This is the second part in what will be a multi-part series on negotiating. The particular emphasis will be on negotiating in the special education process, but the basic principles apply in any negotiation.

In negotiation, there is no substitute for preparation. In most cases, negotiations are won or lost before the talking begins. If you think this is the sort of thing where you can just show up and wing it, you are in for some unpleasant surprises. Even if you manage to reach agreement, you risk missing some opportunity because you weren’t prepared to see it. The more difficult the negotiation is likely to be, the more serious your preparation needs to be.

How good is your map?

If you think of a negotiation as journey-sometimes a long, twisting one through hostile territory-it helps to have a good map. There are five important points on your journey to an agreement. You need to make sure they are all on your map before you start out. We’ll talk about each of these again when we talk about the negotiation process. They are:

• Interests
• Options for satisfying those interests
• Standards for resolving differences fairly
• Alternatives to negotiation
• Proposals for agreement

Interests

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This is the first part in what will be a multi-part series on negotiating. The particular emphasis will be on negotiating in the special education process, but the basic principles apply in any negotiation.

If your children need special education services, there a couple of things you should know. One is that as long as your child is in the school system you will be having regular negotiations with the school staff about your child’s program and services. The other is that anyone can learn to negotiate better and with less stress.

What is negotiation?

Negotiation is simply the communication that takes place whenever you try to get something you want from another person. We all do it every day. Unfortunately, most of us have never learned to do it very well.

How is it usually done?

Most people find negotiating to be really stressful. We usually see only two possibilities.

We can be really hard-nosed, and see it as a power contest where pretty much anything goes. We may get most of what we want that way-but at the risk of damaging our relationship with the other side.

Or, we can focus on maintaining the relationship and “play nice” like our mothers taught us. We may end up agreeing to something that doesn’t really meet our child’s needs. Neither of those options works very well.

Most people learn the hard and soft styles of negotiating as children on the playground. They usually pick one of the two styles to use most of the time and don’t give much thought to whether are alternatives.

There is an alternative

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Question

Is any child with an Autism disorder diagnosis eligible for an IEP, even if they are high functioning and are in regular education classes?

Answer

I’m afraid the best answer I can give you is “maybe.” If you will look in the “definitions” section of the current special education regulations and find “child with a disability”, you will see that there are two parts. One is that you have to fit into one of the categories that are also defined in that section. Autism is one of the categories.

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Many parents believe at some point that their child needs a one-to-one aide in order to be able to get the Free, Appropriate, Public Education (FAPE) the school district is obligated to provide them. When the parents ask for this in an ARC meeting, the usual response is “We don’t provide one-to-one aides, it’s too restrictive and can hinder the child’s development”, or some variation on that theme. At this point, most parents feel stuck and frustrated and don’t know what to do next. Read more »

Question

My 5 year old daughter with Down syndrome was recently “re-evaluated” by the public school system. The report came back full of what were believe are inaccuracies secondary to the way the assessment was conducted and the prematurity of it. She was due for re-eval in April, of this year and this re-eval was done in October of last year, only 34 days into kindergarten. Her teachers agree that the eval is wrong.

As a result of the eval, the system wants to rewrite her IEP , we believe for the purposes of changing her placement. After much battle, she currently is fully mainstreamed in a regular classroom with minimal aide support and pull-outs for special education 1:1. The system was against this and wants her in the self-contained room.

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For over 20 years now, I’ve been a professional (non-attorney) disability rights advocate. When I would show up at meetings on behalf of my clients, I would often hear “Hey, that advocate guy just came in.”

When I decided to start a blog about advocacy, I tried to think up an accurately descriptive name for it that I could also turn into a domain. Those of you who have ever tried to come up with a domain name that is unique and also descriptive of what you do know what fun that process is. It seems that all your best ideas have already been taken. So, I finally worked my way through my list of domain name possibilities to “advocateguy” and it was available-so here we are.

What I hope to do here is share the knowledge and skills I’ve developed over 20+ years as a professional disability rights advocate. I will concentrate on children in the special education system because that is the area I’m most familiar with. Basic advocacy principles are the same when dealing with all bureaucracies, but there is also a lot that depends on the details of each system.