0:00:06.2 VB: Thank you. Welcome to the Inclusive Education Project. I'm Vickie Brett.

0:00:09.0 AS: I'm Amanda Selogie. We're two civil rights lawyers on a mission to change the conversation about education, civil rights, and modern activism.

0:00:22.8 VB: Each week, we're gonna explore new topics which are going to educate and empower others.

0:00:25.5 AS: And give them a platform to enact change in education and level the playing field.

0:00:33.9 VB: Hi everyone. We have a special, that's why we weren't prepared because we have a special podcast today. I know that we always say that, but we really legitimately do.

0:00:45.2 AS: Well this is different because as you know, a couple weeks ago, we had Karen Odell Barber from Neurologics on our podcast. She has her own podcast, Tackling Brain Health, that she interviewed us on and we thought it would be fun for you guys to take a listen to. Her podcast interviewing us. You learn a little bit more about us. Maybe you didn't know and talk a little bit more about her.

0:01:06.9 VB: Yeah. She had some really good questions that she has faced just with the type of clients that she has and what they're experiencing. So we got to do a couple of hypotheticals, which was fun. And now you get to listen to it. Enjoy.

0:01:22.5 AS: Enjoy.

0:01:24.0 VB: Well, I'm Vickie, and I'm here with.

0:01:27.6 AS: Amanda Selogie.

0:01:29.7 VB: And we are special education attorneys, and our nonprofit law firm is called the Inclusive Education Project, IEP. And if you know, you know, IEP also is the acronym for Individualized Education Programs, and that's basically our jam.

0:01:45.5 AS: Yeah. We work. Yeah, I mean, we like to say that we're civil rights attorneys that sometimes gets. Confused. We get a lot of people who just don't understand that attorneys are even in this area of law. I went to law school knowing I wanted to get into special education law. And my stepfather is a family law attorney. And he goes, that's not an area.

0:02:05.5 VB: I said, yes, it is.

0:02:10.9 AS: But it's a very unique, very small sector of law. I mean, there's maybe, what, 50 or so attorneys that do what we do in the state of California. In some states, there's Arizona.

0:02:15.0 VB: Yeah, there's like, yeah, Mexico, there's one, maybe two.

0:02:21.4 AS: Yeah. I mean, I thought I was gonna be a teacher. My aunt's a special ed teacher. So I have a degree in child development, went through that route, worked at a school that was full inclusion. So every kid who had an IEP, who had a disability included in general education. But it was one of those one in a million programs that it all worked great. It was done correctly. And then I quickly found out that that was not the case in most areas and worked with a family who had gone through due process. And I don't know, I'd always been told I should be an attorney and I fought it so hard, but. It kind of clicked into place that this was what I was meant to be because I just felt like there's too much red tape in the system. So went to law school and met Vickie.

0:03:00.4 VB: Yeah, I had a little bit of a different path. I, and this will be dating myself a little bit. I thought I was gonna be Erin Brockovich and I was gonna be environmental law. I got a fellowship in law school with Coast Keepers here in Costa Mesa and really just got into it. And it was a lot of paper pushing, which is great. A lot of letter writing and I'm more of a people person. And when I met Amanda, I was a year ahead of her. I was a third year, and she was a second year, and we actually met abroad in Spain. Because normally you're not in the same classes. It just depends, right? So we really just kind of bonded over baguettes and cured meats while everybody else was having a siesta, and one of the classes that she was like, oh, you should join this. I'm gonna be in the clinic. We had a special education clinic. And I thought, okay, yeah, I needed a couple units. That's fine. The only experience I'd ever had with, you know, special education was a cousin of mine that was on the spectrum. And by the time that I was in law school, or at least my third year, he had already graduated. So it was, you know, I had known about IEPs, but not really like what they were. And so I joined this class and I'm in the class like one time and then they told me. Because I speak Spanish to the Orange County section, she was in the LA section. So we never got the class, obviously. We're doing okay. We've had our law firm for 10 years now.

0:04:27.2 AS: Yeah, I mean, we always talked about, oh, 10 years down the line, you know, we'll start our own firm together. She graduated before me and went to work for a firm. I went to work for a firm. But about a year or so in, you know. Special education law is such, like I said, such a unique field. It's so different than other areas of law. So we talked to our colleagues and people we went to law school with and, you know, you kind of trauma bond. We kind of trauma bonded over the fact that it was such a unique area of law that no one understood. We call it the wild, wild west because, you know, federal law for special education only goes back, you know, four years. 350 years. It's not a very old law when you think of like contracts law, family law. And it's done so differently that we would talk to other attorneys and they'd be like, oh, we're dealing with this in court. And we'd feel like that's just so different. And we quickly found that like a lot of attorneys in this area do things one particular way. And a lot of it is filing for due process. And a lot of it is really traditional legal work.

0:05:29.2 KOB: And what does that mean? For people who don't know, like for people tuning in thinking this is sports, but they're hanging in because they're fascinated. What does it mean? First of all, I will say I am a kid who was diagnosed with profound learning disability and they use that word disability. And I hate that word. I've said that a bunch, right? Like I prefer learning difference, but I understand disability is a legal term, right? And of course, I didn't have any of these accommodations or and that when I was going to school. Your field didn't even really exist. It was in its infancy. Right. And so when I was diagnosed, I was in my last semester of grad school. Wow. And I took the Beery and a whole battery of tests. I love testing. I love data. We all know this about me. And the idea of like, hey, okay, the professor said, I need to speak to Karen O'Dell at the break. And I was like, oh, like, what did I do? I'm in late. Like, that's not what you want. Right. And then she said, you have a profound learning disability.

0:06:27.0 KOB: And I laughed. And I thought like nope sorry lady like I don't think you got that right like don't you know I'm speaking at graduation right and then she I'm dating myself now like to kind of post it now and she said do you wanna get an A in this class without taking the final and then she said well you got to go back to your school district 'cause your disability is so profound it would have been identified in kindergarten and then she wrote something on paper posed it no shoved it in the desk and it was like what was that and She said, oh, it's my hypothesis. I'll show it to you when you come back. But print everything out. And this is like going way back to like pre-iPhone. She goes, it'll be on microfiche. You may have to spend a day looking for it, but it can be there. Right. Sure enough, I did. And there it was. Like in kindergarten, I was diagnosed with visual motor impairment, all kinds. I had OTPT.

0:07:15.9 KOB: And then like our family, my dad was an engineer. We made the bunch. And the weapons didn't make it male to the next school and that was the end of it so it was like I only had accommodation in kindergarten and I went through like all the phases that I feel like people go through when they're dealing with the fact that there's a label right right like and I was 28 I think at the time and it was like oh gosh one I should have been identified and I should have had some accommodation to what would have been different if I did have accommodation in the things where I I was not a rock star. So when I said, like, I'm pretty sure I don't have this disability. And it was like, oh, are you good at geometry? No. How about math? How about can you read a map? No. How about is it easy for you to find your way out of a subway? No. How about racket sports or any kind of sport that where swinging is, you know.

0:08:09.9 KOB: Hand-eye coordination. I don't swing till the ball already is gone. And so, yeah, you just explained like all my workarounds. And there was part of me that was like, huh, what would it have been like if I could have... You know, done geometry. Right. Because when I was in fourth grade, I wanted to be an architect. And it was like, all of those things are required to do that job. Right. And my dad was like laughing at me and goes in his perfect British accent, like, hey, darling, you have to be good at news. You can't be an architect. So I mean, the shock of it for me. And then also the, like, the brain is a fascinating organ that does a work around. Right. All these things that didn't work well for me, but I think in my day nobody had educational attorneys but even today on my on the clinical side when I work with parents they're like like we can't work with an attorney the school will hate us right yeah right right and so what do you say to parents who say that or or they go well we don't want money for residential treatment or for you know like little healthy child yeah and they act as though you know, they're taking books away from students or you're not gonna have a Spanish teacher. What do you say about that?

0:09:26.8 VB: Right right right. Well, there's a lot of misconceptions in law. I mean, I remember when I first started and I have a lot of friends that are teachers and I have family that are teachers and the general consensus was... Well, everything you fight for is taking it away from others. And that's a misconception because the law, the funding is separate. But I think just in generally, like when we were working for other firms, we realized that, I mean, a lot of attorneys, they handle it like a typical case due process is litigation. You are filing a lawsuit against the school district and it's seen that way. And I think that's why a lot of families are hesitant towards it. They don't wanna be litigious. Maybe they're not litigious people to begin with. They don't want retaliation. They don't wanna be hated. The way we approach it is a little bit different, which is why we started our firm as a nonprofit. And we really try to work to get the families back on track with the school team. Don't get me wrong. We file for due process if we need to.

0:10:19.0 KOB: I'm going to stop you and say that 'cause there are firms that will not do that. They go, we will work right up to due process. And if it's... You know, if it's filing a lawsuit, we don't do that. So maybe you can speak to that.

0:10:32.2 VB: It's just, it's gotten really political. So, you know, when you're taking the context of when... 90% of the cases that are filed in the state of California, it's administrative law. You're not walking into the Los Angeles Superior Courthouse. So that's already a difference. Pre-COVID, you were going into the school district for the hearing. Yeah, yeah. Now, I mean, the Office of Administrative Hearings is completely virtual and they're never going back. So it's even more. I know. I know. Really. So they're saving money there already right?

0:11:09.2 KOB: It also makes it accessible for families who are rural places where there's no attorneys.

0:11:12.9 VB: So if 90% of those cases resolve, the administrative law judges are only getting a small percentage. And each year it varies, but in recent years it hasn't been more than that. And so when people hear that, oh, they usually resolve. And that's why a lot of attorneys go up into after mediation because after that, that's when costs get real high because you're prepping and you're putting other clients off to the side while you prepare for a week hearing, two week hearings now.

0:11:43.6 AS: It is a full-on hearing where you need the evidence. You need to be able to prove your case.

0:11:49.9 VB: But for the most part, when we are using the district's own records to show the failures, the child has not made progress. You have the Individualized Education Program. There are goals. One of the first things we look for is... The child making progress on their goals. And more often than not, they are not. And instead of the IEP team who is meeting yearly or should be meeting yearly, should be assessing every three years, they're not doing their job. And that's where we come in. So by the time that a parent reaches us, they're usually pissed off. So at least they have that kind of fury in them. And if they're not and they're just curious, once we do a review and we kind of lay out like these are the things that we think they've always known it. They just were not able to articulate like what was actually happening.

0:12:36.9 AS: Right. Or they place the blame on themselves. Like I have a brand new client that's only been with us for a little bit and I just finished drafting the complaint and sent it to them yesterday. And they sent me an email this morning already, like the mom telling me that she was in tears just reading the complaint because for the first time she feels like she's seen. That her child would see. But not only that, like when they first came to me, they thought, well, my child hasn't been receiving speech for like all semester because there hasn't been a speech therapist. And they thought that's the only thing that we can file for due process on. But we'd like to move forward. And I told them, I said, you know, I bet you that's not the only thing. Let's look at the record. Let's go through it. And my complaint has six issues and only one of them is speech. There's a lot of other issues. And. You know, families think, like, it's up to me to ask for this specific thing. And if I don't ask for it, then it's my fault.

0:13:28.6 AS: And I told the family, I said, you know, look, it's not your fault. It's actually the district's job, obligated by law, to identify kids who need to be assessed, identify which assessments need to be done, identify which needs need to be met through IEP goals. It's not up to the parents at all. If the parents ask for it, sure, they're supposed to act. But there's trigger points that the law identifies of when school districts are supposed to get in. And so a lot of families come to us, you know, wanting to file for due process and we go that route if we need to. But as much as we can, we try to collaborate and work with the teams because if this kid is in second grade and we're filing for due process, even if we get the best outcome we can, even if we get private school placement and reimbursement for a bunch of compensatory education, guess what happens next year? We're going to do it all over again. They gotta go back to the IEP team. They gotta make a recommendation for the next school year. Because this kid is gonna grow and change every single year until they're 18 and sometimes 22.

0:14:23.8 AS: So it doesn't do the family or the child really any good to be going through due process necessarily. Sometimes it is absolutely necessary. We get kids who need to be in residential treatment. Without a due process, the district will never pay for it. These are kids who we're not just talking about not graduating high school, we're talking about, well, they may get to high school. So there's definitely a need for it. But there's so many cases where we want to be able to allow this child to thrive throughout schooling. And so we think that's kind of where we felt like with our firm, we needed to be a little bit different because we want to help bridge those gaps. We don't want the school district to just pay for their attorneys to fix their messes. We want them to fix it at the very beginning. If we can get the IEP team to understand this is why we want inclusive education. This is why this child needs sensory processing services within the classroom. You know, so there's so much to it. And, you know, this is why we love. To, you know, work with professionals like you too, because we're constantly learning. Like, we're not psychologists. We're not teachers. We are attorneys. But we need to know all these different aspects of education, not just the law.

0:15:26.4 KOB: So I'm gonna ask you for people who are like stumbling onto this and feel like they've just come down a rabbit hole because so many parents don't even know what an educational attorney is. And they'll sometimes say like, well, I already have an advocate. What is the difference between an educational attorney and an advocate and then also what kind of families find you and yeah and then the fourth thing is what is FAPE oh wonderful question yeah yeah yeah what is FAPE.

0:16:00.5 VB: Yeah so of a free and appropriate public education so we what rules us is the federal law which is the individuals with disability and education act created in the 70s through the years especially the last one A reformation of it was 2004. That is really the standard is the federal law, which is really good for a lot of families. And then California has its own law. So it's state by state. So we are licensed in California as attorneys. We went to law school. We graduated. We passed the bar. We have ESQ behind our names and we are held to an ethical standard. Advocates are not that. There have been a range of advocates that have worked under attorneys. If you are going to work with an advocate, I would say that was probably the only type of advocate that we would advise somebody to work with simply because that means that an attorney has to oversee what that advocate is doing. And if they're not, that's a problem. Most of the advocates that we have seen over the years are well-meaning, intentioned people that may have had a child with special needs.

0:17:05.1 VB: And they have just kind of this life experience. There are some nonprofits and agencies out there that say that they train advocates and things like that. But for us, having dealt with it, if the advocate ever gets into a situation where they are performing legal work, that is not appropriate. That is illegal, actually. And to a certain point, filing for due process, and especially in the state of California, the Attorney General in 2017, he said, actually came out and had said, like, advocates can not file. They should have never been filing. They had been. It kind of been this, like, weird thing. And the attorney general, like, shut it down. Because if something happens and that advocate has, you know, potentially left things on the table in terms of what compensatory education that child was entitled to or, you know, said or did something or... Had the parents sign a settlement agreement without the review of that settlement agreement by an attorney. You know, sometimes people slip things in, you know, whether they mean to or not. We probably think that they do mean to. But parents might be giving up rights and there's no way that the parent can go after that attorney for messing up their kid. Or that advocate. Or that, yeah, not there's no, you can go after us. There's not practice.

0:18:22.0 KOB: There's not practice. But at the closing an advocate is a lay person. On attorney.

0:18:25.7 AS: Yeah. And even at the crux of it, like we get families that say, well, I don't really wanna file for due process, so I'm gonna go with an advocate. And we say that is still dangerous because it's not just due process that the Attorney General has come out and said that they cannot file for due process, that they cannot engage in any legal work. They cannot engage in the practice of law. When it comes down to it, and this is why there's so many problems with special education in general, is that it is based on legal principles that we are asking school educators, administrators, teachers, paraprofessionals to interpret and implement the law. And they're not lawyers. And they're often not trained by lawyers. They're not trained on what the law says. So to have an advocate come in and go to an IEP meeting and say, well, the IDEA says that a FEP requires challenging goals and objective that is interpreting the law to a certain extent.

0:19:13.7 AS: So while there are some advocates that are really good at going to IEP meetings because they've been through it, and they can say, look I have concerns about this goal and I'm gonna ask questions and I'm gonna guide the family through the process. That's all wonderful. And we love that because families shouldn't have to go through it alone. But the reality is that there's so many intricacies and there's so many things that are said at IEP meetings. Statements of this is not legal, or this is not legal. And we've seen advocates do that and they mean well, they're not doing it on purpose, but it can be considered the practice of law, even if you're reaching out to do alternative dispute resolutions with school districts. So you're not quite a due process, but you're above the IEP meeting. And you are engaged in negotiations. That's the practice of law. So there's a lot of gray areas there.

0:19:55.0 VB: I think there was, and then the attorney general...

0:20:03.8 AS: Well yes.

0:20:03.8 VB: Came down and said this is no longer gray. And so I think when parents are Googling, that's how they find advocates. We...

0:20:12.3 KOB: Tell me who's a parent who would be doing that? So for example, there are plenty of parents in my clinical practice go like we don't need an attorney, we just have a kid who is cutting. We just have a kid who is suicidal. We just have a kid who does not want to go to school. Parents have a kid on the autism spectrum. And those are the kind of cases I see, Clinical side. But you see a lot more kids than just those and That would be like an SED distinction. Who are parents who would need, you guys are so impassioned.

0:20:39.5 VB: Yeah, no, thank you.

0:20:40.6 KOB: And that idea of having your muscle on the parental side is so attractive. But I think there are lots of parents who think I can't afford an attorney. If they go like yeah. First of all they say, I don't need one. And the second thing they say is, I can't afford one. What would you guys say to those?

0:20:57.9 AS: I mean, we also get a lot of families who say, I don't need one because my kid doesn't need special education. But all those kids that you talked about, those all need special education. When we look at the mental health component, we get a lot of people who say, my kid doesn't have a diagnosis of autism. My kid doesn't have a diagnosis of cerebral palsy or Down syndrome, or ADHD. My kid is just struggling. And they won't go to school. And we go, if your kid is struggling, they probably need something. And that's where we fit in. And part of why we created a nonprofit was because we recognized too that, especially in Orange County, but across the state, families can't afford an attorney. They can't afford advocates. Most attorneys are very expensive. Many advocates are very expensive. They charge by the hour. So we started our nonprofit to be able to provide pro bono and what we call low bono services. So we do operate in all low cost, flat fees. We don't charge by the hour because we realize that the access is very much a problem for these families who even if they recognize or are told, you need an attorney.

0:21:55.3 VB: And look, the federal law is very explicit in that if you file for due process and you win as the petitioner, as the parent with the attorney, the district is obligated to pay the fees. And so for us, that's where we're able to provide that to our low income families, pro bono, meaning free, because we are looking to see if a case can be filed. So that is how a lot of our pro bono, like it's definitely somebody that feels dismissed, that feels not seen or heard by the school district. 'cause we'll have people that, for years they were just that the pot is on the stove and the district every so often is just like raising the temperature. And then they're the frog that jumps in and isn't jumping out because the water was lukewarm.

0:22:41.9 VB: And then all of a sudden they're burned. And they're either mad and they like Google or we're really active on social media as well. And we have a podcast as well who doesn't have a podcast, and it's called the Inclusive Education Project Podcast. We found that that was easier to kind of break down these stereotypes. Our thing is like let's start the conversation. And I think through the podcast we've reached a lot of people that were like oh, I didn't even know that this was an area of the law. I didn't know that my child who went through chemo needed an IEP or even a 504, which is another federal law under the Rehabilitation Act that can provide certain accommodations for disabilities as a legal term that affect their everyday activities. So sometimes you will see kiddos with ADHD have 504s and maybe they only need light accommodations, if we could say that.

0:23:36.2 VB: So that's like being seated near the teacher. Maybe they need frequent breaks, things like that. Nothing that's actually changing the way that they are accessing the education that would need to be like modified or retaught by a teacher. That's where you're getting into the IEPs and we're getting these specialized academic services. That's where we're getting one-to-one aids. That's where we could be getting educationally related mental health services, the occupational therapy, OT, PT, physical therapy. And for us, and the research is there. Early intervention is what we want to see. And so for you to be identified in kindergarten, magnificent, however, it fell through the cracks. And you were able to... Other parts of your brain were able to take over and kind of mask and camouflage.

0:24:24.3 AS: And I think a lot of these kids that fall through the cracks are the ones that I think families they think, well, maybe my child just isn't going to be a four year college kid. Or maybe they're doing well enough, they pass through their grades. Or maybe even we get a lot of families that have IEPs. Right. And they've been told that everything's just going fine. Year after year. But we tell families, trust your gut. If you feel like something is off, it probably is. The amount of times we have kids that... Families that come to us where they're in sixth, seventh grade and they either don't have an IEP and they should or they do. But it's been the same thing since kindergarten. We go back and we look starting kindergarten and/or preschool even. And we look at every... And we can pinpoint the time when the school knew. It always happens. It always happens. There's rarely been a case where a family comes to us and goes, it just came outta the blue.

0:25:19.8 VB: You're not born overnight with ADHD.

0:25:23.5 AS: No. No.

0:25:23.6 VB: It Just doesn't happen.

0:25:23.7 AS: You can look back at the kindergarten's like teachers' report on the progress report and say they knew. But the problem is that we get in kindergarten and first grade and second grade and so on the paperwork that the teacher fills out, maybe it goes in the kid's file, maybe the next teacher looks at it. But the general education teachers are not special educators. They're not trained to see and identify. So it might go that you get year after year, there's something a little off. They're probably not failing. Right. They're not having distracting behaviors. They're getting notes. Like they were really distracted. They kept getting out of their seat or they felt really withdrawn. They didn't seem to have friends. They were really good at reading, but math and science, it was a struggle. But they're really good at reading. So they're fine because overall academically they're fine. Or the reverse they're fantastic at math, so therefore they're fine. Right. Because we know that they're able to do things something. So it's thought because this child can do this one thing well they must be able to do everything else well. And therefore it's a choice. The child is made.

0:26:28.6 KOB: That's right.

0:26:29.7 AS: To not perform.

0:26:29.8 KOB: My Geometry tutor treated me like garbage.

0:26:31.8 VB: Right. Well, yeah, the labels right.

0:26:33.7 KOB: He looked at like you got straight A's and you get a D in my class. Well, right. And I'm trying to cut off here. And everyday after school.

0:26:39.1 VB: Yeah. And so it's interesting because it just, as humans, we love to label. So you got that label from that. Who knows what would've happened with the other label. But we're constantly doing that. I have a kiddo that currently he has had a diagnosis of ticks and he's in the fifth grade. And we just got to a point, I had told the parents right when they had called, I had said, we need to change teachers. And I've been doing this long enough that I don't wanna punish this child, but I can't change that woman's perspective on your child. She has labeled him as defiant as somebody that doesn't wanna listen. And when we were like he has ticks, she's like no, he does the sounds for attention. And he looks at his friends and we're like do you know what ticks is?

0:27:27.9 AS: But why...

0:27:29.5 VB: He cannot control it. And so I think with anything, there's gonna be labels. But for us, because an IEP has to... It's rooted in data. It's rooted in these evaluations and the goals and the input from everybody that's like working together to provide the services for the child. At least you have this safety net in a sense. Right. To know as much as you can and to really try to uncover your child's potential. Because more often than not, the he's lazy. She is just unbothered and there's no buy-in. And I can't do anything that like I mean well, yeah.

0:28:12.4 AS: There's a lot of assumptions that are made in education. Teachers make assumptions all the times about kids rather than asking why. We get elementary, middle, and high school students who get in trouble for discipline. And there's never a question of why. It's always, we're gonna suspend, we're gonna expel, we're gonna call the police, we're gonna take this kid away in handcuffs. We've had kids as young as five years old getting taken away in handcuffs. Why? Why aren't we asking? Sometimes these kids are taken away. The police are called when they have IEPs and not a single person thinks to ask. Does this child have a disability? But there are often, we get kids who we get appointed for cases in Los Angeles. Kids are either in the foster dependency system.

0:28:55.6 VB: 317e.

0:28:56.4 AS: On the 317e panel. And these are kids who are in the system for one reason or another. And almost always, they don't have an IEP. Many times they're in juvenile hall, they've been incarcerated. And we look through their education on file and we go, this kid should have had an IEP since kindergarten. This kid should have had an IEP since first grade. And whether it's... And a lot of times schools will blame it on the family system. Well, this kid's in foster care or this family doesn't care. This family's not involved. And it's like no, no, no, I'm not looking at the family because I'm looking at your actual records from kindergarten, from second grade. Where it's clear that this child, there's been a call for help and you've done nothing. There's a reason they're having this behavior, whether it's peer conflict or it's destruction in the classroom. There's a reason this kid is doing it. They're not doing it just because they feel like it. Even teenagers, like look at 16 year olds. Most of the time they're not just doing it for the hell of it. There's a reason why. There's some reason why they don't love school. Kids are born.

0:30:00.9 KOB: That it's a brain based trait, the brain closes itself.

0:30:01.8 AS: Yeah. Yeah. I mean these...

0:30:02.3 KOB: The other part is like the school functions as the family for six hours a day.

0:30:07.1 VB: Yes. They know.

0:30:08.4 KOB: Kids have such an erratic Lack of structure. I mean they're bebopping around place to place to place. It's like it is the school's responsibility to provide discipline and structure and function as the role model when they react.

0:30:24.2 AS: And provide the support they need. Which often is mental health support that is woefully lacking in our education system.

0:30:31.7 VB: Yeah. I mean, whether teachers wanna admit it or not, like every child should have an IEP. It's an individualized education program or plan. You're doing that already for all your kiddos. And you cannot do that for a child that has more severe needs. You're gonna need support and you're gonna need help. But more often than not, even though they're boots on the ground, they were told, you are not telling parents that they need to have an assessment. Because our school psych already has like 50 that they need to get done. So I've, I had a friend her first year had told a parent yeah, I think he needs an assessment. And the next day principal called her into the office. I mean her boss. Right. But same feeling that you would've gotten if the principal asked you to come in her office and they had said, you do not tell parents that... That is like against the law. Like when a parent asks a teacher, any school staff that hey, I think my child might need an assessment, that person is obligated to sit down and put that in writing to help the parent put it in writing. That is what the law says. So that those assessments can be provided. But we have administrators out there that say, no, we are at capacity.

0:31:49.2 KOB: Right. I don't think teachers understand the law.

0:31:49.7 VB: Right. Right.

0:31:50.9 AS: They don't understand the law. They're not told the law. And sometimes they're actively told the wrong. They're said, this is the way we do things. You don't do X, Y, and Z.

0:31:58.0 AS: Yeah. You're not gonna question it.

0:32:00.8 VB: You wait until we tell you.

0:32:01.2 KOB: Right.

0:32:01.8 AS: And it's heartbreaking. 'cause they need the support. They can't have a classroom of 25 with five kids that have varying dyslexia. ADHD, ADD.

0:32:11.6 KOB: Too individual life to that extent.

0:32:11.6 AS: Yeah. They need help. And so that's what we hope to prep... My dad's whole side of the family. They're all teachers. And so when they heard that, oh you're going in especially, I was like I'm trying to help you guys. It's just like you need the support in the classroom. I'm not the big bad wolf here.

0:32:27.6 KOB: And that's a really good point. I mean, so in the lay world, plenty of people who go, oh gosh, no. I just feel grateful to have a public education that... And then they don't wanna have attorneys act on their behalf 'cause they don't wanna be seen as difficult parents. Or the kid be labeled. But I think what you're saying is we're advocating for the child, but we're also advocating for the whole educational system. Because the teachers are overloaded and don't understand and.

0:32:55.0 VB: We saw a mass exodus during the pandemic. 'cause they aren't supported at all. No one could blame them.

0:33:01.2 AS: And not only that, like we have so many kids that are unrecognized, unidentified early on. And by the time they get an IEP in second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth grade, it's risen to a level that they are then pushed to a special day class. They're segregated. They're separated. And we're not looking to individualize things. We're not looking to go in the early years and support every kid. The school that I worked at, that was that one in a million where full inclusion worked perfectly. It didn't just benefit that kid who had an IEP. It benefited every kid. All of these kids had started from kindergarten, preschool in their program, being educated with people who were different from them. And they learned from a very early age that this other child is just a child. I'm just a child. We all have strengths, we all have weaknesses, we all need help with things.

0:33:51.3 AS: And they learned not just that tolerance and acceptance, but that understanding that we are all different. And so growing up, by the time they exited elementary school, they thought nothing of there are other kids who had a wheelchair or who needed a visual schedule on their desk. And so there was no bullying, there was no pure conflict. It was so beautiful to see these kids fight over who got to participate with their peers rather than looking at them differently. Because when we try to then... When we segregate them, we are an inclusive society in the sense that like we are all out there. Right. We don't have like separate communities. To a certain extent we do because we've segregated for so long. But when a child exit, their elementary school exits middle school exits high school goes into the real world. We want them to be able to integrate into society and we want society to be able to be accepted and understanding of people who are different.

0:34:48.6 VB: Look, I mean, at the end of the day, from a purely conservative fiscal standpoint, do you wanna provide services for a child from 3 to 18, that early intervention get them to be one of the more productive members of society? Or do you wanna pay disability from 18 until... My cousin, he's probably gonna outlive us all like 18 to... And he is so much more capable. He is capable of so much more than what the label of ASD was given to him and the lack of support that he had gotten. And he gets a hefty check every month, which helps. But I mean, he could have been, and he still can, there are obviously different groups that my aunt has gotten him in that have taken the responsibility that really could have at least foundationally been provided to him K through 12, not even three to 18. And I mean, once we're able to kind of break it down to people that are money conservative, it's like yeah, this is a shorter amount of time. Why wouldn't you put in the funding for this.

0:35:48.0 AS: And we get that question of doesn't it cost a lot of money you're taking away? And like I had said at the beginning that it is actually a separate fund. But what happens is the school districts are a governmental entity who the administrators, the higher ups in the entity get to decide where the money goes. And when the federal money and the state money comes in for special education, a dollar amount is allocated per child. Whether it's general education or special education, separate funding comes in. If it's not used on that child, it doesn't filter back, it doesn't go back to the government. It stays there. And so guess what happens? The school district gets to decide what do we do with this money? So money is allocated in different ways and people aren't involved enough in their school boards to hear and understand the dynamics of how the school board approves money.

0:36:31.8 AS: But guess where a lot of that money goes. And a lot of the insurance money goes is to pay attorneys to fight these battles. Most of it for the school district, their attorneys. So there's the question of whether there's enough money there. Because we see on the surface that teachers don't get paid enough and they don't. We agree with that.

0:36:48.8 KOB: We agree.

0:36:49.7 AS: But the money is there. The money is there to pay more to teachers. The money is there to support the students. The money is there if it's used wisely. If we use structures in place to integrate inclusive education. So curriculums that would not just help that kid with dyslexia but would help every single student. We pay for that instead of having to pay for intensive intervention three years later. It's actually cheaper, but we're not allocating the funds correctly. We're getting a new football field. We're paying superintendents three figure salaries and six figure pensions for what? They're not necessarily the educators. The educators should be getting paid and getting trained to provide it. So I think there's a lot of it... Like I said, there's a lot of assumptions that are being made that are not correct about our education system.

0:37:29.8 KOB: What would you say to a parent who says, I don't know if calling you is right for my family. Who is the child that you serve? The full list?

0:37:43.2 VB: Yeah. I mean for 13 eligibility categories with basically a catchall that could be... Which other health impairment can, a lot of varying things fall under that. And so we get so many different types. I mean we've had genetic deletions mutations that are like this child of mine is one of like six in the world. She's had articles written about her and like we had mentioned kiddos with dyslexia, kiddos with ADHD ADD kiddos that are on the spectrum which varies in and of itself just what this child with autism needs is gonna be a heck of a lot different from this child with autism. And so that's where that sense of it's the wild west comes in. And so really I really truly believe that the parent that finds us is just a parent that is not felt seen or heard or they're just like frustrated. They're just frustrated and.

0:38:38.4 KOB: That word.

0:38:38.5 VB: They talk to somebody. And a lot of word of mouth obviously with any attorney is word of mouth. But because of the outreach we do and we do workshops and trainings where people realize who we are and what we stand for. And so it really just kind of comes down to what that... You have this parental instinct you know when something's wrong. And all you have to do is just speak to somebody that has had that experience or kind of recognizes, yeah, that doesn't sound right. Like what can you do? Who can you call? And just even a quick, wherever you are, just special education attorney in my area you're gonna find us. We're not under a rock and not necessarily us, any state that you're in you will find a special education attorney. But it's just knowing that information, just that we exist.

0:39:27.0 AS: And that due process isn't the only option. It's not the only way that you can fight the school team. I mean, in fact, many of our clients, I mean I have several clients that I've had for 10 plus years and we've never filed for due process. Because we've helped navigate and build a better relationship with the school team and collaborate. And we are the ones that get to go in and be that independent person to a certain extent to be asking the hard questions. See the things that the parents might not see and kind of be that in between. Sometimes we are translators in a certain extent. Not just for the language, but also for what does it mean to have challenging goals and really guide families through. So sometimes like you just want to have someone that can help tell you this is right or this isn't right, and ask the right question. So attorneys can do that as well. It doesn't have to be litigation.