SPECIAL-EDUCATION-GUAM

Are you a parent or advocate who helps children with autism or another disability, receive special education services? Have you been told that you can not attend IEP meetings with parents in a certain district? Would you like to learn a few tips on how to handle this situation? This article will give you 4 tips to use if this situation happens to you or an advocate that you work with.

The Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) states that parents have the right to have people help them, who have knowledge or special expertise regarding the student. IDEA also states that parents have the right to be equal participants, in their child’s IEP process! If parents ask an advocate to come to a meeting with them, the advocate is to be considered an IEP team member.

OSEP agrees with this and issued a memorandum on January 15, 2004 clarifying an advocate’s role at an IEP meeting. It states that: Since the parent has invited the advocate to the IEP meeting, this person is considered to be an IEP team member and may assume an active role in the student’s IEP. Some advocates are being banned from student’s IEP meetings because they are considered divisive! Below are 4 Tips to use if this happens to you:

Dee Alpert, a lawyer who spent her professional life as a special education advocate, died of a brain aneurysm this weekend at the age of 65, reports the Wall Street Journal. Alpert had dedicated her career to helping special education students in the New York City public school system.

She was considered something of an unofficial inspector general, since she had a rare grasp of the “arcana of school regulations, audits and budget.” She used this knowledge in assisting parents and advocates, often for no charge.

Over the course of her investigations, she uncovered a discrepancy in handling abuse allegations, which depended on whether a victim was a special education student. In one of her most controversial exposes, titled “Abu Ghraib on the Hudson” Alpert broke down the proposed state regulation and uncovered a clause that would allow schools to lock up students with disabilities in a “seclusion room.”