Change.org

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I would encourage all of you to visit the Change.org site and sign or make suggestions on how to change the act. I did have to greatly truncate the proposal for posting. They only allow 2000 characters. I had double that in the original document. I also cannot edit it after someone comments.

http://www.change.org/ideas/view/autism_advancement_act

Hopefully most of you parents will agree with what I've stated.

I like your ideas and I agree with most of them. I wish they would greatly simplify special education laws, so that parents have an easy path to private placement. As it stands now, special education law is similar to medical malpractice (this is how it was explained to me by the attorney I hired) and the burden is actually on the parent to prove that the school is not providing FAPE. It is very difficult for parents with limited financial resources to "win" a private placement.

My son was secluded a lot during the school day and his behavior got worse for it. They were going to send him away to a school that uses restraint, even though his teacher admitted that restraints were never needed for my son. I knew they would restrain him in that other school, esp. when he saw other kids being restrained. I think his behavior would have escalated. That's when I started homeschooling. I would have preferred to have him in a private placement for high functioning autism/aspergers....but, pursuing litigation would have bankrupted me and there was no guarantee that I would win my case.

They should give families like ours vouchers. If I had the money that the public school gets for not educating my son, I would feel satisfied with that.

Like I said, I had to edit out a lot of things. I felt like this was the best set of topics to outline. I cannot believe they limit people to 2000 characters. Even 500 words would have been enough to get my point across. Instead, having to half it, it leaves a lot of obvious holes even to me. Please sign this though. I have to get some 1800 before the end of the day to allow this to go to the "next level" before being presented to Obama's administration.

Done

Darn

Voting is closed.

I had major issues with the other autism one that was so popular. This was much better.

Oh well. With the economy as it is and corporations as the priority I have little hope for something like this anyway...