Let's Talk Sped Law

Season 1, Episode 4: An Interview with COPAA's Legal Director, Selene Almazan, Esq.

April 14, 2020 Season 1 Episode 4
Let's Talk Sped Law
Season 1, Episode 4: An Interview with COPAA's Legal Director, Selene Almazan, Esq.
Show Notes Transcript


COPAA’s mission is to protect and enforce the legal and civil rights of students with disabilities and their families.  Our primary goal is to secure high quality educational services and to promote excellence in advocacy.


COPAA works to:

  • Enable parents to work more effectively with school personnel to plan and obtain effective educational programs for their children with disabilities;

  • Encourage more attorneys and advocates to undertake representation of parents of children with disabilities in their efforts to plan and obtain effective educational programs;

  • Provide advocate, attorney, parent and other professional COPAA members with the practical resources and information they need to obtain effective educational programs for students with disabilities;

  • Enable members to network and share information and legal resources;

  • Provide training for special education advocates on all aspects of special education advocacy and informal conflict resolution;

  • Provide training for attorneys on legal practice: including due process, litigation, and informal conflict resolution;

  • Enable parents to locate advocates, attorneys, and related professionals through COPAA's website directory;

  • File amicus curiae briefs in cases of national significance.

We sat down with COPAA's Legal Director, Attorney Selene Almazan to discuss the scope COPAA's national footprint in advocating for the rights of children with disabilities.

Jeff Forte:

Welcome to the podcast. Let's talk sped law, a podcast dedicated to discussing special education rights of children with disabilities. I'm your host and special education attorney, Jeff forte. Now let's talk sped law. Hi everyone. This is attorney Jeff Forte back with another episode of Let's Talk Sped Law. Today I'm very excited to have on the call with us today- Selena Almazan who is from COPAA. Selene, could you introduce yourself here to our audience members and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Selene Almazan:

I'm Selene Almazan. I am the legal director for the council of parent attorneys and advocates. I have been their legal director since 2014. Prior to that I was a board member for I think 11 years and I have been a member of COPAA since 1998. I have been practicing special education law since 1986 or 87 having done it as a law student in the early 1980s. So I have been practicing special education law for a very long time.

Jeff Forte:

And for for the benefit of our audience, do you have your own practice as well as being the legal director of COPAA?

Selene Almazan:

I do. I was a legal aid lawyer right out of law school for about six or seven years and represented children in the foster care system. We know that most of those children have special education needs. So I did IEP meetings as well as other hearings for children in foster care. And then I was at a nonprofit, the Maryland coalition for inclusive education for about 23 years, where I practice exclusively, least restrictive environment law. I've done IEP meetings, due process hearings, mediations, federal court litigation not only under the individuals with disabilities education act, but also under Section 504 of the rehab act and the Americans with disabilities act. Then, when decided to leave the nonprofit those clients who still had open cases I took with me and opened a small private practice where I represent families who are looking to return to their neighborhood schools or remain in their neighborhood schools. I still practice exclusively least restrictive environment law.

Jeff Forte:

Great thanks Selene. So, as the legal director of COPAA, can you get into what COPAA first stands and what is its mission currently?

Selene Almazan:

Okay. So the council of parent attorneys and advocates was founded in 1998, by Jim Rosenfeld who, is now at the university of Washington in Seattle and it's been around since 1998. It was formed to address the needs of advocates and attorneys and parents of children with disabilities and the advocates and attorneys who represent the parents and children. It is exclusively for attorneys and advocates who only represent families. It is not open to school district side attorneys or you know people on that represent school districts in the United States. It's mission is to ensure that there is the highest level of representation for families. We provide a lot of training for advocates and attorneys. So that's what we do. The training as we have progressed, you know, went from one conference a year in our main conference and we have now grown to about 2,700 members. So it's certainly grown in its offerings and its size and a lot of the policy work that we do as an organization.

Jeff Forte:

So really there's almost three audience members swim lanes for COPAA. And for folks that are listening, I'm also a member of COPAA and the resources that they have are just absolutely tremendous. You should definitely check out their website to get more information about COPAA. What I see it as is there's really kind of three audience or participant members, right? There's the special education parent attorneys, there's the special education parent advocates, and then there's the parents themselves. Right? And what resources and offerings does COPAA offer for special education advocates?

Selene Almazan:

So we do a year long training, the special education advocacy training. It's the called the seat program and we started that about 10 years ago in conjunction with the university of California. We developed a curriculum and we have been training special education advocates for quite some time. We have now in addition to the introductory course for s eats, we now have advanced levels of seat as well and it is a year long training, w eekly, very intensive and then after that the trainees are expected to do about 60 hours of a practicum with a practicing attorney to sort of follow them along and learn how to do advocacy. We've had for quite some time special education, special education advocates, ethics and principles, you know, always ensuring that that advocates are trained on the unauthorized practice of law and the seat training itself does mostly training in the law. They do a significant amount of papers, I know, and, and homework activities. It's very, it's really incredibly intensive.

Jeff Forte:

So, so if someone wanted to start to learn about becoming an advocate, within the US really COPAA has, nailed it down as far as getting the knowledge and the program and the comprehensiveness of becoming an advocate for children with disabilities through this program called seats. Right?

Selene Almazan:

Yeah. We like to think so. Yes. Yes.

Jeff Forte:

I know a lot of advocates that have, that have gone through it and the practicum is absolutely something that is so essential these days. And you mentioned ethics. You know, it's interesting cause I don't necessarily see that there's, an ethics guidelines for advocates except through the organization of COPAA, which is really great because we're kind of setting the standard for what advocates should be holding themselves to. Right?

Selene Almazan:

Yes, yes. We've had that code of ethics for quite some time. I know that a lot of people do refer to it. You know, we don't certify advocates. We're not in that business sense of what we do, but we do the training., and then we expect the advocates to abide by the code of ethics.

Jeff Forte:

So let's talk now about what COPAA provides for special education attorneys or for attorneys that might be interested in getting into special education law, but otherwise have not gone into that practice yet.

Selene Almazan:

Okay. So let me just go back, are we going to talk about the couple of committees as well? Because the other thing that we do offer for advocates is our advocates committee. And that's a very robust, let's talk about that. Yeah. Very robust and active committee COPAA. They offer once a week, once a week conference calls where it's always a substantive topic. They have guest speakers once a week and it's like I said, it's incredibly robust committee, that, you know, they do a lot of information sharing and as I said, guest speakers once a week. And, it's incredibly robust. And actually that is a good segway into the other things that we do for attorneys. We also offer online new attorney training. That's how I met you and we offer that once a year. I think this is going to be the fifth cohort that I have done. It's a 12 week course. You have to do papers in order to get continuing legal education credits. This was the last cohort that I did in the fall of 2019. I think I had 36 new attorney participants, which is pretty large. It's great. And about 25 consistently. And then this past cohort, there were 36 participants. In addition, we also offer a new attorney skills training and our conference, which is in-person two days, skills training once a year that we do for new attorneys. We have recently introduced additional offerings for advanced advocates. For advanced advocates, we also offer due process training for advocates. There are some States that allow advocates to do due process hearings. So, we now offer a two day skill level training for advanced advocates as well. The attorneys have access to the COPAA law listserve only attorneys are allowed on the COPAA law listserve and it's also a very robust listserve. Lots of great questions, great answers, great resource. People post pleadings on there. They post suggestions, they post things that they may have written for court or for due process hearings. And t's a really good resource for attorneys.There's also a variety of committees that attorneys can join. The Amicus committee is one. The attorney committee is another. This past year we did round tables for attorneys. I believe we did six beginning in the fall and extending I think until February of 2020. Again taking what the advocates committee has been doing once a month we had a round table with a guest speaker PowerPoint. They were not recorded and the attorney would talk about a topic for about 30 to 40 minutes and then we would open it up to questions from members, attorney members on the related topics. So we did one on trying to think what we did. We did a fape of free, appropriate public education. I believe we did something on independent educational evaluations. So there were just timely topics on one thing and then we would open it up to people for questions.

Jeff Forte:

That's great. That's great Selene. So if we now move to what COPAA provides for parents, a lot of the people that follow the podcast,, are our advocates and attorneys, but then there's also parents what, you know, what resources from the parent's perspective does this COPAA provide? For example, I know that COPAA has a very robust directory geographically of attorneys and advocates that parents should be using as a resource when trying to find out who they may want to hire to help represent them or a question for their child.

Selene Almazan:

Yeah. So we do offer for families. We offer a membership to families. We offer yearly training at the annual conference. We offer webinar trainings throughout the year that those topics are determined by the training committee. Usually they are the topics that were the highest rated at the annual conference. We ask the speakers to come and do a webinar on those topics and that those that information is available to appearance attorneys and advocates we offer membership on the COPAA main list which is available and open. The listserv is open to parents, attorneys and advocates and parents get questions answered there. A lot of advocates are also parents of children with disabilities. That's how some of them became advocates. So that is,, that is something that is available to them as well. We had been trying in the last two conference cycles to offer pre conference trainings to local parents in the city that we are having the conference in. This started when we were in new Orleans last year. We did some training on the ground ahead of the conference to train parents and give some information to families in new Orleans as well as offered a training to attorneys who might be interested in representing families in special education law. There are very few attorneys in Louisiana. They represent families and special education matters. A lot of the attorneys and advocates are from Texas and travel into Louisiana and into new Orleans. There is a law's school clinic from Lloyd Loyola who has been interested in offering representation to families through their law clinics. So we did some on the ground training there for families in Baltimore this past year. We also were offering training for families, Maryland and has a lot of attorneys who do, well, not a lot, but about 25 35 who are members of the Maryland special education lawyers group. About seven or eight do litigation, but the rest are families. The rest are attorneys who represent families. So we did a lot of outreach. We have a very strong parent protection and advocacy organization, disability rights, Maryland who does training, a very strong parents place who does training for families and other organization and in Prince George's County, a loud voices together led by Renetta Stanley who is a former a seat graduate who does a lot of advocacy for families in Prince George's County. So, we are trying to, when we go to cities, look at families and whether or not we can offer additional training on top of the conference.

Jeff Forte:

That, that's amazing. I mean, I can, I can tell you that the pre-conference programs that COPAA has been putting on are so incredibly comprehensive it's such a great idea to get into the cities that we join together and collaborate on for the benefit of the parents within those cities. That's, that's, that's great. So that's something that's fairly new within the last couple of years or so, right?

Selene Almazan:

Yes, it is fairly new. It was spearheaded by a board member, Matt Cohen you know, we have been working on diversity issues for quite some time for at least the last four to five years. Concerted effort to make sure that we had people of color who attend our, our conferences to make sure that we offer enough scholarships for families who may not otherwise be able to attend because of the cost. So we've been, you know, we've been working a on on that as part of our strategic plans. Trying to address all of that. You know when we were in Texas a few years ago in Dallas and we were offering, translations in Spanish in order to try and get more, Latino families, to also participate in the conference.

Jeff Forte:

So let's, if we can, let's kind of pivot and talk about now the scope that COPAA on two fronts with the first filing Amicus briefs and then also on the government relations and the legislative front. I know that COPAA most recently, you know, as we're recording this during the Corona virus,, pandemic and that COPAA has to apply itself at the federal level is just something that's, that's unremarkable. So could you talk about the footprint that COPAA has with filing Amicus briefs, but then also what COPAA is currently doing as far as the legislative advocacy front goes as well?

Selene Almazan:

So prior to my being the legal director, I was one of the co-chairs of the Amicus committee and now as legal director, I direct the work of the committee and the co-chairs. I work with three Amicus co-chairs. We respond to requests. You can go onto our website and look at the dropdown menu for submitted Amicus request. We do ask for a significant amount of information and reasons why people are requesting a n Amicus brief. We file Amicus briefs all throughout the country in all 11 circuits and the District of Columbia, there are 12 appellate circuits in the United States so we also, file Amicus briefs, the United States Supreme court having done so in Fry versus Napoleon as well as Endrew F, t he most recently 2016 17. So we do that Amicus work. They have to be issues that apply to all our members that generally we don't accept requests for an Amicus brief in appeals that are highly fact specific. We're looking for the legal issue that applies to everyone. A good decision will apply to everyone who practices in the fifth circuit, believes that we've made a significant difference in the fifth when we file Amicus briefs. And it's very kind of her to say so, but, you know, we've gotten some nice decisions out of the fifth circuit in many of Sonia's cases. And so, you know, we work on, filing Amicus briefs for members, some non-members, in issues that are of importance, to all of our members. I believe year before last we had, we filed 17 briefs. This past year, I think we did 15, we have like four due at the end of this month of April, beginning of may. So it just kind of ebbs and flows, depends on how much, how many requests we get and how, you know, whether or not we accept them. We also do a fair amount of technical assistance for attorneys and parent members may, may be got a parent who has been pro se, doesn't know if they should continue on. And we do, technical assistance for parents that are pro se as well as attorneys who may have lost at the due-process level. Have questions about how you go onto the federal court level. Same thing, you know, if they have a loss in federal court, whether or not they should go ahead and appeal to, their appellate level. So we do that. We offer moot courts for appellate attorneys, sometimes, some firms, generously give them COPAA Amicus time to argue, which is about two to three minutes. So it depends on locale. So that's kind of the Amicus work. The issues for Amicus that we're interested in also are closely aligned with our policy issues that we believe are important. We have been at the forefront on restraints and seclusion. We have very first principles on restraint, seclusion, other organizations we that exhibitors and sponsors for our conference, as to whether or not they comply with our principles on restraint and seclusion. So we do a lot of advocacy on restraint and seclusion. Its been one of the main major proponents of the keep all students safe act which was pending before. The pandemic, since,you know, since the pandemic, we've been working, we've always worked closely with our policy who assists us in the policy arena the outreach to Hill staff. And we work very closely with her this last go round on the stimulus package, to address the issues on under COVID-19 this is where, you know, we heard that there might be waivers on IDEA. We sent out an alert to our members and right away our members were calling their Congressman and their senators saying no waivers, the Hill back way off on those waivers and instead have asked that the secretary of education submit a report in 30 days regarding waivers on the IDEA or section 504. So we continue to work really hard, send out alert store members on that. One of the great things about,, our members is that whenever we send out alerts for actions that are happening on the Hill,, our members are always right on it calling their Congress men, calling their senators and, and telling the representatives their feelings on it at one way or the other. So, we are a major player, the Hill, the Hill wants to know what we think about many things. And it's been a concerted effort with our government relations committee or executive director or CEO, Denise Marshall has been instrumental in guiding COPAA to become a real powerhouse on the national level. On the state level we get a lot of requests on the state level from members and we do some state involvement, through our members. You know, in Maryland there were a couple of bills last session that COPAA weighed in on and we do that around the country.

Jeff Forte:

Great. Well, thank you so much Selene Almazan for being a guest speaker on Let's Talk Sped Law. COPAA is an incredibly active organization on the national level. It certainly has national authority and the resource for educational rights of students with disabilities and their families for, for advocates, for attorneys as well as for parents. And the footprint that COPAA, has developed since its inception over the last 22 years is really something to be admired and followed. And for the for the listeners who have not yet registered for an event for their list, serve for their membership,, what's the website that they can go to

Selene Almazan:

Selene to find out more information? It's www.copaa.org thank you so much.