[quote=bzylzy] I especially like the advice to figure out what the law is (an attorney can do that for you, of course) and to write stuff down. Written records are very important. A person can say, "No, that's not what I said," but it's hard to say, "No, that's not what I wrote."
Writing things down was very useful to us in yet another way when we were dealing with our uncooperative school. They would often tell us things that they would *never* put down in writing because they were clearly things that were verging on not-exactly-legal... obviously we were never going to get those comments/etc in writing from the school. So what I did, after every meeting or conversation, was to follow-up with a summary email - brief, but stating what my understanding of what was said and agreed or decided upon and asking for the school team/staff member/whoever to respond if their understanding or interpretation was different. I think, in the OP's situation here I would be sure to start following up each suspension or other incident at school with an email just to be able to have something in writing with the OP's understanding of what happened and what the consequence at school was. Our school staff felt like they could say anything they wanted to to a parent, and that they could act in ways that were not exactly legal, but once things were put in writing the school became very different in how they acted and responded, most likely due to worries on the part of the school that the written word could be brought up in legal action.
We never considered taking our advocacy to the point of calling in a lawyer - I realized that would be the point at which it was too all-consuming for us, and that we would be sinking $ into it that I'd rather sink into private school or tutoring or whatever. We never ever considered legal action - but we did approach each situation at school from the perspective of holding the school accountable legally - does that make sense? The school never knew for sure that we *wouldn't* hire a lawyer, so by summarizing things in writing the school staff was prevented indirectly from pushing us around.
polarbear
