Specialedconnection.com / IDELR

Project Name: Specialedconnection.com / IDELR
Cost: $4,603.25 or $7,374.25. Could be disaggregated.
Recurring?: Yes, these are annual expenses.
Description: These are crucial legal resources for people who advocate for the educational rights of children with disabilities.

Specialedconnection.com provides two levels of content – a comprehensive database of fully searchable case law, federal policy and guidance, and statutes and regulations – PLUS tools that explain complex legal and policy issues and provide practical implementation strategies and tips. This database contains many specialized legal materials that are not easily available in more generalized commercial databases such as Lexis and Westlaw, for example, administrative decisions from all 50 states are provided.   In addition, the database provides numerous proprietary secondary materials unavailable elsewhere that are extremely useful to parents, advocates, and attorneys alike.

IDELR is the loose-leaf (updated 22 times per year) case reporter for full text of special education cases, covering cases involving classroom discipline of students with special needs, mediation of disputes, development of effective IEPs, compliance with state standards, and more. It also contains the full text of: major federal statutes and regulations, IDEA policy rulings, Section 504 policy rulings, federal and state court decisions, and SEA appeals decision.

Beneficiaries: A subscription to specialedconnection.com would make it possible for us to help parents more effectively. For example, we have begun a parent hotline, where parents can call in for clinical level advice over the phone. With this resource, we would be able to follow-up by sending parents who call into the hotline a “Quick Start” overview of the area of the law most relevant to their questions and concerns.

IDELR is a hard copy resource that would be kept in Innisfree’s offices, available to all of our constituents. Although there is a good deal of overlap between these two resources, hard copies can be searched much more effectively for some purposes.   Additionally, this subscription comes with bi-monthly updates in this fast-changing area of the law, with concise summaries of important cases from across the country, which could be shared with our constituents upon their request.