Read This Before the 2026-2027 School Year Starts

By Courtney Burnett, Board Certified Special Education Advocate, Licensed SLPA, and mom to a child with disabilities

Before 1975, schools could legally turn your child away at the door….as a legal option.

Children with disabilities were not guaranteed access to public education. Many of them ended up in institutions, separated from their communities, hidden from public life.

It wasn't until undercover investigations pulled back the curtain on what was actually happening inside those institutions that the country was forced to reckon with what it had allowed.

And change didn't come quietly. On March 12, 1990, more than 60 disability rights activists abandoned their wheelchairs and crawled up the 83 stone steps of the U.S. Capitol.

An 8-year-old girl named Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins was among them. When asked if she needed help, she said she'd take all night if she had to.

Four months later, President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law.

These rights did not arrive because someone decided to be generous.

They arrived because disabled people and the families who loved them made it impossible to say no.

And the IEP your child has today, the legal right to a free and appropriate education, to individualized services, to have you at that table as an equal member of the team, exists because of that fight.

That is not ancient history!! That was 35 years ago. Most of us were alive then!

And what I am watching happen in meetings right now tells me we cannot afford to take it for granted.

What I'm Watching Happen in Meetings Right Now

This spring I sat in a meeting for three hours while a district interpreted a neurologist's letter word by word, comma by comma, looking for every reason the language didn't require them to act and help the child to the education they needed.

I've watched a district cancel an IEP meeting three days before the end of the school year, go silent on a parent's emails, and tell her she wasn't allowed to contact the school board.

She filed a state complaint and within 24 hours the family had an IEP meeting offer that had been denied for months.

I'm seeing this across states right now.

When federal enforcement gets quieter, districts notice.

Of course, some keep doing their jobs.

But many start testing what they can get away with. And the families who lose services are almost always the ones who didn't know they could push back or didn't know how.

I am not telling you this to scare you. I am telling you this because your child cannot afford for you to be caught off guard this school year.

IDEA is still federal law. Your child's rights have not changed but right now, the person who has to be willing to use that law is you.

What to Do Before August

Pull out your child's current IEP and read it. The IEP that ended the year is the one that starts the year, and right now, before backpacks come out, is the time to catch anything that needs to change.

Read the goals, the service minutes, the accommodations. If anything in that document doesn't match what your child actually needs, that's a conversation to have now, not later…now!

Pay attention to what's written vs what's being done.

If a teacher has been doing something wonderful and informal because she cares, but it isn't captured in the IEP document, the next teacher doesn't have to do it. The next district doesn't have to do it.

Learn your state complaint process. This is not a lawsuit and it doesn't require a lawyer. It is a written complaint to your state education agency saying: here is what the IEP says, and here is what the school is doing, and those two things don't match.

Federal oversight is thinner than it has been in years, which means your state complaint process is one of the most powerful tools you have right now. Use it.

When you go into meetings, know the phrases that shift the dynamic.

"Can you show me the data that supports that decision?" cuts through an opinion being presented as a conclusion.

"I'm not saying that. The facts are saying that" is what you say when a school frames your questions as accusations instead of engaging with what their own documentation shows.

"I'd like that documented in the prior written notice" goes at the end of every single no they give you, because requiring them to write down the reason for a denial changes what people are willing to say out loud.

None of those phrases are confrontational. All of them are grounded in federal law, and all of them signal that you know what you're entitled to, which changes how the room behaves.

Where to Start If You're Not Sure

Most parents walk into IEP meetings as the only person in the room who wasn't trained for it.

The school has a team that does this every week. You have the knowledge you've been able to gather in between everything else your life requires.

I created the Build a Better IEP Masterclass and it covers what IDEA actually requires in plain language, the most common goal and service mistakes I see, and the advocacy tools that put you back on equal footing with the team.

It's where I'd start if you're newer to this process or feel like you've been missing something.

You can access it for FREE HERE.

If you have something specific happening right now, a meeting coming up, a service that disappeared, a district that stopped responding, book a free 15-minute IEP strategy call and we'll look at your situation together.

The people who crawled up those Capitol steps in 1990 were not waiting to feel ready.

They went because the alternative was going backward, and backward was somewhere they had already been.

Watch the free Build a Better IEP Masterclass

Book your free 15-minute IEP strategy call

Courtney Burnett is a Board Certified Special Education Advocate, Licensed SLPA, and mom raising a child with disabilities. She has worked with 500+ families across 30+ states and is the founder of Grit & Grace Advocate Training and the Build a Better IEP Masterclass.