Parent Advocacy: Letters, Documents & Paper Trails

Keep a record of youcr contacts with the school. Your log should include telephone calls and meetings, conversations, and correspondence between you and the school.

Keep copies of all letters, reports, and consent forms.

Train yourself to write things down! If you have a dispute with the school, your contact log is independent evidence that supports your memory.

Make your requests in writing. Write polite follow-up letters to document events, discussions, and meetings.

Documentation that supports your position is a key to resolving disputes early. Your tools are simple:

Documents Support Memories & and Testimony

As Pete says, "If a statement is not written down, it was not said."

If you have a dispute with the school, you should assume that you will testify about your recollections. Memories are unreliable and influenced by emotions. If your problems boils down to your word against the word of a school employee, you are not likely to prevail without proper documentation.

However, if your recollections are supported by a journal, contact log or calendar that describes the problem or event, you will be in a stronger position. Your journal or log should be contemporaneous -- that is, written when the events or incidents occurred.

If you can produce a letter that describes what the school agreed to do or refused to do, your position will be stronger.

 If the school asks you to sign a consent or permission form, get a copy for your records. Your copy establishes what you agreed to.

Documents Answer Questions

Documents provide answers to “Who, What, Why, When, Where, How and Explain” questions.

Logs, Journals and Calendars

Your Contact Log

Use a log to document all contacts between you and the school. Your log should include telephone calls, messages, meetings, letters, and notes between you and the school staff. Figure 1 is a contact log for telephone calls.

Your log is a memory aid and will help you remember what happened and why.

Your log is a record of:

You can use a log to document problems too. Figure 3 shows how to log in a problem.

Use the log to document conversations and meetings.

You can use a bound or looseleaf notebook as a log. Be consistent!

Tip! If you use an electronic log, be sure to back up your files on more than one computer. Print the log often.

Your Calendar

Many parents like to record their appointments in a monthly or "Year at a Glance" calendar. Calendars can provide good evidence about meeting dates and times.

If you document meeting dates and times in a calendar, write a description of what happened at the meeting in your journal or log.

Tip! Do not throw your calendar away at the end of the year!

Your Journal

Your journal is like a diary and should be clear and legible.

If you request a due process hearing, your journal may be important evidence in your child’s case. Your writings, journals, logs, calendars, and letters may be subpoenaed by the school district.

Assume that school personnel and their attorney will read your papers. Stick to the facts. Do not use the journal to report your feelings and frustrations.

When you write into your journal, write to the Stranger who has the power to fix problems. When the Stranger reads your journal, the Stranger will understand your perspective and want to fix your problems.

In Wrightslaw: From Emotions to Advocacy. you learn how to write good evidence letters and persuasive “Letters to the Stranger.”

Tip! You have a right to a copy of your child’s IEP.

Writing to "The Stranger"

When you document problems and write letters, assume that your letters will be read by a Stranger who has the power to right the wrongs.

After reading a letter from you, the Stranger understands the issues, knows what you want and why, and wants to help.

Who is the Stranger?

The Stranger has the power to make important decisions on your child's behalf. The Stranger may be be the director of special education or the school superintendent. The Stranger may be a hearing officer, Administrative Law Officer, or judge.

If you write a clear, logical, factual letter about your problem to the Stranger, a letter that persuades the Stranger to help, you will prevail without a war.

We call this technique "Writing the Letter to the Stranger." To learn more about letter writing, download and read these articles.

The Art of Writing Letters. In "The Art of Writing Letters, you will learn two approaches to letter writing, the Blame Approach and the Story-Telling Approach. You will learn the differences between business letters and therapeutic letters - and why you should never send therapeutic letters to the school. We introduce the "Letter to the Stranger" concept that is a trademark of our clients.

12 Rules for Writing Great Letters. You write letters to request information, request action, provide information or describe an event, decline a request, and express appreciation. Learn how to write letters that make a good impression and get positive results.

Original "Letter to the Stranger," by Janie Bowman and Peter Wright. When you read the original "Letter to the Stranger" that was posted on the CompuServe ADD Forum in 1994, you will see how this concept evolved. A few years later, this article and other information from the ADD Forum became part of a Smithsonian Exhibit about online culture and communities. 

In Summation

In this article, you learned to create paper trails by documenting contacts with the school - conversations, meetings and other events.

You can use low-tech tools -- logs, journals, and calendars. You saw how to use a contact log to document telephone conversations and meetings.

You will think about the powerful decision-making Stranger when you write descriptions of events, concerns and problems.

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