Fighting for a Fair Education
Karla is a working mom who came to Legal Aid SMC after exhausting all her options to get her daughter, Esmeralda, an appropriate education. Esmeralda has dyslexia, a learning disorder that affects reading and language skills. Esmerelda started middle school with an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), a tool used by school districts to outline the resources a student requires to progress with their peers, so Karla believed Esmeralda would get the help she needed, but she had to rely on an English-speaking coworker to interpret for her at IEP meetings.
As is often the case, Esmeralda’s learning difficulties bled into every aspect of her world. She grew depressed and anxious about how her classmates saw her. When Karla began taking Esmeralda to a therapist, she discovered the school was failing her daughter. Rather than provide Esmeralda with specialized education designed to help kids with dyslexia, the middle school had placed Esmeralda—whose primary language is English—in an English language learning class that was taught in Spanish. When school officials told Karla it was the best they could do, she thought it was the end of her fight for her daughter’s education.
Instead, a friend connected Karla with Michelle de Blank, Supervising Attorney and Legal Director of the Peninsula Family Advocacy Program (FAP). Karla learned about the actions she could take to make sure her daughter received a fair education. Together, they prepared all the documents necessary to file a complaint with the state. Rather than face a hearing, the school decided to settle and provide Esmeralda with the services she needed to learn to read. When Karla spoke with us in the fall, she shared that her daughter was now reading at grade level and confident enough to present to her whole class.