Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy When meetings become HOSTILE - What to do??

I definitely get what you are saying! It's just so frustrating when I'm all about meeting the needs of the child and they are all about status quo. GRRR!

I've stayed away from the lawyer route for 4 years only because we are in a protected state. I'm looking for an educational advocate to go with me to my next meeting though. Might help to have someone else there that actually understands the laws and my kids rights.

Momma Bear, I think that an advocate sounds like a PERFECT solution in your situation.

I'd also be asking that person to "Mentor" you in order to improve your own advocacy skills-- if this is the only game in town, so to speak, then you are going to need those skills yourself in the long run.



Ask your advocate how s/he prepares for meetings-- how s/he addresses disagreements, etc.

I also think-- NO lawyers. Not yet, anyway.

"Let the record reflect that the district has offered/requested {item} and the parents plan to respond by {agreed upon date} after consulting with their child's psychologist" would be accurate, meanwhile the district as described seems to be preparing falsified records? Or at best not working in good faith to allow a reasonable amount of time. Which gives rise to the question - Was an agenda of meeting topics and expectations of decisions to be made at the meeting supplied to you in advance, and with sufficient lead time? (Might the district's position be that parents arrived unprepared to make decisions they had received advance notification of?) It is difficult to tell from the description whether the district was not proactively communicative regarding its evidence/data/position or if they also hid the agenda of topics, timeframes, discussion items, action items, etc. Sounds like the district may be taking an intimidating and indefensible position.

Just commiserating... no real answers here... possibly a cautionary tale...

Organizations tend to be geared toward self-preservation. Not to make excuses for them but unfortunately much of what parents encounter may be based on a teacher's/school's/district's previous negative experiences with other families who've gone before.

Similarly, future families will embark on their own journeys on the road of gifted education for their childrens' sake, and the journey of these future families may be made easier or more difficult based partly upon advocacy efforts of parents today.

Some have shared that when they encountered no-win situations, they left and found other educational opportunities for their children. Unfortunately some organizations may choose to share negative statements about a family with new schools, preventing families from achieving a fresh start for their child/ren even after investing considerable effort in locating a new school which initially presented itself as being a good "fit" and very welcoming.

It is possible that a district which falsifies its meeting records may be inclined to similarly share false negative information about a family, possibly sabotaging or sandbagging the child/ren & family with the new educational institution... creating a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. Is this something attorneys might deal with... reviewing school records and limiting the information which may shared about students/families?

Just to clarify - this is full on blindsiding. No advance notice that led us to come to meetings unprepared.

Another concern that I have with so many families here saying they left the schools when they encounter these situations is that may very well be the intent behind some of this. I had been warned about our horrible principal's history of making life miserable for anyone she considered "a problem". I was told numerous stories about students, teachers and staff who left after she seemed to target them. I fully believe that was her intent with DD, especially since we had been on the fence between enrolling her in public with an IEP or at a wonderful local private. I am convinced that she believed if she made DD (and us) miserable enough we would remove her and she would become someone else's problem.

She did not count on DD's needs being so extreme that the private had to be removed from consideration. She didn't count on us getting very serious about educating ourselves about DD's rights and insisting that the district meet their responsibilities. She didn't count on our willingness to spend money and go up the food chain to get the state dept of ed, the superintendent and attorneys involved.

Ironically she got DD out of her school, at great expense to the district, but simultaneously was removed as principal herself. Both parts of this outcome are much more rare than parents throwing in the towel and moving to a new district, placing their kids in privates or deciding to home school. Because of DD's situation none of these options were available to us or we would have indeed removed her.

Just some food for thought about *why* some of these hostile situations may occur with our kids whose needs can be so difficult to meet.

We experienced this at one point as well. It's real. And a neighboring district has quite a number of "refugees" in it as a result.

I share this concern-- but look, if it DOES get to that point, you really should file a complaint with OCR over due process and retaliatory conduct. While they aren't a ton of help re: specific accommodations and stonewalling regarding same, they ARE tigers when it comes to retaliatory behavior, hostility and hectoring during the process.

Which is good, because frankly, most administrators HAVE to consider it a "win" when a 2e (or merely disabled) student's parents decide that they've had enough.

I experienced a truly sobering moment when my DD was about 7yo, and we were taking a (side-by-side) beginning strings class that was taught inside local elementary schools. We showed up at a non-neighborhood school, and because of my DD's disability, we opted to wait in the office to "talk to" the instructor (who was not an official school district employee, but that of the strings program). We were flexible on the day of the week and the time, but needed to find out from the instructor where we'd have the fewest problems w/r/t the disability issue. Quite honestly, we needed for this class to NOT be in certain environments, and weren't looking for CHANGES to the program, but fact-finding to figure out where we could fit in relatively easily...

Well, us waiting in the office aroused administrative/principal concern, apparently-- like, what are they doing there? Why are they here? Are they planning to just sit there for long? etc.

The secretary addressed the principle thusly (apparently she didn't know that we could hear EVERY.WORD.);

"Oh, they're here because {other location} is a problem because of {child's disability, at length}. They thought it would be better to wait here."

"WHAT?? Oh no!! Are they new??" (panic in voice)

"Oh, don't worry-- they aren't ours. They're districted for {other school}. No worries! They'll only be here for today, apparently."

"Oh, that's GREAT."

My DD was stunned. She already knew that she was persona non grata-- but this was one of the first times that she heard it so openly displayed in front of her on the part of an adult. I'm sorry to say that it was far from the last time-- nor was it it anything like the most hurtful, either. At least they didn't already know us.

We knew better than to even ASK for what she clearly needed for the pushback that we knew would ensue. She might have had the RIGHT under the law, all right... but no way was her collection of needs "reasonable" by most administrative standards, and there you have a recipe for abject misery for all.

So we homeschooled. It was that or risk my DD's life daily for academics that didn't stand a chance of meeting her needs. Some choice.

That breaks my heart. How can people be so cruel? (I know that there is no good answer to that question.)

Unfortunately, a clever way to stack the deck in their favor. In a trusting environment, one would not suspect a thing... after one meeting like this families often learn to ask in advance for an agenda... or another meeting.


Yes, that may not be uncommon.

These experiences change us, don't they.

Agreed. Some schools also find PG academic needs too difficult to meet, even without need for 2e accommodations. In any of these cases schools may concoct ways to spin things, possibly including trying to provoke a negative emotional response at a meeting. Sometimes we read on gifted forums that a child "wrote too well" causing a teacher to suspect them of turning in work which was not their own original composition. Even after student work passed plagiarism check software, and several impromptu pieces of similar quality are written on demand and under supervision to prove ability, such unfounded allegations can cast a long shadow. This is just one example. There are a multitude of ways in which schools may attempt to discredit, ostracize, and marginalize students/families. Families may think it cannot happen to them, until it does. It may take some months before a family is able to process this, connecting all the dots and seeing the pattern, meanwhile the pattern may be clear early on to others who are not as close to the situation.

May they some day realize the impact of their words. Hugs to you & kiddo. Similar heartache when PG child overhears they will not be welcomed to particular school because ERB indicates they may usurp position at top of class. Unwanted. Rejected. Closed doors. No opportunity.

This poem seems to fit: "I Cultivate a White Rose", by Jose Marti