Remember that first IEP team meeting for your child? Let's see if we get this right. You're a young mother and you're probably alone. You're a little nervous, maybe even scared about what is supposed to happen at the meeting. You've been dealing with "experts" on other parts of your
child's llife as you've learned about the medical and community realities of having a child with a disability, and you haven't gained any measure of confidence in your abilities as a parent.

You walk into the IEP team meeting room. You see the little chair and the long table. Across the table from you sit six or seven people with degrees and titles who say they "know" your child. They hold your child's evaluations and other paperwork in front of them that you've never seen.
During introductions it seems like everyone else has a title like Mister, Mizz or Doctor, while you're "just a mom."

Through the course of the meeting, while you squirm on the little chair - we call it the "mom" chair -- it seems to you that it doesn't take long for everyone else to start calling you "Mom," while they keep the special titles for themselves. After all, they are the "experts." The meeting seems to run smoothly, with them doing most of the talking and you doing most of the listening. Before you know it, they thrust a multi-page document in front of you and insist you check "this box" and "sign here" so that they can be about the business of meeting your child's special education needs.

Tired, sore [from the "mom" chair] and confused, you follow their directions and the meeting concludes. Your child now has an Individualized Education Plan, and you have a headache, and a sinking feeling that - whatever happened - you've just signed away your child's future and you have no idea what you've just done. You leave the school in a fog, hoping that whatever you did was right by your child.

After two or three of these IEP Tea

m Meetings - and continuing doubt on your part about whether you've really made sure your child's educational needs are being met by the IEP -- you've finally connected with some parent groups and started to learn a little about the IEP process and you and your child's rights under the IEP. If you're somewhat lucky, you've even found a group or organization that has volunteer advocates available to help you prepare for IEP Team Meetings in advance. In some instances the volunteer advocates have even been able to attend the meetings with you. What relief this brings to you. Finally, you don't feel quite so small, inadequate or unprepared sitting in the "mom" chair, and the line of "experts" across from you aren't so daunting when you've got an advocate sitting in a little chair beside you.

The volunteer advocates sitting next to you went through the same IEP growth process. They've learned the ropes from their own "mom" chair, and have made time to learn enough to help you and other parents through the process. They've carved out precious time to attend special education workshops. They've paid child care workers, paid their own transportation and preparation costs, and become an invaluable resource to you and other parents. They attend meetings for free, paying for copying costs out of their own pockets, along with the other costs associated with making sure their own child's needs are met while they are helping you. They've done this because of their own experiences in the "mom" chair, and their refusal to see you and other parents go through the process without help.

But wait. There is a sinister move afoot in schools across America. We're hearing stories about a new school trend. In school after school, volunteer parent advocates arriving to attend IEP Team Meetings with parents are being greeted at the meeting room door by school administrators. The administrators are telling the advocates that when they attend IEP meetings they are engaging in the unauthorized practice of law. They are telling the advocates that the school might have no choice but to report the advocate to the state agency that regulates lawyers.

The advocates, who already have overcome their own fear of being intimidated by the IEP process suddenly are confronting a new form of intimidation. Now what do they do? Attend the meeting and keep their mouths shut? Expose themselves and their families to the cost of fighting the school - and the state bar - over their right to help parents at IEP meetings? Leave the meeting - and the parent - so that they don't have to fight the battle?

The Senators and Members of Congress know little or nothing about your experience at that first IEP team meeting. They know little or nothing about what it is like to sit in the "mom" chair, across a long table from the school team. They also don't know what it is like for you - and for your child's educational programming - to have a volunteer advocate sitting with you, just to level the playing field a little, and to make the number of "experts" sitting across from you seem slightly less intimidating.

Our federal legislators also don't know how hard it is for parents to find good volunteer advocate help. They don't know how little information parents receive about the IEP process from schools, or about how intimidating school officials can be to parents AND advocates.

The family fight to save the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA] is real. The threats to IDEA are real. The intimidation at the school level is real. The schools control the process, and few parents truly have access to competent legal advice or the services of trained advocates. The proposed attorney fee cap now being considered by Congress seems designed to make competent help even less available to parents and families. And now the advocates are being intimidated in individual schools.

We would like to think that we parents have control over our children's educational programming. But we're consistently stalked by our own fears and our own experiences sitting in the "mom" chair at the long table. If we don't let our legislators know about that experience, and about the current balance of power in favor of the schools, we have nobody to blame but ourselves if Congress takes away the already limited legal resources we now have.

With this new trend of threatening volunteer advocates with the unauthorized practice of law if they help you at IEP Team Meetings, school administrators have only highlighted the threats to our children and us. We cannot let them get away with this. Write your Members of Congress and your Senators. Tell them about your experiences in the "mom" chair. Invite them or their staff members to attend an IEP Team Meeting with you; to sit on your side of the long table in their own "mom" chair.

Our silence as parents in the face of school attacks on advocates only strengthens the schools and weakens the families. Don't remain silent. Call your senator today. We're running out of days - and out of advocates.

And only you know how lonely that little chair and long table truly are.
Tricia and Calvin Luker