Ms. Blumenreich was a special education teacher and transition coordinator in New York City as well as a school administrator and special education administrator in suburban New York. She worked at Student Advocacy for a short time before becoming the Superintendent of a residential special education school district in New York and is now in private practice as an Educational Advocate in New York and New Jersey.
She will speak from both the school district perspective and as a child education advocate, acknowledging the difficulty of these two different perspectives and how she thinks successful communication and early conflict resolution can occur. Ms. Blumenreich spent many years chairing IEP teams. From this experience, she learned that the greatest issue stopping school districts and parents from resolving conflict is that neither one understands the other: Parents do not know how school districts work and school districts, although made up of many parents, some of whom have children with disabilities, do not fully understand the impact that a child with disabilities has on the family unit. Often it is necessary to work with both groups outside the formal IEP team setting; sometimes individually, and sometimes jointly before going to the IEP team. The clarification of what the parent desires for a child with a disability and what and why the school district is offering, leads to a successful IEP team meeting with the student receiving appropriate services which are not necessarily the most costly for the district.
In challenging Ms. Zager, Ms. Blumenreich practices what she preaches. She and Ms. Zager resolve most of their issues peacefully.