Adam Dayan engages in an insightful discussion with Selene Almazan, Special Education Attorney and Legal Director for the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA). Against the backdrop of today’s political climate, they explore the current administration’s push to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. Adam and Selene break down the potential consequences, what it would take to make such a move a reality, and the critical role COPAA plays in addressing this issue, along with other challenges impacting the nation.
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ANNOUNCER: This is Curious Incident, a podcast for special needs families, and your window into the world of special education. Special needs parenting can be challenging, and we want to make it easier by providing you with the resources you need to help your child. Step deep into the world of learning differently with your host, special education attorney Adam Dayan.
ADAM: It’s an honor to be sitting here with my fellow attorney, Selene Almazan. Selene has been a member of COPA, the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, since its inception in 1998. Selene was on the Board of Directors from 2003 to 2014. Since becoming COPA’s legal director in 2014, Selene has been involved in nearly every COPA brief submitted, as well as involved in a number of governmental affairs issues. Selene, through a private practice, represents families at IEP team meetings, state complaint proceedings, mediations, due process hearings, and federal court proceedings in the state of Maryland. She has extensive experience, training families, teachers, school administrators, attorneys and advocates on legal issues related to special education law, as well as disability discrimination issues. Selene, thank you so much for being here.
SELENE: Well, thank you Adam. Thanks for inviting me.
ADAM: Of course. So, tell us about yourself and what led you down the career path you’ve chosen.
SELENE: I originally wanted to be a social worker, and somebody told me that if you went to law school, you could kind of do both. So, I decided I would go to law school, and I went to law school in early 80s. Took a legal clinic because the law school I went to required legal clinic experience, and I took a developmental disabilities clinic and was in the mid-1980s when the institutions where people with disabilities were placed, were being emptied and placed in the community, and the legal clinic was the plaintiff’s attorney to release people who were living in the institutions. So, I started doing that and really never looked back. It was a life-changing experience walking into an institution and seeing people who were institutionalized, and the lack of agency and the lack of humanity. I wasn’t really prepared for any of that, and when I saw it, I decided that was for me. It was ensuring that people had agency and a voice and the ability to make decisions about their own lives. So, that was it.
ADAM: Sounds like a pivotal point for you.
SELENE: It was a pivotal point for me.
ADAM: Can you tell our listeners a bit about COPA and its core mission?
SELENE: Sure, COPA is a national organization of parents, advocates, attorneys, and related professionals who support families, and we’re more than 3,400 members in all 50 states and some territories. We ensure that children with disabilities, 8 million children with disabilities in the United States have their voices heard through federal policies and state policies. We do a variety of training for advocates and parents. We do training for attorneys, and we are a very strong presence on the Hill in Washington, D.C.
ADAM: I can’t underscore enough the importance of this organization. I’ve been a member for about 15 years now, and it seems like the school districts, both state and local, and on the federal level, there’s always changes keeping everybody on their toes, and it’s so important to have this body of people who are advocating for kids with special needs.
SELENE: You know, COPA is an amazing organization in that it does bring people together. It helps families have a voice through either their own voices or through their advocates or their attorneys, and I think that the training that we provide is pivotal to ensure that there is quality in advocacy and ensure the parents know what their rights are. I think that’s really so important.
ADAM: Absolutely. Can you tell us about your specific role with COPA?
SELENE: I’m the legal director and have been the legal director since 2014. I do a variety of things. We have a robust amicus brief writing, which are a friend of the court briefs that we write for members across the country once they get to the appeals court. So you have your due process. So if you go to due process and you have a hearing and it doesn’t go the way that you want, you have the ability to file in federal court to have the hearing decision overturned, if that’s what you want as a family. So you go to federal court, and if federal court doesn’t go the way that you want, you have the ability to go on to an appellate court, and there are 12 appeals courts in the country, and through 11, and then the DC Circuit. And then from there, there’s the United States Supreme Court. So when families are going on to the appellate level, we write these friend of the court briefs on issues that impact everyone. So if it is an issue about, say, at least restrictive environment, and there’s been some legal errors in the analysis of where a child should be placed, we write a brief about pointing out the relevant law and the relevant policy, and usually the research surrounding that issue. I participate in federal policy stuff. I do a lot of mentoring for attorneys around the country, a lot of technical assistance for attorneys around the country. We review pleadings for families, for attorneys in federal court. If it’s the first time an attorney has been in federal court and they want us to review their complaint or their emotions, we do that for them. We do a lot of legal strategizing with attorneys, and then the training. I do a 12-week online training for new attorneys, and then a two-day skills training in person at our annual conference in March of every year.
ADAM: Can you talk about how COPA’s resources are being used to address challenges faced by special needs families?
SELENE: We have a weekly news that goes out to over 8,000 people every week, where we have updates on either Amicus briefs or state issues that have arisen in state by state. COPA has a state policy director, Chris Rowe, who manages the activities that go on in the states. It’s not just the federal level, but it’s also at the state level. We have a social media presence with a reach over 20,000 people. Last year we trained about 2,900 people through our seed training, which is our advocacy training, and our attorney classes, as well as our annual conference. We provided 192 scholarships for people to attend our training and conferences and memberships to belong to COPA. We are very generous in those scholarships as well. We have a very vibrant discussion board for attorneys on COPA law, and then there’s a general discussion board just COPA for advocates and parents and attorneys to participate in. There were about 13,000 discussion posts last year. It’s a very active listserv, and for the attorneys we had around 5,000 attorney discussions on our COPA law list. We have a very far reach as far as social media goes. We have a social media person, Charvelle Sumter, who was very active on Instagram, Facebook, X, and now Blue Sky.
ADAM: We’re parents who want to become more educated and take advantage of COPA’s advocacy training. We’re big proponents of parents educating themselves. That’s one of the reasons this podcast exists so that parents can glean information and understand how this process works. How can parents out there who want to understand their rights more and know what they can be doing to help their children get what they need to take advantage of COPA’s advocacy training?
SELENE: You can become a member of COPA. We do have scholarships for that for parents, and you can become a member, and then you have access to our webinars. You have access to our new Learning Center where we have modules where parents can listen to a variety of short webinars on their rights. You can apply to become what we call seat one training, which opens up, I believe, every June and fills up very quickly. Those are the trainings that we offer. We also offer the in-person training at COPA, and we also offer, if you become a parent member, we also have the listserv, which is, as I said, very active and full of very good information for families.
ADAM: Amazing. Thank you. What are some of the key successes COPA has had over the years in advocating for special education?
SELENE: I’ll start with the 2005 Supreme Court decision in Schaffer v. Weast. That was the case that was about the burden of proof, and whether or not parents bear that burden. In a court proceeding, you have the person who generally brings the case has the burden of proving through evidence that their position is correct. So this case was about the burden of proof, and who should have that burden of proof. Our position in that case was that because school systems have all of the evidence already, they have all of the documents, they have built-in experts, they have all those witnesses that they should bear that burden of proving that their decision at an IEP team table is the right decision. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court didn’t see it that way. However, the benefit of that activity in gathering up amicus briefs and trying to support the family in that case was that there are a variety of organizations who are, when they’re all together, are very powerful. So there was COPA, there was the Arc of the United States, there was United Cerebral Policy at the time, there was National Disability Rights Network and D.R.N. So there were a lot of organizations, and for me in 2005, trying to coordinate those briefs and being part of that, I was struck by how much we are all alike, even if we have different missions, some organizations, their issues are about people with Down syndrome or people with an intellectual disability. So I was struck by the commonality among us.
ADAM: Any other successes that you wanted to highlight?
SELENE: Sure. So there was Schaffer vs. Weast in 2005, and then more recent successes have been the Perez v. Sturgis School District out of the Sixth Circuit, which essentially solidified that if you have an IEP and you are discriminated against in school and you resolve your IDEA issues so that you resolve your placement issues or you resolve your maybe compensatory education that you’re entitled to because the school district failed you, that you still can proceed on any of those discrimination issues beyond the IDEA. So that was a very important case. Andrew F, which established in our mind is a new free appropriate public education standard in 2017. That was also a big success. Again, a student who lost at the hearing level, who lost at the federal district level, who lost at the appellate level in the Tenth Circuit, they were successful in getting their case accepted at the Supreme Court level and the Supreme Court said that all of those lower courts got it wrong and that the student indeed was not making progress just because they made progress on one IEP goal, that that did not establish that a student was receiving a free appropriate public education, a very important case.
ADAM: And you mentioned the new standard. Do you want to articulate what that standard is?
SELENE: That students are entitled to ambitious goals, challenging objectives that the school district is obligated to provide a cogent response on why they’ve made this decision. So that is the new standard that this idea of receiving some educational benefit or meaningful educational benefit or diminumous educational benefit that those standards are not the standard. You have to look at that IEP and whether or not it is challenging and ambitious for that
ADAM: students. So it calls into question the goals in an IEP if they’re not ambitious or aligned with the students’ abilities. That’s right. It’s not going to be enough that the student has met those goals. We need to be writing goals that match what the student is capable of.
SELENE: Exactly correct. In light of a student’s potential. So that language I think is very powerful when you look at a child’s potential and not just a belief system that if you have an intellectual disability with an IQ score of whatever that you need to look at what that potential is. You know, the brain grows and develops as you age. And so it’s really looking at that potential. It was a very powerful argument and it was very powerful in looking at the justices that day and their understanding that it’s important to get it right for students because the education career of a child can go by in a flash and they seem to understand how important it was for a child and for a school district to get it right for students.
ANNOUNCER: If you like what you are hearing, please let us know by subscribing to the Curious Incident Podcast and letting other special needs parents know about it too. If you have thoughts, questions, comments, or would like to suggest ideas for a future episode, we’d love to hear it. So email your feedback to podcast at Dayanlofirm.com.
ADAM: So as we’ve noted, COPA is a national organization and we touched on this a little bit before. How does advocacy differ depending on what state a family is located in and how do those differences affect COPA’s advocacy work?
SELENE: States are free to give more rights to families than the federal law does and what is important in each state is to ensure that federal law is being followed and that there is not something less for families under state law than they get under federal law. We support families and efforts in states who want a burden of proof bill. We support families in states who want stronger least restricted environment guidelines for school districts. That’s an issue in Oklahoma right now. We support families who want or might be interested in consent laws. As I mentioned earlier, if they can’t get a burden of proof law, then at least a consent law where they have to consent to restraint and seclusion on an IEP or consent to movement onto the alternate assessments. So this student is not going to receive a high school diploma and we support states in those efforts through our members and through COPA weighing in on various bills or issues at the state level.
ADAM: And what’s your view on the inconsistency among states? I mean, we have the IDEA. It’s a comprehensive, vast piece of legislation that gives families lots of rights and yet you have states doing different things on a local level. How do you view that?
SELENE: One issue where there is a glaring disparity is in restraint and seclusion protections. So each state has either guidelines or a state law on when restraint can be used on a student or when seclusion can be used on a student where a student is placed in a room and there is no way to leave voluntarily.
ADAM: Do you want to clarify the restraint piece?
SELENE: Restraint is when you hold a child down against their will. Restraint can be used in situations where there is serious bodily harm to the student or others. So restraining a student in order to protect them and others when it looks like there’s going to be serious bodily harm to someone. Sometimes restraint is not used in those situations. Sometimes school districts use mats to restrain a child either up against a wall or on the floor. Schools use restraint to hold a child down by their arms and their legs and their head face up on the floor until they comply or until they stop struggling. So those are all things that are dangerous to children. In this dangerous, there have been instances where children in the country and Georgia have hung themselves while in a seclusion room and nobody was in the room and the child died. Students have died from being restrained because they cannot breathe. So the non-uniformity throughout states with restraint and seclusion laws we believe is very dangerous. We’ve been at the forefront on restraint and seclusion. We had principles around restraint and seclusion for quite some time, have been advocating for federal legislation that bans seclusion in all states and that would place parameters around restraint. Maryland recently banned all seclusion for children in the last two years. So we believe that that’s a good effort. But the fact that it depends on where you live depends on how much force can be used on you, I think is very problematic. The IDEA does not have any language about restraint and seclusion. That’s why federal legislation, we believe, is so important because there’s just such a patchwork of laws depending on where you live. And for those people who live in southern states where there is still the use of corporal punishment, it’s even a heavier lift because in those states where corporal punishment is still used, parents can agree that their children can be hit. And obviously the issue of restraint and seclusion is a heavier lift where you have an atmosphere where school districts believe that children should be subjected to corporal punishment.
ADAM: So let’s talk about the current moment, awkward transition, but we’ll transition nonetheless. There are lots of changes happening in the world right now, including a new presidential administration. How would you describe the moment we’re in in terms of education policy?
SELENE: There are a lot of unknowns right now. We did send a transition memorandum to the new administration on those issues that we would like to continue to partner with. We know that disability is ignorant of what your political affiliations are. So everyone is affected by disability at some point or another. There’s a lot of common ground. We believe they can be found. It is unknown right now what is going to happen with the new administration. We know that during the first Trump administration, the Department of Education held firm during the pandemic that there would be no waiver of a free appropriate public education for students with disabilities. However, that the only entity that can say that the IDEA doesn’t apply is Congress and the only person who could ask for a waiver was the Department of Education, the Secretary, and she did not. She held very firm during the pandemic closures that all students were entitled to a free appropriate public education. There was no waiver that she asked for from Congress. So I am heartened by that. Students with disabilities were not harmed as far as a waiver during that time. Certainly students with disabilities and all students were harmed during the closures, obviously. So it is unknown what’s going to happen with the new administration. The confirmation hearing has not been held for the proposed new Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon. So that is unknown what’s going to happen. But we remain ready to work with the new administration as we were during the first administration.
ADAM: How do you anticipate changes in education policy might impact children with special needs? What are the threats and opportunities this special needs community is facing, acknowledging that a lot has been said and we don’t know with certainty what’s going to be?
SELENE: Well, there are 8 million children with disabilities in the United States that are potentially going to be affected by new policies in this new administration. So I believe that the need for COPA is greater than ever. We know that coming in some of the plans that they have was to curb the enforcement of civil rights that would be through the Office for Civil Rights. There is that concern about curbing the investigations from the Office for Civil Rights into school district activities around students.
ADAM: Can you give some specifics in what ways?
SELENE: So during the Obama administration, the Office for Civil Rights investigated issues. If you had a complaint that you submitted to the Office for Civil Rights that you believe that the students’ rights were violated, that administration would investigate and then look at whether or not there was a systemic issue throughout a school district, say with exclusionary discipline that only affected African-American children with disabilities. So it was a systemic issue. During the first Trump administration, there was a curb on whether or not they were going to investigate the entire school district or just that one complaint. So there is a concern that there would be, you know, they would revert to just looking at the one student complaint and not looking at a whole systemic issues within a whole school district. So that’s one issue that we are watching carefully. We know that the incoming administration is interested in enacting universal school choice in every state. And the issue with vouchers or education savings accounts or things of that nature where the state gives apparent money to go to another school, a private school, for children with significant support needs, there’s not enough money in $9,000 or $10,000 even for you to find a private school that is going to give your child everything that they need, like speech or assistive technology or occupational therapy, there’s just not enough money for that. So if you are a family who lives in poverty, that’s not an option for you. In addition, when parents accept the voucher money or the ESA money or whatever they call it, that money, they waive or they give up all their IDEA rights. So they take the money and in exchange they no longer have a right to complain, they no longer have a right to non-discrimination depending on the private school that they choose, especially if it’s a parochial school that doesn’t receive any federal money, you receive that voucher money, you go to the school and pay them and they can kick you out and you don’t have a right to say that you were discriminated against. So that is the concern about universal school choice, that there is the requirement for parents to give up their IDEA rights, I think is concerning that that would happen to families, especially for families who live in poverty and may not be able to make up the additional tuition.
ADAM: And what impact do you think that would have on public schools’ ability to educate kids with special needs if families are exiting the public school system in favor of the vouchers?
SELENE: It’s going to be a drain on budgets as far as giving out the money, I believe that in Arizona it has exploded and the, you know, it’s been difficult for the budgets to keep up with the state budgets, to keep up with the money that people are taking in order to exit. It also could leave the students who have the most significant needs and the students who live in poverty in public schools without the ability to have additional money coming in so that their needs can be met. It really sets up an inequitable system for children with disabilities. So the other concern that we are watching is the ability of states and schools to determine the content that they feel is appropriate to teach, looking at whether or not there are efforts to eliminate teacher tenure and the issues of the reduction and elimination of Title IX protections that are based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
ADAM: What is your view on the future of the U.S. Department of Education if it is eliminated? What implications do you foresee that having?
SELENE: The Department of Education has been around since the 1970s. President Carter is the one who signed that legislation. As soon as President Reagan was elected, he vowed to eliminate the Department of Education. And there was an uprising of parents around the country saying that you cannot eliminate the Department of Education because it does so many things for children with disabilities. It’s been tried before to eliminate the Department of Education. It requires 60 votes in Congress to eliminate a department. You can’t just eliminate a department on a whim.
ADAM: So 60 votes in the Senate.
SELENE: So that is important to know. It would be a tremendous political lift to get rid of the Department of Education because as I said, disability and children with disabilities, they don’t know a political affiliation. And there are many people in the Senate who have children with disabilities on both sides of the aisle. So I don’t think that that is going to be something that’s going to happen because it is a big lift to convince the Senate to do that. The Department of Education has a lot of roles. They establish the policies. They administer the funding. They collect data. They do research. They identify issues that are important to families. And they enforce anti-discrimination laws. And so the Department of Education really does so much for children with disabilities. It also is important that they promote equal access for everyone. So it is more than just the funding and it’s more than student loans. It really is ensuring that our nation’s children eat million children with disabilities receive what they need by setting policy.
ADAM: And what do you think would be the biggest implications for special needs families if the US Department of Education just disappeared?
SELENE: So I think it’s going to be the funding, how that money is given to the states, whether then the states give the IDEA money in block funding and tell states that they can do what they want with it. And then there’s no enforcement to ensure that that money is being spent, how it should be spent. There’s no enforcement mechanism, which I think is important, that there be some enforcement mechanism by someone to ensure that the money is going to where it needs to go. And being used in the way that it should be used.
ADAM: And how do you anticipate things would shift if that were to occur? Would funding come from a different federal agency perhaps? Or would it be up to the states to provide the funding themselves? What would that look like in your view?
SELENE: So I think that the money would come from the federal government to the states and then the states would then decide how to allocate that to their local school districts.
ADAM: Do you think it would still come from the federal government, just the enforcement and accountability of the missing IC?
SELENE: Yes. And it would probably come in the block grant so that they could do whatever they wanted to do with it.
ADAM: Does COPA foresee a risk of changes to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or its implementation?
SELENE: I don’t think that any efforts to weaken IDEA would be successful because I do believe that there would be a groundswell. And we know that the new chairman of the Health and Education and Labor, that the help committee, is Senator Cassidy. And Senator Cassidy has been very vocal and a big supporter of children with disabilities. He has a child with a disability. And there is a lot of common ground to be found with him. He has a child that has benefited from IDEA services, right? And IDEA laws and protections. So I think that that is a very positive thing that he is the new chairman of that committee.
ADAM: Which committee did you say that is?
SELENE: The help committee.
ADAM: And what does that committee do?
SELENE: It is the one that oversees the Department of Education and would be the one where if there are amendments to the IDEA that would weaken it, it would come from that committee.
ADAM: Just want to put the IDEA in context. When was it created? And when is it due to be reviewed again?
SELENE: So the IDEA was created in 1975. It is a permanent piece of legislation. It does not have to be reauthorized. It can be amended. So the Part B of the IDEA which covers children from 3 to 21 is a permanent piece of legislation. You don’t ever have to do anything to it. It always remains in effect. There are parts of the IDEA that do need to be amended. I think some of the funding and some of the state obligations have to be reauthorized. There is no calendar or time frame for the IDEA because it is a piece of permanent legislation. It can’t be taken away without an act of Congress.
ADAM: That’s reassuring to parents, isn’t it?
SELENE: I think it is, yes.
ADAM: Well, I’m glad you clarified that distinction because we’ve been getting calls from parents and other people fearing that their rights are about to disappear because of all that’s anticipated with the new administration. So it’s good to know that it’s a permanent piece of legislation and their rights are not going away in that sense.
SELENE: No, no. I know it’s scary. In the fall, I did talk to a lot of people too, a lot of lawyers, parents who were very concerned about what was going to happen. As I said, it’s a big lift to get rid of a whole department. It would be a big lift to get rid of a piece of legislation that’s been in effect since 1975 that protects 8 million children. You can imagine that there would be a groundswell of families regardless of whatever your political affiliation is who would not want that to happen at all.
ANNOUNCER: Just know about it too. If you have thoughts, questions, comments, or would like to suggest ideas for a future episode, we’d love to hear it. So email your feedback to podcast at Dayanlawfirm.com.
ADAM: What do people need to understand in terms of potential changes in the federal budget and spending for special education services, including any state and local implications? I guess we touched on this a little bit already, but if there’s anything else you want to say on this topic?
SELENE: So the fiscal year budget from House Republicans sets the Part B funding at $14.2 billion, which would be level funds for everything, which would include parent training information centers and research. And the concern, obviously, is that the locals or the states would not receive money at a level that would even account for annual rates of inflation. We have been very supportive throughout the years for full funding of the IDEA. The funding proposal from the House Republicans now would mean that the locals, states, and school districts would have to come up with $31 billion to offset the IDEA and the funding that is proposed from the House Republicans. So that could potentially mean difficulties in hiring teachers and ensuring that students get the services that they need.
ADAM: I’m sure the numbers change from year to year, but do you want to educate listeners a little bit about what the federal government is supposed to fund each year? What is their obligation?
SELENE: So in 1975, when the IDEA was passed, Congress promised up to 40% of federal funds to states in order to educate children with disabilities.
ADAM: 40% of the federal budget?
SELENE: 40% of what states would require.
ADAM: 40% of the states needs.
SELENE: Uh-huh. Yes. 40% of the states needs. Through the years, that number has never reached more than 16% 1, 6%. So when we talk about- Where’s the ground swell for that? When we talk about fully funding the IDEA, we’re really talking about that 40% because that was the promise up to 40%. If states receive federal funds like for, you know, highways or anything like that, if you receive money from the federal government, the federal government tells you these are your obligations. So when states receive that federal money, the obligations are to provide students with the free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment, make sure that parents get reimbursed if they have to go to a non-public or private school. You know, all those protections that are on the IDEA states tell the federal government will agree to do all of these things in exchange for giving us the money. But the money has never been fully there. So states have to make up the rest of that money in order to educate children with disabilities.
ADAM: State and local school districts have a heavy lift of their own to cover the difference.
SELENE: Because of that, you’ve seen situations like in Texas where for years they capped how many children they were identifying as having disabilities. So that kind of data is all that data that states report to the federal government so that the federal government can then see as they saw in Texas that they were capping how many students could get identified as needing IDEA funds, which was wrong. There was a situation where a student was blind and was unable to get an IEP or a student who had autism and was unable to get an IEP. So that kind of data that states report to the federal government allows the federal government to then determine whether or not students are not being identified as what happened in Texas. And that is why we continue to need a Department of Education to ensure that things like capping how many students get identified is not happening in states. And obviously if you cap how many students are getting services, then you can control your budget in some way so that you’re not having to spend that much money on students or ensure that there’s money there for students.
ADAM: That’s a sad state of affairs.
SELENE: It’s a good example of journalism because after a lot of newspaper articles in the Houston Chronicle, the federal government acted in order to ensure that this wasn’t happening.
ADAM: There’s the silver lining. The federal government stepping in to solve that problem. Practically what are the implications if school districts, state and local are picking up more of the tab? What does that mean for their school system and their resources and their ability to educate special needs children?
SELENE: It would mean that parents need to be informed how much money in a state budget is being allocated to locals for the education of children with disabilities. How much locals are allocating for the education of children with disabilities? There are many parents throughout the country who keep tabs on that and make sure that the money is the same level that it always has been. IDEA requires a maintenance of effort which means that you can’t go below the funding that you had the previous year. You have to maintain the same maintenance of effort. M-O-E is what they call it. That is required. You can’t go below that.
ADAM: Yeah, I’m just thinking about the ways in which school districts sometimes go after special education when they need to tighten the budget. Something’s got to give and unfortunately it’s too often the case that special education takes the hit when states are trying to balance their budgets.
SELENE: I totally agree that that is a problem and then that is why parents have to be vigilant. All of this enforcement, it seems, comes down to families who already are dealing with children who might have intensive support needs at home. Unfortunately, that is the paradigm that we’re living in and always have. It’s always been up to families and parents to ensure that their children get what they need. I think that one of my thoughts has always been you’re not supposed to pay IDEA money to attorneys fees when you get reimbursed, when families prevail and then you submit your fees and you get reimbursed. That is not supposed to come out of part B money because that doesn’t have anything to do with educating kids with disabilities. What’s always been interesting to me is how much school systems pay for in-house lawyers or lawyers from outside law firms to represent the school district and whether or not there’s a true cost benefit analysis of fighting a family or coming to some kind of agreement with the family. That to me, I’ve never really understood the allocation of resources to fight families for things that students need and I think that that’s a real problem. When a family wants a reimbursement for a $3,000 evaluation that they want the school system to pay for, litigating over $3,000 seems to me to be foolish. I once had a case where I just wanted the school system to pay $60 for CPR class for an aid for a client and that went all the way up to the fourth circuit court of appeals. It didn’t make any sense. Where is the cost benefit analysis in that?
ADAM: Yeah and in New York City, it seems like it varies from one mayoral administration to the next. Yes. Especially after the last few years, Bloomberg was of the mind, let’s hire lawyers to defend these cases. De Blasio was of the mind, let’s settle these cases and make it easier for families. Adams has a mindset similar to Bloomberg’s hiring lots of lawyers to fight these cases more aggressively and certainly keeps parents and families on their toes. It’s always changing and you really need to be in the know about your rights as a parent and assertive in getting or pursuing what your child is entitled to. And it’s stressful enough for a parent to raise a special needs child. They don’t need on top of that dealing with situations where states are trying to balance their budgets and the result is making it even harder for a special needs parents.
SELENE: I do think it’s very hard to be a parent because I also had a child who had an IEP. So I understand what that feels like and what I think is missing in all of this is that even if a parent has to go and hire a lawyer in order for it to happen, there’s still a power dynamic. You still have all of those people in IEP team who work for the school system and then there’s you and maybe your lawyer or your advocate, maybe your partner and that’s it. And that’s a big power dynamic that I don’t think school districts necessarily understand what that feels like to be that parent with a child with a disability, listening to what those needs are and then being told that your ideas or your request is dismissed and you’re told to go ahead and sue us. It doesn’t seem right.
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ADAM: What specific steps can parents, attorneys and advocates take to ensure that the rights of children with disabilities continue to be protected under the new presidential administration?
SELENE: Well, the law is still the law. You still have rights under IDEA, Section 504, the Americans with Disabilities Act. So the law is still the law that has not changed. It’s important to educate state legislators about what these rights are as well as federal legislators, what the rights are and why upholding these rights is really critical for families and the 8 million students that have disabilities. I continue to believe that courts play an important role in ensuring that those rights are upheld. And as I’ve said before, that disability is bipartisan and the issues surrounding disability and the laws that protect civil rights regarding disabilities have always been bipartisan. And I’m going to continue to hang on to that.
ADAM: Yeah, and I think the education piece is critical. You may not think that a judge, for example, needs to be educated, but judges do both about the existing law and how it applies to a specific family. And same thing in Washington, D.C., educating legislators about existing law and rights and why it’s so important that they remain in place.
SELENE: Exactly, exactly. You know, a good example is COPA was an organizational plaintiff in a lawsuit in Fairfax Public Schools in Virginia. And in that case, Fairfax School District had reported that there had been zero incidences of restraint when they reported to the state and the state reported to the federal government. And in fact, there were individual students who had been restrained and secluded up to 700 times. And none of that had been reported. So we were part of a lawsuit seeking to eliminate the use of the restraint, men’s occlusion in Fairfax County Public Schools. We ended up settling it, but the Fairfax County Public Schools filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. And we were assigned a recent appointee from the first administration, what they call a Trump judge. And he got it. And he issued an amazing 40-page opinion on that motion to dismiss, talking about the rights of students and why the civil rights were important to uphold and declining to dismiss the lawsuit because he absolutely saw what was there. So the law is the law, as I said. And you know, even if you buy into whether or not somebody has been appointed by this president or that president, the law is the law. And that judge exercised his ability to read the law and interpret it and decline to dismiss the lawsuit. And we later settled the lawsuit, but that was very important.
ADAM: Nice. Great work. What are some of the top hot button issues being addressed in the courts at this time with respect to securing appropriate educational support and services?
SELENE: So issues related to equal access to Education under Section 504, the legal standard for discrimination under Section 504 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Supreme Court recently granted the petition for cert, a case out of the 8th Circuit, HAT versus OCO, which is going to hopefully establish once and for all whether or not you have to establish bad faith or gross misjudgment when you are trying to bring a discrimination lawsuit for a student who attends a public school, K to 12. Students with School of Voidence or Trauma, we’re finding out a lot more about trauma and the effect on the brain. I think that those issues are at the forefront and the continued proper application of the NGF standard, which we discussed earlier. So I see all of those as the hot topic issues.
ADAM: And continuing on the theme of speaking with policymakers and affecting change, could you discuss how COPA is engaging with policymakers to strengthen or protect the rights of children with disabilities?
SELENE: COPA has a Federal Policy Advisor and we also have a State Policy Director that I work with along with COPA’s CEO Denise Marshall. And we also have a COPA Government Relations Committee that is very active to co-chairs and we work with them to issue policy briefs, hold briefings and conduct visits to elected officials that provide them with information so that our members can participate in what we call Hill Day. Usually, we have those Hill Days in May where we go with members and visit legislators in Washington, D.C. They’re staffers in their office. So we do a lot of that around the Federal Policy work.
ADAM: What challenges do families of color, families living in poverty and families who speak another language face during the process of securing an appropriate education for their children and how does COPA work to support these populations?
SELENE: So families of color and families who live in poverty and families who speak in other language are at a distinct disadvantage when confronting decisions by school districts, especially families who don’t speak the language. I think it’s daunting for many families. In my private practice, I do represent a number of families who are Spanish speakers and who need assistance with their children’s IEP. So they already are disadvantaged and their ability maybe to seek outside help like a lawyer or an advocate. And so I think that that is problematic for them. We know that children who are African-American and have disabilities are subjected at disproportionate rates to restraint and seclusion, arrests in schools, exclusionary discipline where they’re suspended or expelled. It has been part of our COPA strategic plan to address these issues. And we’ve been working on it for a number of years and trying to increase the number of families from diverse backgrounds as COPA members, as well as people who are on our board, people who have lived experience with the disability. I think it’s very important as well. So it is something that we work actively to address through our trainings, through our annual conference, and also through our membership recruitment.
ADAM: What are some things we can expect to see from COPA in the future?
SELENE: I think that we continue to broaden our reach in our voice. We continue to do a lot of friend of the court briefs and reach out to people who need assistance across the country and try to help attorneys and try to train families and try to train advocates. So it’s going to remain the same. We’re going to remain vigilant as we always have. You know, it doesn’t really matter who the administration is. We have had disagreements. It doesn’t matter who the president is. We’ve had disagreements all along the way and have always felt that more work needs to be done to enforce and protect children with disabilities.
ADAM: How can attorneys and advocates working with COPA further push back against any disagreements, areas of disagreement, or potentially harmful education policies?
SELENE: I think it goes back to your state and local boards of education and remaining vigilant and understanding those decisions that they’re making. Policy work isn’t always what attorneys like to do. I certainly don’t relish it, but I think it’s important in order to make sure that our clients are protected and parents are protected. I find that parents oftentimes through their own research, no way more than lawyers do about what budgets are or what policies are being handed down. So everybody needs to remain involved in what their state and local boards of education are doing and make sure that the students with disabilities are getting what they absolutely need.
ADAM: If you’re a parent out there and you know all this stuff, COPA could really use you.
SELENE: Yes, absolutely. We have so many members across the country who are just phenomenal. They’re just forces of nature. It’s unbelievable.
ADAM: What advice would you offer to parents of children with disabilities who are feeling uncertain or concerned about the future of their children’s education and services under the new administration?
SELENE: So it’s important to stay informed and make sure that the information that you’re hearing is real and that is backed up by something that’s in writing. Don’t believe everything that you read on the internet. So it’s important to stay informed. Good example of that is the concern that people had about the closing of the Department of Education when you really look down at it and see what would be required. It’s not as scary as one would think.
ADAM: Good to know. Who can become a member of COPA and what is entailed in obtaining membership?
SELENE: So parents, advocates, attorneys and related professionals, you can go to www.copa.org, copa.org, and click on the join us link in order to join our organization. If you work for a school system and you get more than 50% of your income through employment, you’re not eligible to be a member of COPA.
ADAM: Do you want to say what are some of the benefits of becoming a member?
SELENE: So it is a wonderful community of people who are dedicated and committed to students with disabilities. We offer training on all of these issues, training on how to be an effective advocate, how to be informed as a parent, how to be a better attorney, understand what the issues are. It’s a really great community, absolutely.
ADAM: And if you want to say a few words about the annual conference, I think I went to my first one 15 years ago in St. Louis, Missouri. It’s a great experience and I’ve been to many since then, but if you want to tell our listeners.
SELENE: So COPA has an annual conference, usually the first week of March. This year it’s going to be in Irvine, California. And we have a great program. We are going to cover a lot of these things that we’ve talked about today. We also have pre-conference training or attorneys, advocates, parents and related professionals. It’s about 700 people now, so it’s very big. And it is a great time to get recharged, be around people who are like-minded in their commitment to children with disabilities. So it’s a great experience once a year.
ADAM: So where can our listeners learn more about you and COPA?
SELENE: www.copa.org. And we’re at Instagram and LinkedIn, as well as Blue Sky and X. So we have a presence everywhere. COPA, FAPE, is how you reach us on Blue Sky. So those are all things that are way beyond my knowledge level, but we’re all over social media. I’m not on any social media.
ADAM: So. Excellent. Thanks, Selene. I will bring us home. I want to say that I really respect your leadership at COPA. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you over the years. I appreciate your being here to educate our listeners about what they can do to make a difference. And I look forward to continued advocacy for students with disabilities and special needs.
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