Rubber swords

This post is specifically intended for the people whom I have in the past referred to as "shepherds of the broken", the parents of special needs children, most of whom are quiet heroes.

Sometimes, when you are the parent of a child with a disability, there are times that you have to stand up and fight a system that shamelessly puts its own self-interests ahead of the very real interests of your kid.

It probably doesn't hurt if you and your spouse are lawyers.

Judges: School Held Autistic Student 'Hostage'

(Naperville Sun) NAPERVILLE Two judges have said Naperville School District 203 held an autistic student "hostage" to "blackmail" his parents into agreeing to its plans for his education.

Killian Hynes, a nonverbal, autistic 6-year-old Naperville boy, communicates using a device known as a Tango. It's as important to Killian as a wheelchair to a child with a physical disability, said his father, Kevin Hynes, 43.

That's why the Hyneses took legal action when Naperville School District 203 withheld Killian's communication device.

"I know my rights, and I know my son's rights," said Kevin, a lawyer, as is his wife, Beth, 44.

(Read more...)

(Thanks, Dorothy, for bringing this story to my attention, and Erin for the link.)

Schuyler's current situation is so good that it's easy to forget how bad it was before we moved to Plano, or how firmly a school system can dig in its heels when it is convinced that it has an interest that it needs to protect from another resource-gobbling special needs family.

If you are the parent of a broken child, you may have had your doubts as to how seriously your kid's school district takes you. There's no telling how seriously they take you as a parent or as a knowledgeable advocate for your kid, but don't ever forget that as a threat to their autonomy and their allocation of their precious resources, they take you very seriously indeed.

I googled the lawyer for the school district in the Naperville case and found her listing with a law firm which appears to specialize in representing educational institutions and local governments. (Her name isn't exactly a secret, and I'm hardly saying anything here that would get me in trouble, but I think I'll give her a fake name just the same. She's no different from countless others doing the same kind of work.) Her listing makes it pretty clear what she does for a living, and what her work might mean for a great many special needs parents.

Gretchen McLawyerson focuses on special education and students' rights law. She counsels and represents public school districts at IEP meetings, due process hearings, mediation, and student expulsion and residency hearings. Gretchen has defended district decisions regarding evaluations, services and placement of special education students in due process hearings. She has successfully removed dangerous students from the regular education environment and also prevailed in hearings to defend against a parent's unilateral private placement of a student. She has assisted clients in building residency and discipline cases involving students and has successfully defended districts' decisions in state and federal courts. Gretchen's litigation experience also includes proceedings before federal and state agencies including the Department of Education, the State Board of Education, and the Office for Civil Rights.

To be fair, a list of her recent presentations suggests that a great deal of her work involves teaching schools how to provide adequate resources for its students (while avoiding liability issues, of course). I'm sure Gretchen McLawyerson sleeps pretty well at night and believes that the work she does is in the best interests of her clients and their ability to provide services to as many students as possible, and she's probably right about that at least some of the time.

But when she gave a presentation titled "Taking Charge of the IEP Process", it doesn't take much imagination to form an opinion about who it is that she is empowering, or who it is that she believes the IEP needs to be taken charge from. Gretchen McLawyerson focuses on students' rights law, but given her clients and their interests, do you think her expertise in this area primarily rests in knowing exactly where those students' rights begin or end?

And she's just one lawyer, just one random example taken from one news story about one case that happened to catch the eye of one reader of my one little blog about one broken child amongst millions.

When I write in my book about "fighting monsters with rubber swords", it's not always Schuyler's polymicrogyria that is the monster. Shepherds of the broken protect our flocks from a variety of wolves.