ARISE - EFR

Guiding Families Through Special Education: A Conversation with Education Advocate Beth Clark

• Tim Mahar

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In this episode of the ARISE – Exceptional Family Resources Podcast, CEO Bruce Drake speaks with Beth Clark, Lead Education Advocate at ARISE & EFR. Beth shares her journey from classroom teacher and parent of three children with disabilities to advocate, and explains how education advocacy helps families navigate the complex world of special education.

They discuss common school challenges, how to communicate effectively with districts, why the right language in meetings and letters matters, and what “success” looks like when schools and families truly collaborate. Beth also highlights that ARISE–EFR’s education advocacy services are grant-funded and free to families, and explains how parents can reach out for support when a child is struggling or has a suspected disability.

This episode is a must-listen for any caregiver feeling overwhelmed by IEPs, meetings, or school systems—and looking for a knowledgeable partner in their corner.

SPEAKER_00:

This is the Arise Exceptional Family Resources Podcast with your host, CEO Bruce Drake.

SPEAKER_01:

Hello, everyone. I'm Bruce Drake, the CEO at Arise and Exceptional Family Resources, and I'm host for today's Exceptional Talk on Disabilities. We have a great person in today. I'm excited to be joined by Beth Clark, a lead education advocate at Arise and EFR. Welcome, Beth. Hey, Bruce, how are you doing? I'm doing great. Thank you. So, Beth, I want to talk all about education advocacy because I don't think people know a lot about it and what that means. But let's start with you just telling us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_02:

Sure. I'm a central New York native. I grew up in Syracuse, New York, and uh went away, got a degree in Spanish, which uh Where'd you go? I went to Western Pennsylvania for school. I got a degree in Spanish, which um turns out you can't do a ton with.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

And I ended up teaching at my alma mater without a certification or anything like that for a couple of years. Taught Spanish to junior high and senior high kids. Okay. And discovered I really loved it.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

So I decided to get my teaching credentials, taught for several more years, had kids, decided to stay with a child. Yeah, I've got three kids, uh, currently a 14-year-old daughter and 13 and 8-year-old sons. Okay. And um during COVID-ish times, around that time, we discovered that uh my middle son had a learning disability and ADHD.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

And very shortly thereafter, my daughter got a diagnosis. My middle son got another diagnosis, and my youngest was diagnosed with autism.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

So it was kind of a heck of a year.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep.

SPEAKER_02:

I homeschooled the next year trying to figure out how to help my middle son figure out how to learn. How does he learn best? What works for him? And got him an IEP. He went back to school. Um, first year was amazing. Second year, we had some difficulties with the school district. And I got so frustrated and I started reading lots of educational law. And I knew another of our advocates, uh, Vicki Afinati up in Oswego from uh the community, and I gave her a call and said, Hey, Vicki, can you help me out with this? I don't know what to do. She gave me some resources, suggested that I call the state and get some information. And we had a great conversation, and she said, you know, you know a lot of this stuff. We have a job opening. You should apply. And so I did, and I've been doing this for the last couple of years here.

SPEAKER_01:

Aaron Ross Powell That's a great origin story. Uh why don't you tell people a little bit about what education advocacy is?

SPEAKER_02:

Aaron Powell Sure. So education advocacy, we like to say that it is helping students and families navigate the special ed system. There's a lot of stuff that is very unique to special education. There's a lot of language that is very different.

SPEAKER_01:

Aaron Powell Do you have an example of something that you would say is unique to special education?

SPEAKER_02:

So the the procedures are very specific. Okay. There are things that if you request them verbally, the school district can choose whether to agree to them. If you request them in writing, they have to do them.

SPEAKER_01:

Got it.

SPEAKER_02:

There's specific language that you can use, specific wording that you can use that kind of triggers different things. So for instance, one of the things that as parents we talk about is the things that would benefit our children. We see needs, we see where our kids are struggling with something, and we say they would really benefit from books on tape, audiobooks, rather than having to read everything for a kid with dyslexia or a speech-to-text programming so that they can dictate their writing instead of having to write things out longhand if a child has uh fine motor difficulties or dysgraphia. The school district is not necessarily concerned with what is going to benefit a child. What they have to be concerned with is what the child needs. So one of the things I talk to parents about is not using the terminology of would benefit from. If I say my son would benefit from this, there are very few children who would not benefit from things like that. Right. But the question is, my what does my son need in order to access and progress in their education?

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. So let me let me just go through some of the layers of because you said a lot. It's really interesting stuff to me. So first of all, you talked about that your son had some difficulties in his second year. Yeah. What if you're a parent of a child who has a disability or needs assistance, when you say difficulties, what are the types of things that parents are dealing with? Either for your own son or just things that you see as part of your job.

SPEAKER_02:

So I think as parents, we deal with our kids at home. And we often see a different side to our kids at home than the school sees. It does feed into the home piece because we all know that if our kids are struggling at school, they're gonna come home and probably fall apart.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

But sometimes that's hard for schools to see because they will see a child who's holding it together, sometimes by the skin of their teeth, but they're holding it together. So we try to help parents uh figure out how to communicate some of those things to the school. Some of those things might look like behaviors that we're seeing at home. Sometimes kids are struggling at school. They may be struggling academically with reading, with writing, with math. They might be struggling to uh with fine motor tasks, um, writing, cutting, typing.

SPEAKER_01:

Um What about like socialization? Is that an area where we'll see kids struggle?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, we see a lot of kids struggling with socialization, especially post-COVID. Um and anxiety, depression kind of feeds into a lot of these things. We have kids who uh struggle to make friends, to keep friends, to behave in socially appropriate ways. And a lot of times schools will call those things behaviors. And so when when schools talk about behaviors, a lot of times it's not what we would talk about as a good behavior or bad behavior. That what they are talking about is a group of um actions that are usually when they talk about behaviors, uh, are usually um not appropriate reactions socially for the other thing.

SPEAKER_01:

So there's a a variety of different ways that kids may be struggling because of their disability or the environment that they're in. How prepared are parents for that when they enter this school? So are you seeing kids from kindergarten on? Are you meeting kids for the first time in 11th grade? Where where are you seeing them in this process?

SPEAKER_02:

Aaron Ross Powell We uh work with families um anywhere from the transition into pre-K.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

So uh sometimes two-ish year olds, but um primarily three through the end of school age services, which is 21 in New York State, uh, for children with disabilities. And we work with parents whenever they reach out.

SPEAKER_01:

So how do they how do they know about you, right? So uh I'm a parent and my and my kids are struggling and it feels overwhelming and I don't know how to go forward. How do they find out about you?

SPEAKER_02:

It's mostly word of mouth. We are at outreaches or fairs or kind of um community partnership events wherever we can be. But for the most part, it's word of mouth. Um care managers will refer to us. We'll have sometimes school districts will will recommend that families reach out, which is quite a vote of confidence to have a school district say, hey, if you need extra support here, these people can help explain things. They can help you work through things, they can help make sure that things are being done correctly. And that is really what we try to do. We try to work with school districts, but we're also holding them accountable.

SPEAKER_01:

Aaron Ross Powell So is it and I don't want you to talk about any school district specifically, but is it adversarial? I mean, do is it based on the school district? Is it based on the people in the room when you show up? What is that relationship like?

SPEAKER_02:

Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. It does vary some. We try really hard to be collaborators. This is a relationship that the family and the school district are going to have for a very long time. School districts, unless people move out of the district, this is a relationship that lasts from pre-K all the way through to adulthood. And many families have multiple kids. And we do our very best not to burn any bridges that we can possibly leave intact. We want districts and families to be able to work together. And that's really kind of what we see as successful is when we can kind of step out of the picture and families and districts can continue to work together, collaborate, communicate effectively, they can use the same language, they understand each other, and they know that there's uh there's a rapport that's been established, and they know that they're both working together for the good of this kid.

SPEAKER_01:

Aaron Powell That that sounds like the dream result.

SPEAKER_02:

It is.

SPEAKER_01:

How frequently would you say that happens? Is it is it what you typically expect and you're gonna stay there until you get to that point?

SPEAKER_02:

Or often. Often. Sometimes, sometimes parents will decide that they are kind of done with things at an earlier stage. Sometimes parents uh want to go a different direction. That's totally fine. We try to hook them up with anything that we can if we can't help anymore. But we we work as much as we can to try to get that get to that perfect ending. Um and we also try to help parents and families understand more about the whole process so that they feel better equipped to to navigate all of this themselves.

SPEAKER_01:

Aaron Powell So I think you said earlier, right, you you're interested in the law, but you're not a lawyer. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm not a lawyer. And are definitely not.

SPEAKER_01:

Aaron Ross Powell And your role as an advocate for the parent and the the child, really, and then also to provide some education, probably to the parents and a little bit to the school district at times?

SPEAKER_02:

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. And we'll work with the state. Sometimes we'll kind of dig into some things and figure out are there different ways, are there out-of-the-box ways that we can solve a problem here? If there's transportation that needs to happen, where can we how can how else could we solve this problem?

SPEAKER_01:

Do you have a success story that you could share?

SPEAKER_02:

Sure. I have a student who I worked with actually for probably I'm still working with them, but it's probably been about 18 months. Okay. And we this is a a student who was having a lot of trouble getting services, getting related services, uh homeschooled student. And there's a lot of contention with the district. The relationship between district and family had just was awful. Nobody was listening to each other. Nobody was really interested in figuring out how we could solve this. There were some new players that kind of entered the game, and um they were really interested in trying to figure out a solution here. And we um we worked together with the family and uh the district and designed an incredibly unique solution where um the parent has a lot of control over who is being provided. Um the school district is able to determine some of the things that are the most important to them. And they're the cer the child's now getting services for the first time. She's making huge gains uh physically, visually, communicatively, and she's so much more regulated and able to learn everything. I mean, the progress this child has made is phenomenal.

SPEAKER_01:

It must be such a relief both to the child and to the parents.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, and the district also, because they genuinely do want the child to be able to learn. That's their goal, too.

SPEAKER_01:

Aaron Powell, I have a couple of quick questions and then I'm gonna let you go. So, first, how is being a parent of children who are struggling or who have disabilities? I don't want to say that they're struggling. How has that impacted you and your role in in the job?

SPEAKER_02:

I feel like it has informed almost everything that I do. I have a lot of compassion and empathy for where parents are. It's hard to be a parent of a kid with a disability. It is it is not easy. It's not easy to see your kids struggle. It's not easy to see them struggle. And and sometimes you don't understand why they're struggling. Why, why is this such a problem? Why can't you just do this? Right. And I've learned a lot about my own children's disabilities. Um I'm able to share some of that with parents, but I'm also just able to meet them with that understanding, knowing that they're trying to navigate this as best that as they can. One of the things I tell parents a lot is we do the best we can with the information that we have at the time. We can't, we will, but we can't beat ourselves up about things that happened in the past. I personally, I was an educator. I had a teaching degree. I didn't know I could go to these special education meetings and speak up for my child.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. I'm sure the parents really appreciate your perspective and what you bring. So how do is there a cost to the program and how do people access the program?

SPEAKER_02:

There is no cost to our program. Um we are completely grant funded. So we work with people regardless of income, regardless of uh eligibility status. The only qualifications to be involved in our program is that the student needs to either have a disability or have a suspected disability. And that can include things like anxiety and depression and ADHD. Um, some of these things need to be diagnosed in order for the school to deal with them, but they don't for our program. So we can help get started, get things started, and help talk parents through that.

SPEAKER_01:

And how would they find you? How would they connect with you? Other than a word of mouth, do they go to the Arise website?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, they can go to the to the Arise website. We have a general line right now. The phone number is 315-671-2623 or ed advocacy, that's E D A D V O C A C Y at Arise Inc.org. Um and you can shoot us a little bit of information, uh what you're looking for, and somebody will respond. Um it takes about a month or so to kind of get people onboarded. Uh, so please don't call like, you know, the day before your meeting. That's not going to help very much. Um but we'll do it we can.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for your time and the wonderful work that you're doing with education advocacy. Ladies and gentlemen, that was Arise and Exceptional Family Resources lead education advocate, Beth Clark. As always, thank you all for listening, and we hope you join us next time as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks. This has been the Arise Exceptional Family Resources Podcast with CEO Bruce Drake, recorded and produced at the WCNY Public Broadcasting Studios. For more information, visit our website at contactefr.org. You can also follow us on Facebook. Thank you for listening.