The Ties That Bind - Or Maybe It's "Blind"

Back in the day when my moons were more aligned for balls-to-the-wall special education advocacy, I went to countless IEP's in Hillsborough County and many in neighboring counties. I have countless memories of "hijacking" IEP's and "blindsiding" the person that was "running the IEP" simply by asking them to read a specific portion of the IDEA procedural safeguards that, in my humble non-attorney position, had been misrepresented by the person while informing the trusting parent of their (parent's) IDEA procedural safeguards.

I was even called into the ROSSAC building after one particular meeting in Eastern Hillsborough County where the poor ESE specialist just could not get off his well rehearsed, never-challenged spiel that was rarely connected to what the pamphlet really said. I really did try hard to not be anti-collaborative, but I also could not let the parent go through the meeting making decisions based on outright false information. I knew that the decisions she was going to try to make were going to be for the best interest of her child, something I think IDEA is to afford all parents of ESE kids. After the third or fourth safeguard challenge, ones that I knew were important for the parent to completely understand, he told me if I interrupted again, I would be told to leave. I am sure it was embarrassing to him to read something that contradicted what he had just said. Thankfully, by that time we were at the end where it talks about state complaints and due process.

I said all of that just to say this. During that time I also studied a lot of case law and trends across the nation regarding special education issues. One thing I noted was the apparent correlation between California and Florida when it came to how special education issues were dealt with. My recollection is that the lawsuits that they lost were very similar. Somewhere on one of my blogs I wrote about the black list that California had of "troublemaker, advocating parents".

Finally to the point. I thought I would share with my local readers what has just happened in Los Angeles. What's your guess? Are California and Florida still tied?
You gotta listen to the end.


LAUSD board votes to lay off 5,400 teachers, personnel - 4/14/09 - Los Angeles-Southern California-LA Breaking News, Weather, Traffic, Sports - abc7.com