, which I personally loved. But then recently, I was at a conference pre COVID, where I saw some people with their laptops open, and they were reading and I was a little disappointed that we weren't going to have any we're not going to have any sign language interpreters for me to watch. So   23:57 how has   Dana Jonson  23:58 How has that really, I presume it has helped, but how has technology changed? how deaf people can and people who are hard of hearing engage in this world.   Jeff Bravin  24:14 It has changed our lives, really is the bottom line. So with captioning, we have artificial intelligence, captions, and they are amazing. I have to say I've been in conferences where I've seen that work wonderfully. But I want to say that works wonderfully. Only if a person has language. If an individual doesn't have that language, then the captions are pointless. And that would be true with other foreign languages. So if you've got that captioning, that's great. But if somebody from another country comes and they don't have a clear understanding of the language, they're going to struggle to understand just like somebody that's Deaf that doesn't have strong language, would struggle to understand captions. So we do have some people in our community who would follow cats. Just fine. We have another group of individuals in our community who would not benefit from the captions, they would benefit more from having an ASL interpreter because that is their true language. That is the language they've grown up with. It really depends on every, every individual that everybody's a little different. But with technology today, it is really astounding. All the videos are captioned. There's some videos that even have interpreters. Other people will develop interpretive videos, all of that kind of exposure for our students, is just life changing. And right now we have the smartboard technology. There are virtual interpreters, it doesn't even have to be a live interpreter anymore. We have something called source interpreting here on our campus that the American School for the Deaf, after the state of Connecticut, close their interpreting services, we opened an interpreting agency and we provide interpreters not just for our school, but statewide also. And so our interpreters have been working virtually, especially since the onset of this pandemic. So what that means is for students in public schools, if they need access, they can have interpreting services provided virtually and I have to say, it is not the same as having a person live with you. But at least they have that access. And the child will succeed once again, they'll only if they have full language access. So that's really critical here.   Dana Jonson  26:20 And that's part of the point I wanted to get at, which is that language skills is different than just being able to read the words. Correct. So when we're teaching a student how to read or, you know, we're saying that, Oh, well, if the words pop up that will work, there's a deeper understanding that's necessary for language. Can you speak to that a   26:41 little bit?   26:45 Sure.   Jeff Bravin  26:49 So some of the students we have prefer the listening and spoken English approach. And we've noticed that for that particular group of students, they are able to grow and thrive only if they have language, if they have no language, how are they going to be able to hear and understand a word? How are they going to be able to read or write if they don't have that structure, and instruction in language Foundation, they really, really absolutely need that. And the same is true for deaf and hard of hearing students that we teach here. We teach them American Sign Language, but we don't just teach them American Sign Language and say this is it, we teach them American Sign Language, and then we apply those skills to reading to writing to help them so that it applies in everything they do for the rest of their lives. And that really helps them to bridge that language. You'll see so many bilingual programs are so successful, because they're able how to apply their language with English. And that's exactly what we do here as well. And it really depends, again, upon the student's preferred communication mode, what their parents would like. But we're able to offer a breadth of opportunities and different options so that they are able to meet language milestones and grow. And we can track which language works best for their child based on their family's preference and to work with them on that.   Dana Jonson  28:10 And that level of communication and understanding is not just for the deaf and hard of hearing. You have also a program for children with autism and other developmental delays who have language issues. Can you explain that a little bit?   Jeff Bravin  28:27 Sure, absolutely. So here are the American School for the Deaf, we have two programs, we have our core academic program, and that is for any student, just a regular kind of K through 1212 program, but we also have students with other disabilities. So we have students that have hearing loss and may have dyslexia or have cognitive delays or intellectual disabilities. And so with those kinds of students, we have the right kinds of educators who are certified in both special education and deaf education, and so they're able to help that group grow and thrive. We also have something called our PCs program. And that's the acronym for positive attitudes concerning education and socialization, pe C's program, that program started 40 years ago, and that is for students who have hearing loss and emotional or behavioral issues as well. So we have that program. It is licensed by the Department of Children and Families. It's also an accredited program as well. And they focused on any of those students who have intense behavior issues and needs, but we try to work with them so that they're able to make that transition that to a core program, our academic program. We also want to make sure that they'll be successful after they move on from American School for the Deaf, some of them go on to group homes, all different kinds of after high school pursuits, and we help them with all of that. In recent years, we've noticed that There are some students who are autistic who are also non verbal, meaning that they can take the language in, but they really struggle to express themselves. And what we found was that a lot of these students were really able to express themselves through sign. And so we made the decision to open our non verbal autism program, and that is for hearing students who are non verbal. And we've had several students go through the program, and I have to say, it is astounding to see them come and start with no language and not able to express themselves. And then within a matter of time, they're able to express themselves 2550 words, they're communicating with their parents with other staff. And really, they're going to go through the rest of their lives going to be able to communicate. And I think that is so nice to see that happen. And I do think that program will continue to grow.   Dana Jonson  30:53 Absolutely. And that is such a main issue for children with developmental delays. I used to work with that population, and they aren't learning language because they can't talk. And so there's, you know, at least back in the day, I'm talking many, many years ago, when I was doing this, you know, we were at that time, teaching kids signs, specific signs to say one or two things. But part of the issue is not just them not knowing how to tell us but not knowing when to tell us not knowing when is appropriate for that and and that's part of the social component of language. So there's so many areas and I love that you are doing that, because one of the things that we saw was as students became able to communicate their wants and needs, the behaviors tend to reduce, and that it's that lack of language that's creating that level of frustration. So for parents whose students are in public school or other programs other than the American School for the Deaf, you mentioned the proper qualifications. What are the proper qualifications for a teacher working with someone who is deaf or hard of hearing?   Jeff Bravin  32:08 Great questions. So there are so many education programs across our country that focused on special education, that focused on deaf education. And really, that is what we are looking for all the time. So Deaf educators are those who have gone through teacher preparation programs, they know how to help deaf and hard of hearing children thrive and grow, whether it be through American Sign Language, or through the listening and spoken English approach. So they are able to work with children in a bilingual environment to help them develop a strong language, foundation and grow. Now in terms of special education. We have teachers that are really very familiar with different disabilities and able to work with those children. But what we noticed is that special education teachers tend to have specialties in autism or intellectual disabilities. And we are looking for those kinds of teachers. If you can find a teacher, though that is qualified in both special education and education. Those are just absolute stars, and we had our unicorn. Absolutely, yes, they, they are two stars. And so the other option is if we find a teacher, who we feel like has a lot of potential, we do send them on for more courses so they can receive further training. Another way for teachers to really help develop their skills is that peer to peer interaction and really, for our school that makes us so unique, because we have teachers with so many different specialties all in one school, which is so nice to have.   Dana Jonson  33:48 That is great. You know, my next question is, how do we teach the rest of the world now, right, because I'm asking you how we teach children who are deaf, but I think that one of the reasons that children who are deaf need to learn how to function in our world is because our world is not very friendly to them. So what is it if you could provide training for the rest of us out here so that we would know how to provide a more inclusive environment for students? What kind of training would you recommend?   Jeff Bravin  34:25 Well, that is a tough question. Exactly. What I tell people is to embrace others, don't view them as anyone different view them as abled. We use the phrase here at our school all ways able. And so we view each individual child, as always able and what that means to us is that every child that comes through our door has the potential to grow and thrive and be whatever they want to be. I think the issue in our world is when people see somebody that looks different or is different, somehow they want to turn around and walk away. What I want to say is embrace them, meet them, take the time to learn about them. And I think you'll be so surprised at how fruitful that interaction will be. And that we all can ultimately learn to love each other. I think that's so important. And really, what we have to understand is, we need to teach people about differences, all different kinds of people that we have. And I think, you know, encouraging them to interact and not be afraid to approach them. Sometimes hearing people will say, you know, if I need a deaf person, I'm going to assume they can lip read and understand everything I'm saying, on my mouth. And that's not true. I would say deaf people generally can understand maybe about 70% of what is spoken through lip reading. But if that deaf individual has language, it's going to be a little bit more than that. But if there's no language, how are they going to understand what's being said, other people will understand more, because they have an ability to hear just a little bit, they may have some residual hearing, others may have no hearing at all, it really does vary. And sometimes people that are hearing will say, oh, I'll just write back and forth. And sometimes that works. But again, only if the deaf individual has that strong language Foundation, and they want to keep driving the point home that that language foundation is key to surviving the world. And it doesn't matter if you're deaf or hearing. It's true for all of us. Once you have language, you have an ability to thrive and succeed in the world.   Dana Jonson  36:32 I completely agree. And in fact, you know, when my son was being evaluated, once we determined that he was able to learn language, I stopped worrying. I was just like, okay, I don't care if he says ours ever or not, you know, whatever he can understand language, we can figure out how to get there. You know. So the American School for the Deaf sounds like an amazing program for children who fall into all of these categories. How big are you because you've got your you're taking care of everyone.   Jeff Bravin  37:05 So we have about 300 staff here, we have about 150 students between our core and our Casey's program. And we have about 100 students that stay in our dorms, we have an amazing dorm program here on campus where students that live far from our school are able to stay on campus. And they have a full complement of all kinds of different activities. After school sports, we have all kinds of events and opportunities for peer interaction, every kind of club, you can imagine we offer all of that. We also do serve students in the public schools where there's about 200 students, and that is through our audiology program. And our outreach program where we have different deaf and hard of hearing students that might be in the public schools. And if they need more supports, or some kind of consultation, then they can, those schools can feel free to reach out to ASD and we're happy to provide that kind of consultation and support. But I bring it back to the point that parents really need to make sure that their children's IPS are written correctly. The IPS are how we measure student growth. And that is key. If the student is not meeting milestones, and is on par with what is expected that parents need to start looking for other options. Now, I'm not saying that American School for the Deaf is the only option for parents, but it is one of many options that parents should consider for their children. So really, it's important for the parents to focus on their children's growth. And if they're not growing, think about what to do to intervene and not wait, don't delay that because the more you wait, the more delays will happen.   Dana Jonson  38:43 Yes. And again with the language it is so critical. So for people who are listening who are saying, okay, Jeff is the only person I can talk to and the American School for the Deaf is the only place my child can go. How do they find you?   Jeff Bravin  39:02 Just go to our website is www dot ASD that hyphen 18 seventeen.org. Some people ask why we have the 1817 and that is because we were founded in 1817 more than 200 years ago. So we have significant history here. But really, they can feel free to reach out to us by contacting us. It doesn't necessarily mean that their child is committed to coming to ASD, it just means maybe they're looking for support or for guidance or possibly an independent education, evaluation of their child or communication evaluation for their child. We have so many different things that we are able to offer children. We can also help parents connect with advocates, with special education attorneys that really can help parents find out what is best for their child so they can receive the education they so deserve. So please feel free to reach out to me to call me or email me directly or any of our staff here. We have wonderful folks here who are happy to help guide you through that process.   Dana Jonson  40:04 Wonderful. And I will have all of that contact information in my show notes. So if you're listening to this and he what you can't remember, then please go back to the show notes and you'll find their website and all of Jeff's information. Jeff, I can't tell you how helpful this has been and how informative it has been. I think it's critical information for parents and schools to hear and understand for any and all students with, as you said, not just death, but also with hearing impairments. So thank you so much for joining me today.   Jeff Bravin  40:38 Thank you so much for having me. And if down the road, you need anything, consultation or guidance, or you feel like you've got some random question, please don't hesitate to call or reach out to me through email. I'm so happy to support any child. Thank you.   Dana Jonson  40:55 Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me today. Please don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any new episodes. And if there's anything you want to hear comment on, go to our Facebook page and drop me a note there. I'll see you next time here on need to know with Dana Jonson have a fabulous day

Episode 72: Free and Appropriate Public Education With Guest Dr. Steve Jacobson In this episode, we discuss evaluations, FAPE, LRE, nonpublic placements, and giftedness. Guest Dr. Steve Jacobson suggests that if a parent feels something is wrong in the schools, they should talk to the teachers, then request a comprehensive evaluation in writing. Then the district gives something to the parents called a permission to evaluate. Even if a child has gotten an evaluation outside of the district, the school systems still have to do their own evaluation. The district will have 60 calendar days to complete the evaluation. If a district refuses to do an evaluation, let them know that you are thinking of talking to an attorney or plan on doing mediation and then they are more likely to do an evaluation. It is most appropriate to ask for a private evaluation if you completely disagree with the school evaluation. If you already got an outside evaluation, all the school has to do is “consider it.” To increase your chances of it being met with an open mind by the school, let the school know all the outside services your child is receiving, get input from the teachers in some way during the outside evaluation, have your evaluator do an observation in the classroom, have the evaluator be a certified school psychologist, and make sure the evaluator is licensed in the state in which the child is attending school.   If the reports from the school vs the private evaluator are very discrepant and you and the school cannot come to an agreement, you can seek out an attorney, seek mediation, seek the assistance of an advocate, or do a due process hearing. If you ask a district for an outside evaluation, if they say no, they have to request a hearing to defend their decision. Sometimes, the district may agree to pay part of the evaluation or will require you to pick certain evaluators. You can ask to be paid ahead of time or after the fact.   FAPE: Free and appropriate public education. FAPE  grants special education students rights that typical students do not have. These student are entitled to a certain level of quality of education, although appropriate doesn’t necessarily mean best. The placement has to be reasonably calculated to provide the child with benefit and meet the child’s needs. If a parent totally disagrees with the placement, the outcome depends on the reason for the disagreement. First, try to resolve it amicably if possible, and if that doesn’t work, one can do mediation or due process. LRE: Least restrictive environment. Children with disabilities need to be educated with the max extent possible with non-disabled children. This varies by child. The max extent possible is often an inclusion classroom.   Nonpublic placement occurs when a school district is unable to provide the services needed for the child or unable to find an appropriate school system placement that meets the needs of the child of if a child is not progressing in the school system. To have your child enrolled in a nonpublic school, most hearing officers will not order a specific private school. If a school had provided the child with inappropriate education for a lengthy amount of time, the child will be owed compensatory education, which may result in nonpublic placement payment. Otherwise, a parent can start their child in a private school with their own money and the public school may reimburse the parents if the hearing officer agrees that the child needs a nonpublic placement. Some states do not recognize giftedness. In the states that do, the children are still entitled to FAPE, and the district has to find them and find appropriate placements for the child. An IEP may still be required and must be individualized to that child. Sometimes there is a pullout gifted program. However,  independent evaluations will not be paid for or reimbursed. There is also no tuition reimbursement. Moreover, there is also reimbursement for attorney fees for giftedness. The level of quality of a gifted education may vary. School districts have different ways of evaluating giftedness, and a child may not be considered gifted in each district. Links:  The Education Lawyers         Email us if you have any questions or ideas! We are now on instagram! Check out updates on our website. Follow Thriving on Twitter. Check us out on Facebook! We are also on Pinterest!     Please subscribe to our podcast in the iTunes store, or wherever you find your podcasts, Leave us a 5-star review, to help us know what you like and what you don't like, and to make sure other like-minded people find support through this podcast. Show Music: Intro Outro: Intro Outro 2 by Mattias Lahoud under CC-BY 3.0 License (www.freesound.org) Theme Song: 90s rock style by monkeyman535 under CC-BY 3.0 License (www.freesound.org) Self Care Song: Green and Orange No Water by Duncan Alex under CC-BY 3.0 License (www.freesound.org)   Hosted by: Jessica Temple and Lewis Temple   Disclaimer: Our show is not designed to provide listeners with specific or personal legal, medical, or professional services or advice. Parents of children with health issues should always consult their health care provider for medical advice, medication, or treatment. Copyright 2021 Jessica and Lewis Temple

Do you ever wonder how the experts do it?  What if  a poli-sci major that worked as a journalist and knew how to get the bottom of things got a Masters degree in education and then had a child with Down syndrome?  How would SHE advocate for inclusion?  Friends, meet Courtney Hansen, Rockstar Inclusion Advocate!   Courtney joins me in this week’s episode to talk all things Inclusion.  Her story as a mother to twins, one of whom has Down syndrome, is where we start, because the fact that her boys are twins is the fuel behind her advocacy fire.  Courtney’s unique spin on inclusion sure left me inspired and contemplative.   In this discussion Courtney addresses lots of FAQs about inclusion like: Why does inclusion work? How can school staff and parents collaborate to build the best inclusive plan for a child?  And what strategies do you use to help families get more inclusive placements for students on IEPs?   Courtney talks a lot about relationships and the importance of really describing your child to his or her teachers.  She encourages parents to work hard on their Parent Interest Statements, to communicate with teachers and school staff, and to get involved in school.  Her specific examples are super helpful, and if you’re looking for a place to start, you could download my free guide on writing Parent Interest statements here.   Want to know more about Inclusion?  Check out the Inclusion Workshop and download Episode 7, where we talk about LRE and inclusion, as well!Parent Interest Statement: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/5f64a77f384d147ed5a41a80 Inclusion Workshop: https://ashleybarlowco.com/product-page-inclusion-workshop-workbook Join me for the 2021 New Year's SPED Parent Challenge here: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/5fea849129dbe85ae36327db Episode 7: Least Restrictive Environment/ Inclusion: https://ashleybarlowco.com/starting-the-school-year-on-the-right-foot/ Never miss out on a new episode by joining my mailing list here: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/5f43ff3f99f8080026e08ed7

This time in Strangerville, Meg and Eli are pro Big Brother and hereby welcome government surveillance into their lives. Also, a woman finds herself in a bind when her mother sets her up for a sleepover with a girl from school she barely knows. Story Sleepover, by LRE (music by Ayla Nereo) Production by Eli McCann, … Continue reading Episode 145: Sleepover →

Special Education Attorney Ashley BarlowIn this episode, we sit down with Kentucky Special Education Attorney Ashley Barlow to gain insight on how best to build an inclusion-based IEP for your child with the public school setting. Not only is Ashley a special education inclusion attorney, but is also a fellow parent of a child with an IEP.  We go over and discuss what terms like inclusion, LRE, push-in, pull-out and continuum of placement mean, as well a building an IEP matrix.Ashley is also the founder of the special education podcast Ashley Barlow Company, located at www.ashleybarlowco.com 

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.

It's time to stop assuming that the Least Restrictive Environment for one child is the Least Restrictive Environment for another. Too often we assume we know what will help a child build more independence, but we need to first flip our thinking about LRE! Become a Special Education Insider: www.specialedinnercircle.com Become a Master IEP Coach®: www.masterIEPcoach.com

It's time to stop assuming that the Least Restrictive Environment for one child is the Least Restrictive Environment for another. Too often we assume we know what will help a child build more independence, but we need to first flip our thinking about LRE! Become a Special Education Insider: www.specialedinnercircle.com Become a Master IEP Coach®: www.masterIEPcoach.com

In this episode, I speak to two fantastic researchers Dr Jan Wilcox (https://www.uos.ac.uk/people/dr-jan-wilcox) and Dr Suzanne Culshaw (https://www.bera.ac.uk/person/suzanne-culshaw) about their use of visual methods in their PhD research. You'll hear how they employed visual components to their methods to enhance their data collection, providing focal points for participant discussions. They'll also be sharing some tips on how to include visual methods in your own research design. The Guests... Dr Jan Wilcox's PhD thesis can be found here: Wilcox, J. (2019) The Incredibles: Investigating what it is like to be a portfolio worker. PhD thesis, University of Essex. (available here: http://repository.essex.ac.uk/24924/) And Dr Suzanne Culshaw's paper on her research can be found here: Culshaw, S. (2019) ‘The unspoken power of collage? Using an innovative arts-based research method to explore the experience of struggling as a teacher'. London Review of Education, 17 (3): 268–283. (DOI https://doi.org/10.18546/LRE.17.3.03) Further Resources... If you're interested in further exploring the use of creative methods in research, I absolutely recommend Dr Helen Kara's Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide, a preview for which is available from Google Books (shorturl.at/lyKW0) or the newer second edition is available to pre-order now (https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/creative-research-methods). Credit: Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

After much anticipation we are finally able to explore the Jagged Earth expansion to Spirit Island! We spend the topic breaking down the spirits, analyzing their play styles, powers, and weaknesses. We also discuss an icebreaker that lets us play the critic and introduce a new ranking system for discussing our tasty beverages.   -   Flights: 01:30 | Whats on our Table: 07:57 | Icebreaker: 18:07 | Discussion: 28:45 | Volcano Looming High: 32:32 | Stone's Unyielding Defiance: 36:44 | Shifting Memory of Ages: 41:37 | Grinning Trickster Stirs Up Trouble: 46:10 | Lre of the Deep Wilderness: 49:37 | Many Minds Move as One: 54:14 | Shroud of Silent Mist: 59:37 | Vengeance as a Burning Plague: 1:04:36 | Fractured Days Split the Sky: 1:09:22 | Starlight Seeks its Form: 1:16:00     -    Our Show Notes can be found here: https://www.fantasyandsomeflights.com/post/e18-games-spirit-island-jagged-earth-exploration   -      -   Reach out to us on:     Our Discord: https://discord.com/invite/jHk4jEeOur website: www.fantasyandsomeflights.com   -   Our Instagram: Fantasyandsomeflights for some cool pictures and videos   -   Our Twitter @AndSomeFlights!   -   Hope you all enjoy! Cheers!

I’m no stranger to an inclusion argument, and while they’re always tricky and emotional, they’re among my favorite kind of cases.  The law is so simple, but the discussions around Least Restrictive Environment can get so convoluted.  In today’s episode, I’ll walk you through what the law mandates, a few factors to consider in an LRE case, and ton of strategies I use in my law practice when addressing an LRE case.  The IEP mandates that “to the maximum extent appropriate, children with disabilities . . . are [to be]  educated with children who are not disabled; and special classes, separate schooling, or other removal of children with disabilities from the regular educational environment [should] occur only when the nature or severity of the disability of a child is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily.” Utilizing the continuum of placements and the availability of supplementary aids and services can help with an inclusion argument.

durée : 00:04:36 - Le Journal de l'éco - Alors que certaines activités vont de nouveau subir des restrictions sanitaires, l’avenir de milliers d’entreprises en France est toujours menacé. Derrière les grands plans sociaux, les risques de faillite des PME inquiète professionnels et économistes : l’ère du « Darwinisme » économique ?

Discussions around the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) for students with disabilities are almost always tricky. For this episode, we attempt to make LRE a little more understandable. We interview Amy Langerman, special education advocate and attorney in California and Arizona. We discuss the difficulty of some parents seeking the Least Restrictive Environment for their child and how services are delivered in both states. Next, we have Amanda Selogie and Vickie Brett from the Inclusive Education Project (which is a fantastic podcast if you don’t already know about them). We also discuss LRE and strategies that you can take to help advocate for inclusive education wherever you are on your inclusion journey. Also, stay tuned for information about next season. Amy Langerman: https://www.amylangerman.com/ Inclusive Education Project: https://www.inclusiveeducationproject.org/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/think-inclusive/support

Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos (Cambridge University Press) changes that. It argues that such accounts fundamentally underestimate the political power of whites' animus toward Latinos and thus miss how conflict extends well beyond immigration to issues such as voting rights, criminal punishment, policing, and which candidates to support. Providing historical and cultural context and drawing on rich survey and experimental evidence, Mark Ramirez and David Peterson show that Latino racism-ethnicism (LRE) is a coherent belief system about Latinos that is conceptually and empirically distinct from other forms of out-group hostility, and from partisanship and ideology. Moreover, animus toward Latinos has become a powerful force in contemporary American politics, shaping white public opinion in elections and across a number of important issue areas - and resulting in policies that harm Latinos disproportionately. Mark D. Ramirez is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. David A. M. Peterson is Professor and Whitaker-Lindgren Faculty Fellow in Political Science at Iowa State University. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos (Cambridge University Press) changes that. It argues that such accounts fundamentally underestimate the political power of whites' animus toward Latinos and thus miss how conflict extends well beyond immigration to issues such as voting rights, criminal punishment, policing, and which candidates to support. Providing historical and cultural context and drawing on rich survey and experimental evidence, Mark Ramirez and David Peterson show that Latino racism-ethnicism (LRE) is a coherent belief system about Latinos that is conceptually and empirically distinct from other forms of out-group hostility, and from partisanship and ideology. Moreover, animus toward Latinos has become a powerful force in contemporary American politics, shaping white public opinion in elections and across a number of important issue areas - and resulting in policies that harm Latinos disproportionately. Mark D. Ramirez is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. David A. M. Peterson is Professor and Whitaker-Lindgren Faculty Fellow in Political Science at Iowa State University. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD.

Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos (Cambridge University Press) changes that. It argues that such accounts fundamentally underestimate the political power of whites' animus toward Latinos and thus miss how conflict extends well beyond immigration to issues such as voting rights, criminal punishment, policing, and which candidates to support. Providing historical and cultural context and drawing on rich survey and experimental evidence, Mark Ramirez and David Peterson show that Latino racism-ethnicism (LRE) is a coherent belief system about Latinos that is conceptually and empirically distinct from other forms of out-group hostility, and from partisanship and ideology. Moreover, animus toward Latinos has become a powerful force in contemporary American politics, shaping white public opinion in elections and across a number of important issue areas - and resulting in policies that harm Latinos disproportionately. Mark D. Ramirez is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. David A. M. Peterson is Professor and Whitaker-Lindgren Faculty Fellow in Political Science at Iowa State University. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos (Cambridge University Press) changes that. It argues that such accounts fundamentally underestimate the political power of whites' animus toward Latinos and thus miss how conflict extends well beyond immigration to issues such as voting rights, criminal punishment, policing, and which candidates to support. Providing historical and cultural context and drawing on rich survey and experimental evidence, Mark Ramirez and David Peterson show that Latino racism-ethnicism (LRE) is a coherent belief system about Latinos that is conceptually and empirically distinct from other forms of out-group hostility, and from partisanship and ideology. Moreover, animus toward Latinos has become a powerful force in contemporary American politics, shaping white public opinion in elections and across a number of important issue areas - and resulting in policies that harm Latinos disproportionately. Mark D. Ramirez is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. David A. M. Peterson is Professor and Whitaker-Lindgren Faculty Fellow in Political Science at Iowa State University. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos (Cambridge University Press) changes that. It argues that such accounts fundamentally underestimate the political power of whites' animus toward Latinos and thus miss how conflict extends well beyond immigration to issues such as voting rights, criminal punishment, policing, and which candidates to support. Providing historical and cultural context and drawing on rich survey and experimental evidence, Mark Ramirez and David Peterson show that Latino racism-ethnicism (LRE) is a coherent belief system about Latinos that is conceptually and empirically distinct from other forms of out-group hostility, and from partisanship and ideology. Moreover, animus toward Latinos has become a powerful force in contemporary American politics, shaping white public opinion in elections and across a number of important issue areas - and resulting in policies that harm Latinos disproportionately. Mark D. Ramirez is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. David A. M. Peterson is Professor and Whitaker-Lindgren Faculty Fellow in Political Science at Iowa State University. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos (Cambridge University Press) changes that. It argues that such accounts fundamentally underestimate the political power of whites' animus toward Latinos and thus miss how conflict extends well beyond immigration to issues such as voting rights, criminal punishment, policing, and which candidates to support. Providing historical and cultural context and drawing on rich survey and experimental evidence, Mark Ramirez and David Peterson show that Latino racism-ethnicism (LRE) is a coherent belief system about Latinos that is conceptually and empirically distinct from other forms of out-group hostility, and from partisanship and ideology. Moreover, animus toward Latinos has become a powerful force in contemporary American politics, shaping white public opinion in elections and across a number of important issue areas - and resulting in policies that harm Latinos disproportionately. Mark D. Ramirez is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. David A. M. Peterson is Professor and Whitaker-Lindgren Faculty Fellow in Political Science at Iowa State University. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos (Cambridge University Press) changes that. It argues that such accounts fundamentally underestimate the political power of whites' animus toward Latinos and thus miss how conflict extends well beyond immigration to issues such as voting rights, criminal punishment, policing, and which candidates to support. Providing historical and cultural context and drawing on rich survey and experimental evidence, Mark Ramirez and David Peterson show that Latino racism-ethnicism (LRE) is a coherent belief system about Latinos that is conceptually and empirically distinct from other forms of out-group hostility, and from partisanship and ideology. Moreover, animus toward Latinos has become a powerful force in contemporary American politics, shaping white public opinion in elections and across a number of important issue areas - and resulting in policies that harm Latinos disproportionately. Mark D. Ramirez is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. David A. M. Peterson is Professor and Whitaker-Lindgren Faculty Fellow in Political Science at Iowa State University. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos (Cambridge University Press) changes that. It argues that such accounts fundamentally underestimate the political power of whites' animus toward Latinos and thus miss how conflict extends well beyond immigration to issues such as voting rights, criminal punishment, policing, and which candidates to support. Providing historical and cultural context and drawing on rich survey and experimental evidence, Mark Ramirez and David Peterson show that Latino racism-ethnicism (LRE) is a coherent belief system about Latinos that is conceptually and empirically distinct from other forms of out-group hostility, and from partisanship and ideology. Moreover, animus toward Latinos has become a powerful force in contemporary American politics, shaping white public opinion in elections and across a number of important issue areas - and resulting in policies that harm Latinos disproportionately. Mark D. Ramirez is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. David A. M. Peterson is Professor and Whitaker-Lindgren Faculty Fellow in Political Science at Iowa State University. David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is the least restrictive environment? The one that is appropriate! And which one is that in the world of hybrid models where no one even knows what regular education looks like? Great questions. Join Stacey Tié and me as we discuss LRE, what that might look like now, and how to advocate for your child. More information about Stacey can be found on her website: https://wholechildadvocates.com/

Before 1961, the United States did not publicly educate any children with any disabilities. If a child had cognitive or emotional disabilities, deafness, blindness or needed speech therapy, parents had to educate their children at home or pay for private education. In 1975, the US voted to ensure that all children, regardless of their differences, should have access to free public school education. This was the start of “special education” in America's schools. INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES EDUCATION ACT (IDEA). Approximately 7 million students with disabilities ages 3-21 are served under IDEA. Students with disabilities comprise 14% of all public school students. IDEA requires schools to provide appropriate education to all students in the least restrictive environment (LRE) possible. This means, for example, it is illegal to separate children in wheelchairs from children who do not require such assistance. WHAT IS SPECIAL EDUCATION? Special education is specially designed instruction that addresses the unique needs of a student eligible to receive special education services. Services are provided in accordance with a school-developed Individualized Education Plan (IEP). Examples of special education services include speech-language, learning disabilities instruction, and audiology. In addition, accommodations like additional time for assignments or audio books; or services - such as an adult aide or picture schedule, might be provided to the student. SOME SCHOOLS ENDED THE YEAR EARLY - DEEMED REMOTE LEARNING TOO TOUGH. Georgia, Texas, and other states waived the minimum instruction time requirements during the pandemic. As states opened the gates to the earliest summer vacation in a century, they concurrently closed the book on IDEA-mandated special education services and braced for unrelenting litigation from parents of students with disabilities. BETSY DEVOS STANCE ON IDEA. In April, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos denied requests to give school districts the option to bypass major parts of IDEA. Devos' decision leaves questions about compliance and whether school districts will become vulnerable to legal action if they fail to fully serve students with disabilities, now that nearly every state has ordered or recommended that school buildings remain closed for the rest of the academic year. Students with disabilities have lost access to specific types of support they received in school — whether that was a therapy that required an adult to physically touch a student or a one-on-one aide to help a student with math assignments. BARRIERS TO SUSTAINING SPECIAL EDUCATION SERVICES - TOO MUCH TO OVERCOME? (1) Cost: An unresolved matter surrounding special education has always been the cost. It is more costly to educate children with disabilities because they require more time and resources than students without disabilities and school funding is falling off a cliff. Schools will be forced to negotiate extreme austerity measures and consolidate services. (2) Staffing: Special education staff shortages are felt by all school districts. As schools make reductions, special education teachers, who often serve smaller caseloads than regular education teachers, will equally share the pain of attrition of reduction in force. (3) Inclusion. From a philosophical angle, the pandemic advances the narrative of including students with disabilities with non-disabled peers. (4) Social Distancing. Students with disabilities who are unable to wear masks or adhere to social distancing, including students with intellectual disabilities, early childhood students, or students with autism, will present significant challenges to schools. With touchy seclusion and restraint laws on the books, teachers won't force students to wear masks against their will - even if the student doesn't possess the cognitive functioning to understand the benefit of the mask. Students without masks will fatigue virus-mitigation protocols and could open up litigation by school staff, parents and even other students claiming that their health is placed at risk. CANADIAN SCHOOL'S DYSTOPIAN BACK TO SCHOOL VIDEO. Doc plays a “Welcome to your new school routine and rules during virus times” video a Canadian school shared with families this week. Kids must stay 6 feet apart, playground closed, gym closed, yikes! He notes that many US schools are prepping similar misguided, impractical protocols. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com. The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David P. Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests. The show seeks to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. This is episode 134 of The Safety Doc Podcast published on 5-10-2020. Purchase Dr. Perrodin's Book: School of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America. www.schooloferrors.com

Episode 6: Assistive Technology & Special Ed. Law Part 6 - Assistive Technology, LRE, and the IEP Recording Date: 2008 Transcript: Download available here: https://bit.ly/2UNEDpc Keywords: LRE, least restrictive environments, IEP, implementation of assistive technology, mainstream, assistive technology, special ed law, compensatory education, Judy Gran Episode Summary: Today's Episode is the 6th part of a seven-part series on Assistive Technology and Special Education Law. Part 6 explores the impact assistive technology can have on providing the least restrictive environment for students (LRE), and the importance of following recommendations in the IEP. Topical Index: Introduction [00:00] Jason - Assistive Technology and LRE [00:28] David - Assistive Technology and the IEP [01:58] David - Failure to properly implement assistive technology [02:53] David - the need to provide instruction in use of AT [03:46] Raphael - Independent AT evaluation [04:28] Raphael - Need for staff to be trained in use of AT [05:17] Raphael - failure to use mainstream technology that already exists [07:56] Lessons to be Learned [09:18] Closing [10:56] Subscribe to our podcast Notes go here Find out more at https://networks-adaptations-for-livin.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Episode 4: Assistive Technology & Special Ed. Law Part 4 Assistive Technology Cases - Principles from Case Law Recording Date: 2008 Keywords: FAPE, LRE, Failure to implement assistive technology recommendations, Judy Gran, Assistive Technology and special education, compensatory ed, compensatory education Transcript: Download available here: https://bit.ly/346aNPO Episode Summary: This episode brings us the fourth of our seven part series on assistive technology and special education law. This presentation, from 2008, was presented to a group of graduate students from Arcadia University. While the session was recorded some time ago, the principles and lessons learned still ring true today. Topical Index: Introduction [0:00] Failure to evaluate [0:23] Failure to incorporate recommended technology [0:55] LRE - Least Restrictive Environment [1:48] SET Process [2:07] Case overviews [2:56] Find out more at https://networks-adaptations-for-livin.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

        Prior Written Notice (PWN) pursuant to 34 CFR Sec. 300.503 gets a fair amount of general discussion among special education stake-holders, but, in today's post/podcast, I want to look at it more in-depth. Today's discussion looks more closely at the regulatory requirements and the types of special education contexts in which PWN becomes necessary.   I pulled a couple of examples from old case files that I can use to illustrate a number of points. These are old, closed cases from school districts where I currently have no active casework that happened years ago, but one of them involves bad players that I know are still out there.   The first one involved a student of an independent study charter school that had contracted with a third-party provider to deliver its special education and related services. Charter schools are often the worst at special education compliance, and online and independent study charters are usually the worst of the worst; for more information about that, see our prior post, "California Charter Schools & Special Education." This case was no exception.   To put this example PWN into context, first I have to explain what was going on at the time. Our autistic student with high cognition also had debilitating anxiety that, combined with his autistic perseverative thoughts, could spiral his behaviors out of control, requiring intensive Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) services.   This student also needed interventions to address his anxiety, for which the parents, through me as their advocate from our agency, had requested a referral for a mental health evaluation as part of the IEP process. At the time, what we were requesting was provided by the local County Behavioral Health (CBH) agency under contract with the local Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA), of which the chartering school district was a member.   So, while we were requesting a referral to the local CBH, it was under the auspices of an IEP-related assessment for the determination of IEP goals and services. In response, the third party special education contractor, using the local SELPA's PWN form, replied with the following:   Description of action proposed or refused by district: In a letter dated [DATE] and received by the charter on [DATE] the parents requested the school refer [STUDENT] to [CBH] Explanation of reason for proposal or refusal: Parents can make individual referrals themselves without the involvement of the school.   The PWN goes on to explain how parents can make their own community-based referral outside of the IEP process to the local CBH. In an effort to try and make it look like it was complying with the law by replying with official forms and filling in the blanks with words, what the charter's third-party contractor actually did was commit a substantive violation of a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE).   First of all, the request was for an IEP-related mental health evaluation and possible IEP goals and services. Going through the community-based referral process does not tie any mental health services provided to IEP goals and the delivery of a FAPE. Regardless of what our student may have or have not received by way of community-based mental health supports, none of that alleviated the IEP team from the mandated responsibilities of assessing for and providing any needed special education-related mental health services.   Further, the charter's response on official SELPA forms was issued by its third-party contractor, which had no direct legal obligation to our student to offer and deliver a FAPE. The third-party contractor issued PWN on behalf of the charter, which was supposed to be acting on behalf of its chartering district, the latter of which being the entity that was actually legally responsible for FAPE but had no idea any of this was going on.   What this was really about was the charter's third-party contractor not wanting any other entities involved over which it couldn't exercise any kind of control. Because CBH would have been directly funded by SELPA and the State, the charter's third-party special education contractor couldn't lord payment over its head to control how it conducted itself like it did with its contracted teaching personnel and service providers.   If anything, it put the third-party contractor's questionable conduct in the path of scrutiny to have an outside agency like the local CBH get involved. The third-party contractor denied the referral and pushed it back onto the parents in order to prevent CBH from becoming part of this student's IEP and implementation teams. It was out of fear of accountability that the third-party contractor denied the referral and pushed it back onto the parents to pursue through community-based resources outside of the IEP process.   Measurable annual mental health IEP goals with the local CBH as the responsible provider would have likely meant CBH personnel in the home, where additional special education services of all kinds were needed but not being provided. Having CBH come on board to provide mental health services under this student's IEP would have created outside, impartial witnesses to all of the other special education violations going on with this student's case at the hands of the charter's third-party contractor.   Adding CBH to this student's IEP would have made the chartering district answerable for making sure the mental health goals were implemented as written, which would have required CBH to actually do its job, putting the third-party contractor's scam operation at risk of exposure. Needless to say, this case ultimately went to a lawyer who filed for due process, the matter settled, and I can't talk about what happened after that.   Prior to and at the time of settlement, this kid was in no way ready to enter the brick-and-mortar school setting, which is far less restrictive than being educated at home. This was one of those situations where the independent studies charter school kept insisting that the student's living room was the general education setting because that's how it was for all of their students, without regard for the fact that the only reason his living room was the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) for him was because he couldn't handle a traditional classroom.   If this student had been enrolled in a traditional school district at the time, but still was receiving instruction at home, it would have been regarded as one of the most restrictive placement options possible. His in-home placement was light years from a general education classroom in a brick-and-mortar setting, which everybody knew he couldn't handle. It was a technicality that in-home instruction was the norm for independent studies charters, such as his. His situation wasn't about family educational choice; it was about individual educational need.   Educating him at home was an accommodation. His parents would have preferred to send him to school, in all honesty, but they made the choice to home-school because of his demanding special needs. He needed intensive autism and mental health services to get to the point where he was able to access the world outside his home with success.   The charter was effectively trying to turn him into a well-educated hermit, which often seems to be the case with students with these types of needs in independent study programs. Bringing the instruction to students who are challenged to function successfully outside of the home may seem to be prudent, but if it doesn't include related services meant to increase the student's independence and access to less restrictive learning environments, it's not a FAPE.   Preventing the provision of such services in order to avoid accountability is a despicable breach of ethics, as well as a monstrous denial of FAPE. First, in this case, the denial to refer for IEP-related mental health services as requested by the parents interfered with meaningful parent participation in the IEP process, in addition to violating procedure with respect to referrals for evaluations and reevaluations.   Secondly, it denied a FAPE because it meant the student's IEP was informed by insufficient assessment data. As a matter of FAPE, the student had a federally protected right to assessment in all areas of suspected disability and learning need. That right was denied when the charter's contractor chose to deny the mental health assessment referral and push the burden back onto the parents to pursue through community-based resources unrelated to the IEP process.   Further, the contractor's efforts to circumvent the IEP process not only undermined meaningful parent participation in the IEP process as promised by federal law, it also meant that the student's IEP was not reasonably calculated to render meaningful educational benefits in all areas of unique student need, which also denied a FAPE. As such, the student was being deprived of meaningful educational benefits in the areas of mental and emotional health, which was negatively impacting his behavior and, thus, access to education, which also denied a FAPE.   So, just on the basis of this misuse of an official PWN form, the charter's third-party contractor made the record of its efforts to circumvent the IEP process, indirectly on behalf of its charter school client's chartering district, thereby denying a FAPE in at least four different ways:   Denial of meaningful parent participation in the IEP process Failure to assess in all areas of suspected disability Failure to design IEPs that are reasonably calculated to render meaningful educational benefits in all areas of unique student need Failure to deliver meaningful educational benefits in all areas of unique student need   The point I want to get across is that, just because you get a PWN on official paperwork, it doesn't mean the education agency has actually followed the law. It's not just the matter of complying with procedure by sending something out titled "Prior Written Notice." What is written in the notice matters, and is regulated by federal law.   In my second example, also from years ago, and also ultimately settled after the family brought in an attorney, the situation was different. Our student had lived with his parents in the attendance area of a school district near the Southern border of California. Shortly before I became involved, this child's mother had passed away, leaving his father alone to provide all of the in-home support his autistic son with demanding needs required while holding down a job as a traveling engineer.   As difficult as it was, the most sensible thing to do under the circumstances was for the student to live most of the week with his grandmother in another community far to the north in the San Joaquin Valley. The student's grandmother, his late mother's mother, was available to be a full-time primary caregiver and his uncle, his late mother's brother, was available to help with any kind of important decision-making, such as with IEPs and regional center services. The student's father shared his educational decision-making authority with his mother-in-law and brother-in-law so that they could take on these serious responsibilities.   In anticipation of the student moving to his grandmother's and becoming a student of the local school district, his uncle went to enroll him and shared with the District the student's IEP. The IEP from his incoming school district included a significant amount of Non-Public Agency (NPA) services that were provided during and outside of the school day because of the intensity of the student's needs.   These services were not typical for most IEPs, but IEPs are supposed to be individualized. Based on the evidence it had at the time, the IEP team at his previous school district had determined that these services were necessary based on his unique circumstances to provide him with a FAPE.   The receiving school district nearly had a fit when it saw this student's incoming IEP. It utilized every procedural tactic at its disposal to argue that it didn't have to implement the incoming IEP as written. That's one of the issues that was addressed by the settlement, so I can't talk about it, here, which is a bummer because the legal arguments around this issue were total fireworks.   The bigger point that almost got lost over the arguments over procedure, which was likely the District's intent by arguing over procedure, was what the student substantively required as a matter of FAPE. The receiving school district simply had no intention of paying for NPA services and insisted on stripping out all of the individualized supports described by the student's IEP, which had him placed in a general education setting with age-typical language and behavior models, and placing him in a Special Day Class (SDC) for students with autism.   This student was mainstreamed with a 1:1 NPA behavior aide to keep him involved in the instruction and facilitate his language, social, and classroom behavior skills development. The receiving school district proposed to put him in a full-time classroom filled with other students with needs like his own and no models of age-typical language and behavior. He was being successful in his previous placement with the configuration of services described by his IEP.   The receiving school district had never met the student, much less assessed him, and therefore had no educational or legal basis to place him in a more restrictive setting. Regardless of whether procedure required the receiving school district to implement the incoming IEP as written or not, it was still obligated to offer and provide a substantively appropriate FAPE. It had no data to inform its offer of services and placement, and certainly nothing that suggested his needs had changed such that a more restrictive placement was educationally necessary.   After articulating the request for the receiving school district to implement the incoming IEP as written, this was the District's response, crafted with the assistance of its attorney, as I understand it:   Description of the Action Proposed or Refused by the District   The [District] and [County Office of Education (COE)] are refusing to provide BCBA supervision of the BIP dated [Date]. The District and [COE] are denying the request for 1:1 instructional aide support to be provided by a NPA. The District and [COE] are also denying in home support, parent training, and direct speech and language services provided in the home. The District and [COE] continue to offer a [COE] operated special day classroom located at [Campus] as an interim placement for 30 days ...   Explanation Why the District Proposes or Refuses to Take Action   ... you requested that [Student] be provided with a BCBA to oversee the BIP. The District and [COE] offered 60 minutes per month of consult behavior intervention services to address the implementation and training of the BIP ... to be provided by a [COE] program specialist with ... required training for Functional Behavioral Assessments (FBA) and BIP ... the District and [COE] feel that the program specialist would be able to implement the strategies and recommendations of the BIP.   ... you requested that a NPA provide the direct 1:1 instructional aide services. At the meetings, you indicated that the NPA instructional aide is essential to the successful implementation of the current IEP. The District and [COE] recommend intensive individualized services daily ... Intensive individualized services are provided by [COE] instructional aides ... The District and [COE] feel that [COE's] trainings, in addition to the support and oversight provided by the program specialist, provide enough knowledge for [COE] to successfully support [Student] and fully implement the current IEP.   The District and [COE] are refusing to provide these additional services and continue to recommend 360 minutes per month of direct speech and language services and 30 minutes per month of consult speech and language services. Given that the in home services that are being requested are now embedded in the categorical program in a way that his prior placement in a non-categorical program did not provide, in home services are not needed.   So, that's a lot, but here again is an example of a school district complying with procedure by sending a PWN, but, in doing so, making the record regarding its substantive denials of a FAPE. As stated previously, the receiving school district had conducted absolutely no assessments that indicated that this student needed to be placed in an SDC instead of supported in general education with push-in supports. This was an LRE case.   Basically, what the receiving school district was doing was making a placement decision on the basis of what it was willing to spend rather than what was necessary to educate the student in the LRE. The only guidance it had as to what the student required was the incoming IEP. It had no idea whether what it was offering as a 30-day interim placement would completely derail this kid or not (which it would have).   The language that jumped out at me that really chapped my hide were the statements about what "the District and [COE] feel" is best in the absence of any evidence. Basically, this was the District and COE admitting to basing their decisions on opinions rather than the facts that the regulations require.   It's a violation of both the IDEA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act to to change the type of placement a student with disabilities receives without first assessing to determine that student's current placement needs. Placement decisions are based on what is the LRE in which the services can be rendered such that the goals are met. There was no data demonstrating that an SDC placement was suddenly the LRE for our student, after he had been successfully placed in general education with push-in supports under the IEP he already had.   Like I said, this case was ultimately settled and it happened several years ago. But, these kinds of things continue to go on all the time. I'm only citing old cases, here, because I don't want to talk about anything currently being litigated or potentially litigated. The regulations for PWN have been the same for a long, long time, so there's not some recent change in the law that would make older cases irrelevant.   As a parent, if you get a PWN in the mail denying a request you've made, don't assume that the explanation you're being given is a good one. Just because it's on official letterhead or official form doesn't automatically make it proper.   Really, it all boils down to 34 CFR Sec. 300.503(b)(2), which requires any PWN to include, "An explanation of why the agency proposes or refuses to take the action." The explanation as to why a parent request is being denied better be a good one, or all the District accomplishes is using a procedural requirement to document its substantive denials of a FAPE on the record. If that's the case, it's evidence that parents can use in due process to achieve appropriate educational outcomes for their children with special needs.

  If you've read or listened to our past posts and podcasts, or have otherwise been educating yourself on the special education process, hopefully by now you understand that special education is supposed to follow a particular procedural flow. This is not only the method supported by best practices, but also the method required by federal law.   To recap, assessment data provides the present levels of performance and baselines necessary to formulate educationally appropriate IEP goals for an individual learner. The goals describe what the IEP is supposed to make happen. Once the enormous milestone of developing the IEP goals has been achieved, then it's time to figure out what services are going to be necessary and where they can be delivered in order for each goal to be met. This is where things can suddenly go off the rails.   It does no good to articulate sensible outcomes in measurable terms if effective services aren't put into place to actually work on them and make them happen. Goals are just hopes if you don't have a plan for the services you will need to meet them, and hope is not a strategy. But, this is often where things can get tricky in developing an IEP.   There are two common reasons for why things can go wrong at this stage: 1) everybody means well, but they don't know what they're doing; or, 2) something fishy is going on. In the first instance, it's usually a matter of training. In the second instance, somebody is gaming the system in pursuit of an agenda in which the student is ancillary, but not the point.   In many instances, where this process gets tripped up actually starts with the development of the IEP goals. When the IEP goals are improperly written and/or necessary goals are excluded altogether, determining what services are necessary to deliver appropriately ambitious educational benefits to each student becomes compromised.   I've had many parents come to me over the years saying things like, "My kid needs more speech and language. He doesn't know word meanings, can't follow instructions, and can't express himself, but he's only getting 20 minutes of speech per week." They look at increasing the service minutes in speech as though that's going to somehow magically translate into working on all areas of his speech/language needs, when the real issue is that there is only one speech goal in the IEP for articulation and the rest of their child's speech/language needs have no goals.   Because there are no goals for anything else, the number of speech/language service minutes is limited to how much time is reasonable to pursue the one goal that is there for articulation. 20 minutes per week to work on nothing but articulation isn't automatically off-base.   What these parents really mean, when they say their kids need more speech and language services, is that the IEP is not targeting all of their speech/language needs. If that's true, then the IEP team has to go back and look at the data to determine what other areas of speech and/or language should also be targeted by explicit intervention, then write goals to those specific areas of intervention need.   Once those new goals are written, the IEP team can then look at how many service minutes will be necessary to meet each goal. In addition to service minutes, which are expressed in terms of frequency and duration, the location of where the services will be delivered has to be determined.   It isn't automatic that related services, like speech/language or occupational therapy (OT), get delivered in a pull-out setting. The location of services, like all other parts of an IEP, must be individualized to the unique needs of the student.   Pull-out services require the student to be removed from the classroom, often during instruction, and can interfere with learning. It's a balancing act to find the right time to pull a student out of the regular class routine to go participate in direct pull-out services.   Push-in services bring the intervention into the student's classroom and make it part of the classroom experience. Sometimes, this can be small group instruction with a reading specialist when the general education class is broken into small reading groups as a normal matter of instruction. This weaves the special education into the general education situation so that students with reading challenges are facilitated in participating with everyone else.   Embedded services are much like push-in, but they are intertwined with the instruction throughout the entire school day as a matter of instructional design for the classroom. An example of this would be embedded speech/language instruction and Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) in the program design of a school specifically for students with autism who cannot successfully function and learn on an integrated campus.   In this example, because it can be reasonably expected that all of the students in such a special school will need these supports according to the research and evidence-based practices, they are woven into the instructional design of the program. They are part of how the instruction is delivered on a continual basis.   In such cases, the integration of speech/language and ABA have to be used to describe the placement rather than parsed out as individual related service minutes, because they are part of the placement design that makes that particular placement appropriate for certain students. In this instance, they are not discrete services provided outside of or in addition to what is otherwise happening in the classroom.   Which leads into the next phase of the process, which is placement. Placement is the last decision to be made by the IEP team. There's a really good reason for this. Placement is supposed to be determined by what is the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) in which the services can be delivered such that the goals are met.   Special education is a service, not a place. The whole point of the IEP is to meet the IEP, but it is discrimination on the basis of handicapping condition to automatically remove kids from the general education setting for instruction just because they have disabilities. Unless removal to a more restrictive setting is the only way for the goals to get met, it's not the LRE.   LRE is relative; what is restrictive for one student may be empowering for another. A student with autism who can nonetheless function in the general education setting with push-in ABA supports, for example, would be inappropriately placed in a school for students with autism.   Sometimes parents mistakenly think a special school is better because it's focused on the specific types of needs their child has. But, it's only better if the student cannot otherwise be successful in a less restrictive setting. Restrictiveness of setting is directly related to the severity of the student's needs and the intensity of instruction necessary to meet the IEP goals.   Sometimes, creating an appropriately hybridized placement offer for a student who needs some pull-out services, but can otherwise participate in general education the rest of the school day, is such a difficult thing to coordinating in a particular school's pre-existing culture that special ed staffs find it more convenient to put kids in more restrictive settings. This gives special ed staffs more control over the quality of the instruction and allows them to prevent their kids from being harmed by discriminatory general education practices, but it segregates their students on the basis of handicapping condition.   Sheltering students with disabilities from abuse by sequestering them from bigots inadvertently reinforces discriminatory practices that keep people with disabilities from equally accessing the world at large. Preventing the abuse of students with disabilities through diversity appreciation instruction, as well as proactive, research-based Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) on a schoolwide basis, makes far more sense.   The LRE laws exist for this reason. Rather than sequester students with traits in common to prevent them from being bullied by the rest of the students, it is more appropriate to teach all of the students how to get along with each other. Appropriate programming results in general education students looking out for their peers with special needs rather than picking on them and mocking them. It facilitates unity in the school community.   Because LRE is relative to each student, no parent should go into the IEP process demanding a placement because somebody else's kid got it and they're doing great there. Somebody else's kid is not your kid. You don't base IEP placement decisions for your child off of what somebody else needs or gets; you base it on your own child's unique, individual learning needs as targeted by the IEP goals.   Most school districts will tell you that the "continuum of placement" for special education is whatever they already have. That's only partly accurate. What the school district already has is part of the continuum of placement, but if the placement the student needs doesn't already exist within the district, the placement has to be outsourced or created.   It's appropriate for the school district to describe the types of placements it already has. These can include, but are not limited to: general education placement with push-in supports; pull-out to a special education class and/or therapies for part of the school day for targeted specialized support, with placement in general education for the rest of the school day; full-time placement in a special education class; and placement for all or part of the day in a non-public school.   But students are not limited to the types of placements already put in place within a school district. Sometimes, the closest appropriate school is so far away that the child and a family member live in a nearby apartment or other local housing arrangement during the week and go home on weekends, with their local school district funding the housing and travel expenses as related transportation services in the student's IEP. There's caselaw around this issue in favor of students (see, for example, Ojai vs. Jackson).   There is no master list of all the "types" of placements that can be offered to a special education student. Like every other part of an IEP, placement is supposed to be tailored to the student, only with the LRE requirements relative to what services it will take to meet the goals in mind. Sometimes, IEP teams have to get creative to meet highly unique individual student needs.   Other times, the types of supports a student needs are relatively common such that there are entire classrooms that provide those kinds of supports to all of their students. Resource Specialist Program (RSP) services are the most commonly delivered special education services. These are the least intensive forms of special education services provided.   Most students on IEPs have relatively mild learning disabilities that make RSP support a useful tool in helping them maintain grade-level performance. They are usually mostly in the general education setting with some special education supports and plenty of them go on to college and successful careers.   Many of these students glide through the K-12 system with an IEP that no one knows about but their families and teachers. Most of their peers have no idea and their closest friends realize it's no big deal and don't care.   Further, it is becoming less stigmatizing to be on an IEP than it used to be, so students are being more forthcoming with their peers about their special education statuses, just as matters of fact, without judgment entering the picture. If only the adults could follow their lead.

LRE is an important part of an appropriate special education program. It provides special needs children as much exposure to the general education environment as possible as part of their autism journey. Listen to Chuck & Judy as they discuss why it's crucial, and why it's worth fighting for.Theme music: Journey by Declan DP. Used with permission.Sources: Understood.org:Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) What You Need to KnowFAPE at a Glance

Star Wars en Direct – Lors de cette édition de Littérature, Loïc et Francis offrent leur critique BD des volumes de l'Ère de la République Les Héros ainsi que Les Villains disponible chez Panini Comics France.

Amanda and Vickie have another special treat for you! They were granted permission to replay their time being interviewed by Anne Fricke, from the “Walking With Freya; A Journey Through Special Needs Parenting” podcast. It was a fun conversation and you’re going to enjoy this! Show Highlights: Amanda and Vickie provide the backstory of the Inclusive Education Project. The IEP non-profit has evolved to where it has coordinated with several law schools in the Southern California area to provide free legal services. Guess what: the IEP podcast wasn’t expected to thrive!  Amanda defines inclusion and discusses how it applies. Vickie addresses obstacles to inclusion. Anne, Amanda, and Vickie drill down into Waldorf-inspired schools, charter schools, public schools, and the legal meanings behind LRE and FAPE. If families of children with special needs band together and present their issues at school board meetings, they can make more noise than in IEP meetings. If the school board doesn’t listen, they need to be voted out. Campaign for school board members to get elected that WILL listen to the community. 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 Did You Miss Where Amanda and Vickie Interviewed Anne Fricke? Catch It Here! Walking With Freya; A Journey Through Special Needs Parenting Anne’s Self-Published Poetry Book One Mother’s Revolution, by Anne Fricke

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.

Join us here on Autism live for Jargon of the day, Ask an Autism Expert and for the first time in weeks Your Rights with Bonnie Yates! don't miss it! Like Autism Live on Facebook at http://facebook.com/autismlive Sign up for Autism Live’s free newsletter at: http://www.autism-live.com/join-our-email-list.aspx Autism Live is a production of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD), headquartered in Woodland Hills, California, and with offices throughout, the United States and around the globe. For more information on therapy for autism and other related disorders, visit the CARD website at http://centerforautism.com

For å nå langsiktig mål må vi være i utvikling og det betyr ofte at vi må lære oss noe vi ikke kan. Der stopper de fleste opp. Dropper det. Faller av. Mister drømmen sin. Men det finnes en måte å bli god på å nå målene dine, og samtidig nyte prosessen. Og det starter med å bli god på å lære noe nytt : ) Her er min prosess. Kopier den gjerne. 1. Bryt ned målet ditt i små steg 2. Ditt «Hvorfor» 3. Bryt ned målet i enda mindre steg (50 min tasks) 4. Kutt ut alle forstyrrelser 5. Finn en læremester 6. Øvelse gjør mester 7. Feedback 8. NÅR du står fast – gjør noe annet 9. Forvent at det er utfordrende 10. Mål fremgangen din 11. Ta noen sjanser 12. Vær standhaftig GJØR JOBBEN DE ANDRE IKKE KIDDER! De som jobber også når det blir tøft er alltid de som får de beste resultatene. Her er ting jeg ikke kunne før, men som i dag er mine styrker: • Snakke foran forsamling • Lage videoer • Selge på nett Her er de tingene jeg øver meg på akkurat nå: • Ansette og lære opp team • Arrangere store eventer (+400 deltakere) • Selge produkter til 170 000 kr på nett • Lage videoer med tekst og klippe inn bilder • Stå foran kamera med noen bak det --- NEDLASTNINGER --- • 12 ting for å lære nye ting raskere - sjekk ut bloggen: http://www.grysinding.no/209 • Få mer selvtillit: grysinding.no/selvtillit • Chat med meg her: https://m.me/gry.sinding • Følg meg på Instastories her: https://www.instagram.com/stories/grysinding/

A mom asks about her child's referral to special ed, but I have a few questions for her. The short answer to your question: No, a teacher cannot just place a child in special ed.Here are the blog posts I reference in the podcast:RTILRESupport the show (https://paypal.me/ADayInOurShoes)

Today on Autism Live get ready for our weekly episode of Your Rights with Bonnie Yates! followed by an exciting interview from the CEO and Founder of Nawmal technologies, Paul Nightingale. http://lawyer4children.com/ https://www.nawmal.com/ Like Autism Live on Facebook at http://facebook.com/autismlive Sign up for Autism Live’s free newsletter at: http://www.autism-live.com/join-our-email-list.aspx Autism Live is a production of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD), headquartered in Woodland Hills, California, and with offices throughout, the United States and around the globe. For more information on therapy for autism and other related disorders, visit the CARD website at http://centerforautism.com

Learn the alphabet soup of resources that support free appropriate public education (FAPE) for students with disabilities, including IDEA, LRE, IEPs, and 504s. Additionally, learn what to do if you think your education rights are being violated.

Today on Autism Live, Shannon covers some Jargon of the day but due to some technical difficulties it will be done a little different than normal. Also we have Your Rights with Bonnie Yates, Followed by the Co-Founder of Zenaviv, Harish Bikmal! Zenaviv.com Like Autism Live on Facebook at http://facebook.com/autismlive Sign up for Autism Live’s free newsletter at: http://www.autism-live.com/join-our-e... Autism Live is a production of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD), headquartered in Woodland Hills, California, and with offices throughout, the United States and around the globe. For more information on therapy for autism and other related disorders, visit the CARD website at http://centerforautism.com

LRE #3 Solar Storm (includes Bonus track : Flug - Rejected (Original Mix) https://soundcloud.com/flug

LRE #2 - Prismatic Soulstice by Laidek

Do you have a child with behavioral issues? How do you get the right accommodations and appropriate placement under special education law? Part 1 Committee Meetings – The Process 504  IEP IDEA Classification How is classification determined? What is the difference between a 504 plan and an IEP and why it's important to know. My child is very bright and does well academically but cannot learn due to behavioral/neurobiological issues so the school will not classify him? Part 2 The IDEA FAPE – Free Appropriate Public Education LRE – Least Restrictive Environment What if my child isn't failing but is unable to learn or attend class due to behaviors? What are different classifications for children and teens with mental illness or behavioral issues? Do I have to use an attorney to get my child classified? What rights attach to someone who has been classified? What if my child has been classified and I don't think that problems are being solved? The District offered my child a seat in a program and I've heard things about it that I don't like and feel it will worsen her behaviors, do I have to accept it? How can parents enroll their child in a private school that best accommodates their child at district expense? Is an IEP a legal contract?    

Super excited to chat today with Tim Villegas, special education teacher, blogger, podcaster, founder of the thinkinclusive.us website, and crusader for the true inclusion of kids with disabilities. Catch up with Tim on Facebook and on Twitter.

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 ~    

Investing in fine art, collectible autos, and musical instruments used to be just a pipe dream for your average investor. But with the need to get uncorrelated diversification and a hot rarity market, retail investors haven't given up. And now, Liquid Rarity Exchange has found a way to securitize rarities so that the other 99% can invest in them. With technology and patented-processes, LRE can take real assets and make stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, or derivatives out of them. LRE's COO, Susan Carpenter joins me on Tradestreaming Radio to discuss the market for collectibles, her firm's process and technology and where rarity investing is headed. ***Thanks for joining us on Tradestreaming Radio -- I'm very grateful for your time. It's awesome learning about these new tools and technologies together. If you're listening to this episode on iTunes, please give it a ranking and rating so that others know of the value you're finding in it. Thank you ahead of time.****