One Mother's Struggle: How ACE Was Born
I was a young single mother struggling to make ends meet on public assistance and financial aid while a full time student at the University of California, Irvine. We lived on campus at UC Irvine and my son attended the local elementary school. Before my son started kindergarten, I had an appointment with the elementary school principal and informed her my son had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and he required a some type of extra supervision. When my son's hyperactivity started becoming difficult to manage in the Kindergarten classroom, misguided school personnel reported suspected child abuse to Child Protective Services as the cause of my son's hyperactivity. During my son's kindergarten school year, I was investigated for child abuse on three separate occasions. All allegations were found to be totally unsubstantiated. In fact, the Child Protective Services workers found that I was actively enrolled in parenting classes through my church. Meanwhile, the principal suspended my son for bad behavior weekly, despite the fact his behavior was the result of a childhood disorder.
This process of suspensions and the school's choice to separate my son from other children during recess and lunch, having him stay with the resource teacher due to a lack of supervisory staff for the playground, began to deeply wound my son. This process escalated into a change of placement. By first grade, my highly intelligent hyperactive child was placed in classes with low-functioning Autistic children and wasn't allowed to learn with his peers.
Each year I watched my son become more unhappy. By third grade, my son would come home every day and say, "I hate myself," "I'm an idiot," and "everybody hates me." It was a devastating experience witnessing my happy, smart son turn into a self-hating, mean and depressed little boy who, as he got older, couldn't even read. I was disturbed by the fact that no one seemed to think the school was doing anything wrong, nor did anyone seem alarmed by the fact that by third grade, my son couldn't read.
I was desperate to get my sweet son back. I opened the phone book and started calling education lawyers at random. Not one attorney would take my case without several thousand dollars in fees and retainers. I couldn't get any help because I couldn't pay for an attorney.
I finally found a state funded organization that knew all about Special Education rights. I called this organization several times for help and couldn't get a return phone call. When I arrived at their office, the woman at the desk smirked, sarcastically remarked "good luck" and with a loud thud, slammed the California Composite of Law book on the desk.
I spent five weeks reading the entire law book and writing letters to every person in my district I could think of. After my letter writing campaign proved ineffective, I called that organization back again and begged to speak to someone that could tell me what to do. I was told that the director was too busy to answer individual questions. I found myself stuck alone with a law book.
While reading the law and crying because I felt helpless, I found a legal code that required immidiate state intervention, by the California Department of Education, if a school's actions interfered with a parent's ability to work. Because the weekly suspensions were impacting my ability to teach my sections as a first year graduate student teaching assistant at the university, I was able to get immediate state involvement. Representatives from the California Department of Education in Sacramento flew down to Irvine one week after I filed my state complaint against the school district for violating my son's special education rights. I then spent the next four months working with the State and the laws in that book to get my son into a non-public school for highly intelligent children with behavioral problems. The public school paid the tuition for my son's new school between the 4th and 6th grades.
After two years in that school, my happy and healthy son was back and ready to learn to read. The battle wasn't over. My son wasn't reading like other students his age. In fact, reading and writing was still a huge struggle. In the 8th grade, my highly intelligent son's writing was a serious problem. Here is something he wrote about his high school goals:
After another round of advocacy, with the help of our Access Center for Education 2004 team, we were able to get my son the help he needed in reading and writing. We able to get the IEP team to realize my son needed one-to-one reading tutoring during the summer for three hours per day and six hours education therapy per week between the end of summer school and the beginning of the fall semester of his freshman year in high school. In addition, the IEP team agreed that he needed individual remediation three time per weeks, after school, during the school year. Today, as a sophomore, my son actually says "I love school" and is passing all his classes. He's in his first year of Track and Field and is a Junior Varsity team member. My son's life was saved because of special education advocacy.
Advocacy
I have learned that the power to rescue a child's life is in the hands of parents and advocates. Witnessing my son's transformation into darkness and bringing him out of it through special education advocacy revealed my calling in life. I decided that the best life I could live would be the one spent helping other children and parents overcome the pain and suffering of a flawed system that harms children and families. Advocacy was and is a constant learning experience.
In the early years of helping other parents, I developed my skills one meeting and one book at a time. Understanding the assessments schools use to evaluate special needs children is a crucial element in designing an appropriate education plan. The different layers of special education became visible when working with attorneys in due process cases.
After eight years advocating for my son and other parents, I still feel like I'm learning something new with each family. Every family and child are truly unique and each case requires adaptation to address each situation. There are some constants between cases that we are able to harness in our IEP Game training in order to empower parents by helping them learn how to analyze their child's case and prepare for IEP meetings.
Most importantly, ACE is a non-profit dedicated to accessible advocacy and professional service with understanding. We know how difficult and confusing confronting Special Education IEP teams can be. ACE helps parents become active participants in their child's education. We offer parents options that address the powerlessness we see them experience in special education.
Every child deserves an appropriate education.