While special education laws provide vital protection for children with disabilities, navigating the intricacies they present can be daunting. Issues are often sensitive, urgent in nature, and come with short timelines.
With this in mind, special education administrators need a legal team that can keep them on top of the current services and regulations to best serve their students and districts. Many Lehigh Valley and Pennsylvania school districts and charter schools have turned to KingSpry for the training, counsel and representation they need in special education matters.
Rebecca A. Young is KingSpry’s Special Education Practice Chair.
Many of our highly experienced special education attorneys were educators themselves, and are familiar with the unique challenges faced by school personnel. Our team members have the ability to anticipate and respond to delicate concerns proactively, helping schools evaluate and tailor their special education services to prevent legal issues before they occur. Should further resolution be necessary, our special education legal team defends clients through all aspects of due process litigation and appellate proceedings.
KingSpry guides clients through Section 504, the IDEA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, early intervention services and procedures, gifted education services, transition planning, child find issues, evaluation issues and procedures, student discipline, extended school year services, charter school compliance, crisis management, functional behavior assessments, intervention plans, and related services, like OT, PT, speech, and adaptive PE.
Whatever the issue or concern, KingSpry is committed to providing sound consult and full-service representation in all areas of special education law. These include:
- Legal advice and problem solving
- Defensibility reviews of documents such as IEPs and evaluation reports
- Systemic policy review, policy drafting and implementation
- Internal special education department audits
- Case evaluations for future programming
- Expert resource referrals
- Interagency communication and facilitation
- Liaison with advocates and opposing counsel
- School Board presentations
- In-service special education trainings
- OCR proceedings
- Attendance and facilitation of meetings (IEP, GIEP, MDT and manifestation determination)
- Due process hearings
- Litigation and appeals in state and federal courts
- Witness preparation
- Settlement negotiations and development of settlement agreements
- Development of special needs trusts
Who dares to teach must never cease to learn. ~ John Cotton Dana
Staff in-services and trainings are a KingSpry specialty. We know that continuing education and professional development are the very best ways to strengthen special education programs and services to not just comply with the law, but to excel.
Seminars and training are available for our clients in all areas of Special Education Law at our Greyfriars Conference Center or in the school district. Popular topics include Mandatory Child Abuse Reporting, Drafting Defensible IEPs, Section 504 and the IDEA, Disciplining Special Education Students and Gifted Education. Some sessions offer Act 48 credits for participants, including our “K-12 Professional Development Series.” We also feature ongoing special education information in our Education Law Practice Group newsletter, School Law Bullet, and Lunch & Learn programming.
