Before bringing DD to meetings, we asked her to write out her own thoughts on the topic at hand, and I read them out to the meeting. Nobody listened.
We invited our DD to meetings because she wanted to be there. There was a point somewhere (I think 1st grade) where she got the idea that WE were the ones responsible for placing her in that grade level, so she thought we were the problem, and had lost trust in us. This partially explained the severity of her emotional problems that year, because at that point, she felt completely isolated. We had quite a job to do convincing her where the battle-lines had been drawn in those meetings. Bringing her in was important to re-establish trust.
Several months later, the three of us were together informally in the vice principal's office discussing plans for next year, and the veep casually said, "Now that we've finally gotten the grade-skip idea off the table...", I interrupted with a flat, "We have not ruled out any options," and my DD got to see for herself.
