Special Education Law and Special Needs Estate Planning

The conference actually started on Saturday, but for two days prior, COPAA held pre-conference trainings.  This year I decided to concentrate my training time on expert witnesses.  Thursday's class was entitled "Selecting, Preparing, and Paying for Experts."  Friday's class was entitled "Examining and Cross-Examining Experts."

On Saturday morning, I attended a presentation by Joseph Ryan, Ph.D., who is a professor at Clemson University.   Dr. Ryan gave a presentation entitled "Reducing Restraint and Seclusion in Schools." This session was particularly interesting for me, because of a case dealing with isolation that I am currently working on in New Hampshire.

The only disappointment I had all weekend was that one session that I was particularly looking forward to was canceled. The session that I was hoping to attend was entitled "Litigating Injuries of Children with a Disability and Assessing Damages." Instead, I attended a couple of sessions having to do with law office management.

Saturday night I attended a very nice reception for all of the attorneys and advocates in attendance.  I was able to talk with several advocates at the reception about many different special education issues. It's a lot of fun to "talk shop" so in depth with so many people.

On the last day of the conference, I attended two sessions prior to departing. The first session was entitled "Neuropsychology and the Special Needs Assessment." The second session was entitled "Transition: Is There a Higher FAPE Standard?"

As much fun as the conference was, I'm afraid that my trip home was a complete nightmare. The flight from St. Louis to Chicago went fine. In Chicago, though, the attendant at the gate for my Boston flight made an announcement that there was some sort of mishap at Logan involving an Air France jet, and that as a result, several runway lights were out. Therefore, there would be a delay in our flight. Our flight did leave about an hour late, but about an hour from Boston the pilot came on the loudspeaker and said that he had some news for us which was not good. This is never a good sign. He said that because the runway lights were still out they would need to use across runway to land. However, because of the horrible storm in Boston, he did not feel safe landing in that direction, so he was diverting the plane to JFK airport in New York.  We ended up spending the entire night inside the terminal at JFK. United finally put us on a flight to Boston at 7 AM Monday morning. It felt soooooo good t