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 Commentary:
Little Chair - Long Table
by Tricia and Calvin Luker,
Our Children Left Behind, October 27, 2003
For more articles like this
visit
https://www.bridges4kids.org.
Remember that first IEP team meeting for your child? Let’s see
if we get this right. You’re a young mother and you’re probably
alone. You’re a little nervous, maybe even scared about what is
supposed to happen at the meeting. You’ve been dealing with
“experts” on other parts of your child’s life as you’ve learned
about the medical and community realities of having a child with
a disability, and you haven’t gained any measure of confidence
in your abilities as a parent.
You walk into the IEP team meeting room. You see the little
chair and the long table. Across the table from you sit six or
seven people with degrees and titles who say they “know” your
child. They hold your child’s evaluations and other paperwork in
front of them that you’ve never seen. During introductions it
seems like everyone else has a title like Mister, Mizz or
Doctor, while you’re “just a mom.”
Through the course of the meeting, while you squirm on the
little chair – we call it the “mom” chair -- it seems to you
that it doesn’t take long for everyone else to start calling you
“Mom,” while they keep the special titles for themselves. After
all, they are the “experts.” The meeting seems to run smoothly,
with them doing most of the talking and you doing most of the
listening. Before you know it, they thrust a multi-page document
in front of you and insist you check “this box” and “sign here”
so that they can be about the business of meeting your child’s
special education needs.
Tired, sore [from the “mom” chair] and confused, you follow
their directions and the meeting concludes. Your child now has
an Individualized Education Plan, and you have a headache, and a
sinking feeling that – whatever happened – you’ve just signed
away your child’s future and you have no idea what you’ve just
done. You leave the school in a fog, hoping that whatever you
did was right by your child.
After two or three of these IEP Team Meetings – and continuing
doubt on your part about whether you’ve really made sure your
child’s educational needs are being met by the IEP -- you’ve
finally connected with some parent groups and started to learn a
little about the IEP process and you and your child’s rights
under the IEP. If you’re somewhat lucky, you’ve even found a
group or organization that has volunteer advocates available to
help you prepare for IEP Team Meetings in advance. In some
instances the volunteer advocates have even been able to attend
the meetings with you. What relief this brings to you. Finally,
you don’t feel quite so small, inadequate or unprepared sitting
in the “mom” chair, and the line of “experts” across from you
aren’t so daunting when you’ve got an advocate sitting in a
little chair beside you.
The volunteer advocates sitting next to you went through the
same IEP growth process. They’ve learned the ropes from their
own “mom” chair, and have made time to learn enough to help you
and other parents through the process. They’ve carved out
precious time to attend special education workshops. They’ve
paid child care workers, paid their own transportation and
preparation costs, and become an invaluable resource to you and
other parents. They attend meetings for free, paying for copying
costs out of their own pockets, along with the other costs
associated with making sure their own child’s needs are met
while they are helping you. They’ve done this because of their
own experiences in the “mom” chair, and their refusal to see you
and other parents go through the process without help.
But wait. There is a sinister move afoot in schools across
America. We’re hearing stories about a new school trend. In
school after school, volunteer parent advocates arriving to
attend IEP Team Meetings with parents are being greeted at the
meeting room door by school administrators. The administrators
are telling the advocates that when they attend IEP meetings
they are engaging in the unauthorized practice of law. They are
telling the advocates that the school might have no choice but
to report the advocate to the state agency that regulates
lawyers.
The advocates, who already have overcome their own fear of being
intimidated by the IEP process suddenly are confronting a new
form of intimidation. Now what do they do? Attend the meeting
and keep their mouths shut? Expose themselves and their families
to the cost of fighting the school – and the state bar – over
their right to help parents at IEP meetings? Leave the meeting –
and the parent – so that they don’t have to fight the battle?
The Senators and Members of Congress know little or nothing
about your experience at that first IEP team meeting. They know
little or nothing about what it is like to sit in the “mom”
chair, across a long table from the school team. They also don’t
know what it is like for you – and for your child’s educational
programming – to have a volunteer advocate sitting with you,
just to level the playing field a little, and to make the number
of “experts” sitting across from you seem slightly less
intimidating.
Our federal legislators also don’t know how hard it is for
parents to find good volunteer advocate help. They don’t know
how little information parents receive about the IEP process
from schools, or about how intimidating school officials can be
to parents AND advocates.
The family fight to save the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act [IDEA] is real. The threats to IDEA are real. The
intimidation at the school level is real. The schools control
the process, and few parents truly have access to competent
legal advice or the services of trained advocates. The proposed
attorney fee cap now being considered by Congress seems designed
to make competent help even less available to parents and
families. And now the advocates are being intimidated in
individual schools.
We would like to think that we parents have control over our
children’s educational programming. But we’re consistently
stalked by our own fears and our own experiences sitting in the
“mom” chair at the long table. If we don’t let our legislators
know about that experience, and about the current balance of
power in favor of the schools, we have nobody to blame but
ourselves if Congress takes away the already limited legal
resources we now have.
With this new trend of threatening volunteer advocates with the
unauthorized practice of law if they help you at IEP Team
Meetings, school administrators have only highlighted the
threats to our children and us. We cannot let them get away with
this. Write your Members of Congress and your Senators. Tell
them about your experiences in the “mom” chair. Invite them or
their staff members to attend an IEP Team Meeting with you; to
sit on your side of the long table in their own “mom” chair.
Our silence as parents in the face of school attacks on
advocates only strengthens the schools and weakens the families.
Don’t remain silent. Call your senator today. We’re running out
of days – and out of advocates. And only you know how lonely
that little chair and long table truly are.
Copyright 2003 by Tricia and Calvin Luker
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