I had to figure that one out today…character of affairs.  I actually asked my aunt, an attorney, because I had no clue.  Why was I needing to know my own character of affairs?  Because today I started the process of applying to create a non-profit organization.  If I want Jumping Waves Scholarships to be legit, then this is the next logical step and I’m taking the plunge!  On Monday I will head downtown to hand in my application in person and pay the fees (because it’s the one thing ever you can’t do online).

I’m excited!  And nervous!  But you know what, I’ve got a fire in my belly and I know that I am tapping into territory that’s pretty much untapped.  I talked to my advocate today, because-as I’ve said before- I want to work with her to gift scholarships to families who need the support of educational advocates but can’t afford them.  Kristina seemed pretty excited about this and was happy that I wanted to work together to find such families.  What’s even more exciting is that I think I found the first recipient of a scholarship!  It’s exciting to know that I have raised enough money to be able to give the gift of an advocate.  The feeling I have just thinking about giving out scholarships makes me giddy!

But I’m nervous too.  How do I get the word out?  I really want to gain exposure for Jumping Waves.  I don’t want any recognition personally, I want this exposure to raise money to give more money out to help more families.  Period.  And I don’t think there’s a lot of people out there giving scholarships for advocates.  I’m very blessed, again, because I have people in my corner who know a thing or two about doing this stuff.  And I plan to pick their brain over coffee/lunch/pedis!  It’s going to require some serious effort, perhaps going out of my comfort zone, to ask for help.  To get the word out.

California trip in November

This little darling is my inspiration.  She’s been down a tough road and has had to endure more than she ever should at the age of 7.  And there are children who are just like her who have needs that go beyond what they’re offered.

So what is my character of affairs?  It’s as follows:

The purpose of Jumping Waves, Inc. is to give charitable donations for educational purposes for families with children with special educational needs.

And thank you to my aunt for helping me write that and get all that ooey-gooey legal stuff in there!  From that I will form, at some point, a more eloquent mission statement that I will proudly express.  Until then, the above sums it up! Any questions?

I hope you will join my crusade.

Want to learn more about Emma’s story? Visit it here.

You can read about our public school “situation” starting here. And don’t forget about the attorney journey!

You can keep in the loop via my Facebook page and Twitter.

Reading up on those stories will (hopefully) give you a better understanding of how I got here today.

I left off with the fact that the district had decided to initiate settling out of court.  This is exactly what we wanted. And that started the ping pong ball of negotiations.  Back and forth.  A lot.  It was stressful.  But our attorney is a hard ass and always always had Emma’s best interest in the forefront.  In the end, as time went on and I got more nervous (and consequently the attorney told me to “calm down”), it was getting down to the wire.  I kid you not, we signed one day before our court date.  I don’t know if that happens all the time or not.  But holy cow.  Stress!  But it was done.  And, as luck would have it, I had to put it in the hot little hands of the director of special ed myself.  Not something I looked forward to, but in the back of my mind I was chanting “VICTORY”!  And it helped that 3 of my closest girlfriends were coming over that morning.  2 of them didn’t know, one of them brought orange juice, and I popped some bubbly.  We toasted with mimosas to our success!  The journey was over!  (we just wanted to see our money back!)

It felt good.  We were relieved.  We could breathe easier.

It was so sweet.  On Thursday at Thanksgiving, my mother-in-law had everyone say what they were thankful for.  Emma was the 1st one up.  What was she thankful for?  School.

And here’s where I need your help.  During this whole process is when I decided to start my Etsy shop.  I wanted to channel all of this stressful and angry energy into something creative.  With the help of (said) friends, I decided to take some of my photographs and turn them into note cards.  I wanted to sell these notecards to raise money to give to people in our situation.  People who aren’t able to hire the advocate they so desperately deserve.  There are so many families out there that need the help like we did.  These advocates (the experienced ones) have so much more knowledge about the system, laws, rules, then we could ever hope for.  And I truly believe that in most special ed situations, they are necessary.  Unfortunately, while they are necessary, they aren’t necessarily in everyone’s budget.  We were fortunate enough to be able to afford our advocate, Kristina, but I know there are many families who can’t afford one.  And so it is my hope to gift “scholarships” to families who desperately need the help of an advocate but can’t afford it.

These are my ideas.  I have a lot of ideas swirling in my head!  I just want to help.  I have ideas on how to carry this out, but haven’t put forth any actions, with the exception of starting my Etsy shop and I am beginning to see money come in.

Right now I have my note cards as well as my mom’s jewelry.  100% of the proceeds of my cards and my mom’s Jumping Waves jewelry collection will go to my Jumping Waves charity.  I don’t keep any in my wallet.  I believe the items on my Etsy shop are perfect for the upcoming holidays.  I will be gifting my children’s teachers a set of my note cards.  And I have friends doing the same.  I even have teacher friends gifting their room moms with my cards.  They make wonderful and affordable gifts for so many people.  I would love to see the story of Jumping Waves spread.

Please go check out my shop and let me know what you think!  Right now (celebrating Cyber Monday) you can save 25% on your order by entering ‘CYBER25′ upon check out.  I would be so honored if you took a peek and passed on the word.  This is my passion…to help people who are in the situation we were in.

These are just a few of the newer cards on my shop.  Thank you, in advance, for taking a look!

I guess when I posted the last time I didn’t realize it was Friday and I wouldn’t be posting on the weekend!  However, I will continue with the story now that it’s Monday.  During the preparatory stage, the attorney was scouring all of the documents.  I was spending a lot of time at the computer transcribing meetings, and we had hired a behavior expert to provide an FBA (Functional Behavior Analysis) for Emma, something that had never been done in the public school.  This guys is the best in the business and I was confident he’d find what the attorney had suspected.  Mind you, we’ve never met the attorney.  But I suppose when you read 300+ pages about a student, you get a feel for who they are!

I will say that from the time we signed the contract and she received our documents to the date that we actually filed (“we” meaning the attorney) was about 1 month.  It moved pretty quickly.  Fortunately.  Because I was a big ball of stress during this whole time.  It was surreal.

I had hoped, as most do, that this would be resolved out of court.  However, when you file with the court, you get a court date.  Automatically.  And here (perhaps it’s different where you are?) your court date is about 9 weeks out from the date you file.  Sure enough we had a court date for early November.  To have that on your calendar “Court Date” is a little freaky.  We hoped, again, that we wouldn’t need the court, and we could settle it outside.  Something that we did, which is common, is we waived any right for mediation.  I can’t remember the exact term, but basically, we didn’t want to set up another meeting that would, in essence, become a glorified IEP where we plead our case.  Again.

The best news came a day before my birthday.  They wanted to settle out of court.  And we would proceed with negotiating the settlement.  I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday gift!  I have to tell you, negotiating a settlement is like negotiating buying a house.  Except it’s not fun.  It’s more stressful, and you’re not getting a house at the end.  But the back and forth is the same.  And you hope that they get their head outta their ass and do the right thing.  But that’s usually asking too much.  We were just happy to be working towards a settlement.

In the meantime, Emma had started at the new school.  She actually started back up just shy of 3 weeks post surgery.  Amazing.  She was adamant about going back to school if it was going to be the new school.  And guess what.  She was doing well.  And she was happy.  And learning.  Imagine that.  You can read about her first few days at the new school here.

I’ll finish our Attorney Journey…it gets good!

Contacting an attorney (for something other than our will) was surreal to me.  I was a little intimidated, especially after what Kristina told me about her.  But this is exactly the kind of person we want on our side, hands down.  I emailed her and basically told her in the second sentence that I had never contacted an attorney before and so I didn’t know protocol or anything like that.  I’m sure that her policies and procedures are very similar to most attorneys out there.  So if nothing else, by reading this you can learn what to expect when you contact an attorney.  What I won’t be sharing is the details of the case, to protect ourselves from anything that may happen in the future.  If you have specific questions, you can email me.  What I wanted was for her to send the district a letter…like a threat.  If only it were that easy!

She sent me her contract of agreement and that in and of itself was 6 pages! I read through everything.  I even forwarded it to my aunt, who is also an attorney.  I wanted to make sure everything sounded legit.  With the signed contract and the retainer fee, she also requested all documentation from the last 2 years. Due process prohibits any claims beyond 2 years.  In total, I sent her 300+ pages of documentation (keep everything, my friends!) that was organized by year.  So in 2009-2010, Emma was in KG.  Within that section I had progress reports, report cards, IEPs, IEP addendum’s, evaluations, therapy progress reports, and anything else that might pertain to her education.  I bound them with paper clips (the individual documents) then put all the progress reports in a multi-page protector, and repeated with report cards, IEPs, etc.  It was bound in a 2″ black 3 ring binder.  Let me give you a hint, if it’s not obvious.  The more you do for your attorney (or advocate, or anyone you’ve hired to help you), the easier it will be for them to look through the documents, less time is spent searching for specifics, and therefore the less money you will pay.  Keep it organized.  She was appreciative of my efforts.

Within a week she had briefly glossed over the binder.  She knew what information she needed from me- alas there was more!  I ended up transcribing 4 meetings we had over the course of the spring and summer.  Most of these meetings averaged 2 hours long.  Props to any transcribers out there.  It’s tedious work.  Not to mention it stirred up all these emotions from the past few months and made them fresh again.  I spent many, many hours at the computer transcribing.  I was getting headaches from looking at the screen for too long.  It was not fun, it was not easy, but it was a part of the process to get Emma exactly what she deserved.  And a good lesson to me (and to YOU!!!)…record ALL of your meetings.  You will be happy you did, even if you never use them again.  To know I have every word spoken is a comfort.  I actually purchased a digital voice recorder app for my iPad and used that.  It’s called Recorder Pro and it is very inexpensive compared to actual digital recorders out there now.  And what’s great is when you get home, you can easily download the recording onto your desktop.  And that’s where mine sit in one nice folder.

Keep in mind this is all preparatory work.  Nothing had been said to anyone…no letters had been written…nothing had been filed with the courts.  Meanwhile, Emma was still recovering from her surgery.  She was still immobilized and we were carrying her everywhere she wanted to be.  It’s kind of a blur!  Mason was starting Kindergarten (at a different school in the district, mind you).  And along with Emma’s recovery was her impending return to school.  She wanted to go back so badly.  And she asked for the “new school.”  It was something we couldn’t ignore.  In the back of our minds was the rule that once due process was filed, the students could not change schools under any circumstance.  We took a risk and enrolled her in the private school.  We paid the hefty enrollment fee, as well as the first month’s tuition.  It was brutal on our checkbook, to say the least.

Once this process started, there was no turning back.

Doing arts and crafts on her jumbo bean bag, just a few days into her recovery.

I’m noticing that with my writing, I’m using “I” a lot.  Don’t let me mislead you…all these decisions were made jointly by Brett and myself.  While I did the majority of the legwork, any decision we made, we made together.  Always.  And again, I’m here to chronicle the experience, the journey, and to help people in our situation know what to expect when they make the first move to find legal help.  I will continue our Attorney Journey tomorrow!

I have been mulling over in my head, how do I even begin this story?  How much do I even share? My attorney advised me that less is more.  I agree in some aspect, however, I really want to encourage people in our situation to fight for their child…doing whatever it takes to see that they’re in the best place.  To educate parents on their options once the district denies their requests.  It’s not an easy road ahead.  It’s taxing on everyone.  Everyone.  But our story is proof that it is all worth it in the end.

During the spring semester and summer months, we had meetings with our advocate and the district to discuss “options.”  I chronicled all of those meetings because they are important to our journey, and I knew that at the time.  You can read about our meetings starting here.  Our advocate, by the way, is amazing and she will continue to accompany us to our meetings for quite awhile.  I don’t see us ever dealing with a school district without an advocate.  You can learn more about our advocate on her website.

I had a wonderful trip to Paris, which seems like a dream.  It honestly doesn’t seem real anymore.  It was a wonderful “dream,” though!

Ten days after I came home, we had our meeting with the district to determine where the most appropriate placement for Emma would be.  It didn’t go favorably, remember? To have to endure a meeting like that one day before a huge surgery for your daughter is something that no one should have to go through.  Too many emotions going on in such a short amount of time.

Emma had her hip surgery the following day and it went well.  We had 3 nights in the hospital and while we had ups and downs, things went really well.  We came home in a state of mind not unlike new parents have bringing home their newborn baby.  Will I break Emma?  How fragile is she?  How dependent is she?  We had to learn about the new (and temporary) state of our daughter.  She was immobile for 6 weeks.  It was tough.

From leaving a meeting that did not go as we had hoped, to surgery barely 15 hours after the meeting, I dropped the subject on my blog.  But deep down we knew we had decisions to make.  Do we press forward?  Are we so certain of the district’s wrongdoing that we were willing to take legal measures?  Are we so certain of Emma’s placement that we would personally place her at this private school and take her out of public school?  It’s a huge risk, that if it ended poorly, would mean Emma would have to return to the district, due to lack of finances.  This is definitely not a decision to enter lightly.  The only time we had hired an attorney was to draft our will and all that legal “shtuff”.  This was different.  It took many discussions, and they weren’t easy.  There were tears and uncertainties.  Ultimately it was a discussion that we had with a very close friend that helped clarify the decision.  She encouraged us to press forward.  We had come this far.  We were this passionate about doing the right thing for Emma.  What did we have to lose (minus a nice little retainer)?  Brett was (understandably) nervous about the finances.  How would we juggle attorneys fees with the monumental cost of a private school?  In short, we couldn’t.  We couldn’t swing those bills.

We are so fortunate to have the family that we have.  We are truly blessed.  We had family that told us that Emma needed to be in the right setting.  The district wasn’t worthy of educating her.  And therefore we had family that helped pay for her tuition while we ultimately decided to proceed with legal action.

That day after the meeting (which was the day before the surgery), our advocate immediately gave us the name and number of the attorney she recommended.  She warned me: she’s a tough ass.  She doesn’t mince words.  And she’ll tell you exactly what she thinks.  Perfect!  I don’t want some soft cookie representing us.  Oh yeah, and she’s undefeated.

I have to tell you this story, not because I want “revenge.”  Not because I want to “expose” anyone, though I have visions of that.  I am telling this story because people need to be aware of situations with the districts.  We need to be aware of our kids progresses they make.  The evaluations that they undergo.  And when things don’t work the way they should, I want people to be encouraged to know that there are options out there.

Until tomorrow, my friends!