Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Special Education Information for Parents

Do you have a child in Special Education in District 200 (or anywhere?)

Are you overwhelmed with paperwork, record-keeping, who-said-what, deadlines for evaluations and tests?

Confused about IEPs, IDEA, FAPE, LRE and all the other shorthand in this field?

An excellent resource is www.WrightsLaw.com This week's free weekly e-newsletter helps parents with information about how to organize your records and information. Pete and Pam Wright, from Virginia, are nationally known and have been publishing their information for ten years.

Go to www.WrightsLaw.com and subscribe to this immensely helpful newsletter. Pete and Pam have also published excellent resources in hard copy, principally "FETA" (or From Emotions to Advocacy) and other books well worth their prices.

Are you interested in a local parents' support group? Feel like you are the Lone Ranger at times? Most of the time? If there is enough interest in a local support group for parents of children enrolled in Special Education classes, a group will form here in Woodstock.

There is a new group forming in Algonquin-Lake in the Hills, and groups may also be formed for the McHenry-Johnsburg, Huntley, and Harvard-Marengo areas. The rule-of-thumb here is that "many hands make light work." If you are interested now or for the Fall of 2008, please let me know. You can post here or email me at gus@woodstockadvocate.com

1 comment:

Richard W Gorski, M.D. said...

Bravo! You are right on target. Many years ago my wife and I went through this with one of our sons. We found out that where the rubber meets the road you (the parents) are in reality the only true advocate for your child; for manny of the others involved its just a job. The best advice we can give is keep the fire in your gut burning and do all you can for your child even in the face of adversity by some so-called experts.Very often it comes down to shortfall budgets and not enough money to go around to do the things that must be done...don't give up!