EPIC Advocacy and Consulting

08/16/2026

Critical information as the current administration seeks to roll back the Olmstead decision:

"Understanding and Protecting Your Disability Rights Under Olmstead, the ADA, and Section 504."
Wednesday, August 19th, from 4 PM - 5:15 PM ET for a webinar
Register for the webinar at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xHzUA2CBQAOLx8vh7H7c6Q #/registration

*This webinar is presented by the American Association of People with Disabilities , in partnership with The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law , the for Public Representation, and the Washington University Hirsh Health Law and Policy Program.

ASL and CART will be provided. Please contact [email protected] to request any other accommodations.

08/04/2026

Important hearing re: IDEA enforcement:

They're calling it "cutting red tape." Tomorrow I sit as a witness before Senator Hirono to name what it actually is: dismantling fifty years of protection for kids with disabilities, one signature at a time.

I used to run one of the offices they are planning to move. I know what is actually inside it. Not boxes, not an org chart; people who have spent entire careers making sure a child in a district you will never hear of still gets what the law promised them, and that states and districts get the support they need.

In June, the administration announced it would move two offices out of the U.S. Department of Education. The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) is headed to Health and Human Services (HHS). The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is headed to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

On paper, it reads like reorganization. In practice, it is the quiet unwinding of the infrastructure that has held IDEA together for half a century.

IDEA is not a grant program. It is a civil rights law. It guarantees more than 8 million students a free and appropriate public education alongside their peers. That guarantee only works because there are people whose entire job is to enforce it, answer questions about it, and step in when a system fails a family. Move the law away from the people who understand it, and the words on the page stay the same while the protection behind them thins out.

Tomorrow, Senator Mazie Hirono is holding a spotlight forum to put that on the record: "Breaking the Promise: How Relocating the IDEA will be Detrimental to Students and Families." I am honored to be one of the witnesses, alongside leaders from the Council for Exceptional Children, The Arc, the Edley Center on Law & Democracy, and the National Women's Law Center.

This has never been abstract for me. And it is not abstract for the families watching.

It's public if you want to watch:
📅 Tuesday, August 4, 2:30 PM ET
📺 Livestreamed on Senator Hirono's X and YouTube

07/31/2026

Useful info. for our families with Regional Center (TCRC) clients:

State of California

07/28/2026

Some useful information and helpful links as you and your student prepare to return to school:

https://www.facebook.com/CalSCDD/posts/pfbid021pDvBVL8CkE9JFe3qNJ21x6rB1EX9UjteQBwa7jh33b48REbsvKYbUwK3JVq9jeTl

07/06/2026

80% accuracy in reading decoding is NOT sufficient to master reading or to comprehend anything you read.

This weekend, millions of Americans will celebrate the words that declared our nation’s independence.

Now imagine trying to read those words with one out of every five missing.

That is what an 80% reading accuracy goal can look like in practice. These low expectation goals are exceedingly common.

When schools set expectations that accept missing 20% of the words on a page, they are not measuring independence. They are measuring how much reading failure a child is expected to live with.

The freedom to read should not depend on luck, ZIP code, or the schools poorly selected curriculum.

This Fourth of July, remember that one of the greatest civil rights a child can gain is the ability to read the words that define their own freedom.

07/03/2026

A moment of shameless self-promotion in order to bring attention to this incredibly worthy nonprofit organization:

“There’s a whole host of responses that maybe aren’t yes, but they aren’t no, and […]

06/28/2026

Our “why:”

We built an educational system that places the burden of enforcing a child’s civil rights on the very families already drowning under the weight of their child’s unmet needs and the damage caused by the school’s failure. And when those families cannot carry that burden, the child’s rights collapse with them.