After several years of my son's elementary school touting progress that I did not believe he was making in either reading or writing, I consulted an attorney to get help understanding my rights as a parent.  The attorney, upon reviewing my son's school records and finding basis for my concerns, suggested that I work with an Advocate.  The role of the Advocate would be to help lay out an effective process for getting the school to hear me, and then to work within the process in a way that would hold the School Department's feet to the fire in providing a free, appropriate public education for my son.

I went into the process feeling a great deal of guilt for not having understood the kind of help my son really needed in school, and for my failure to get him what he needed in order to learn to read and write.  I'm well-educated, I have always been involved in my children's education, and I had even rearranged my work schedule so that I was available every single day to help my son complete homework pages he could not even read.  Why hadn't it been enough?  What should I have done differently?  There were a lot of nights that I spent, lying awake, worried that my son was about to enter Junior High with the ability to read and write at a second grade level.

After interviewing several Advocates at my attorney's suggestion, I decided to work with Buckley because of his ability to listen and communicate with me, and because of the depth of his knowledge of the process we would face going forward.  In the six months that Buckley has been assisting me, I have learned things about my son's education that almost make me ill:  the amount of "down time" he actually has while receiving special services, the fact that he could not, with his current abilities, actually have earned the standardized test scores that the school kept waving in front of me, and the school's sloppiness in trying process after process after methodology without any factual basis for their choices.  A picture showing why my son cannot read and write at any functional level began to emerge very quickly.

Buckley has guided me in using this picture to gain the School Department's cooperation as well as their understanding that I am not going to go away.  Their days of telling me what a great kid my son is, what a hard worker he is, and how well he is doing are over.  They now know that I know what rights my son has to a free, appropriate public education and what their responsibilities are in providing it.  Thanks to Buckley, we are making significant strides in getting my son what he needs in, despite its Norman Rockwell appearance, a very traditional and rigid system.  I have learned that it is a system where,  historically, the child gets what he or she gets because it is what the school has, as opposed to the child's needs actually being met.

Six months ago, I grappled with how I would pay an Advocate, and whether it would be worth it.  It has been the best investment I have ever made.  Not only has Buckley helped me get the School Department to pay for the testing  my son actually needed in order to determine appropriate services-an enormous  cost not covered by my insurance-but he has helped move everyone involved to the same side of my son's problems with reading and writing.  What I understand, now, is that the work with Buckley has also minimized the legal fees I would have been facing without him, in trying to get the School Department to help my son.  Buckley is very adept at showing me how to hold down the legal and consultative academic costs in having to prove the school's past failures so that my son's future successes are possible.

Sometimes, I still lie awake at night.  Now, however, what plays through my mind is hope for my son and gratitude for the team that Buckley has helped me assemble in getting his needs met.