When Elise was in her next-to-the-last year of school, the system cut back the vocational teacher who took people out into the community for job experiences. I wrote a school board member that I knew and told him that I was not going to sign my daughter IEP because she was not going to get job training in the community. She told the principal, who asked to see my letter. The principal said my letter made absolute sense, and she said to put the vocational training into the IEP, and she would sign it. The result: Elise got three mornings a week of job training from the one reinstated voc teacher in the whole county. The next year she got five mornings. I ended up being chosen as a parent rep on a county school system task force studying transition—a real learning experience.

-Story from a parent advocate