We struggled significantly with our child's IEP and educational needs. By the time we met…read moreMichelle, I had spent thousands of dollars on non-attorney IEP advocates. The advocates we hired were good and supported us in our IEP journey, but we never ended up with an IEP substantially better than we started with. Even the smallest gains in the IEP were prefaced by multiple, sometimes painful IEP meetings with many overt and covert reminders that compromises inevitably had to be made. These compromises were made at the expense of substantially underserving my neurodiverse child's learning, social, and emotional needs.
My husband and I debated whether shelling out more money for an attorney would be worth it. Parents may not know that there isn't a standardized, licensing, or credentialing administrative agency that oversees IEP advocacy accreditation. You can call yourself an "IEP advocate" without any overseeing administrative agency, competency exam, or experience needed to begin your business. That said, there are many excellent, wonderful non-attorney IEP advocates. However, there isn't a standardized accreditation process and though we hired multiple strong IEP advocates, none were able to make the substantial, dramatic gains in our kid's IEP that Michelle accomplished.
In the end-I consulted with 4 IEP attorneys and 8 non-attorney advocates in two school districts. Among the attorneys we consulted with-Michelle had among the most reasonable rates. Moreover, attorneys differ in their approach in how heavy-handed they are with district personnel. Michelle is a team player-she is very respectful, humble, and collaborative when dealing with school personnel.
Moreover, she is very honest about your odds of winning something in due process & the high costs to parents (emotional, time-wise, and financial) with regards to litigation against a school district. She is firm when she needs to be-but it is delivered with the right degree of both strength & tenderness, collaboration and clarity/power in advocating for her client's needs-that is an art that is not always taught or intuitive to attorneys or non-attorneys. Michelle's ability to work with others even as she strongly advocates for her clients is remarkable to watch-she knows when to pick a battle, gently/indirectly showcase when procedural (or substantive) violations may have been made-without going on full attack mode, but still making her points and agenda abundantly clear.
We plan on working with Michelle for years on end. I am not letting go of this gem we found. We finally found an ally who has an incredible mastery of assessments (her knowledge of every assessment, from phonemic understanding, to behavioral assessments, to visual/auditory processing, etc.) that the school staff administered completely blew us away), her understanding of even fine details related to evidence-based curriculum/pedagogy for disparate learning disabilities (ask her questions about dyslexia-you'll be amazed by her content knowledge), autism/ADHD, and sensory-related needs for neurodiverse learners is incredible.
I am amazed by Michelle. She is an outstanding IEP advocate, attorney, and has a personal understanding of the journey as a parent of children with disparate special needs. My kid is finally getting an IEP that is truly individualized to her unique learning-related needs. I finally sat through an IEP meeting without holding back tears-because we were finally being heard through the support of an exceptional, singularly gifted and compassionate advocate & attorney. Don't hesitate. She's the absolute best.
