Life After High School: Practical (and Legally Defensible) Transition Planning for Students with Special Needs

Transition planning is not just a right of passage or technical legal obligation… for students with disabilities, it means moving from an insulated and highly-supportive and protective system where students had no need to understand or think about their disabilityrelated needs to a world where they will largely be required to seek out their own disability-related assistance. While public K12 schools are legally obligated to identify, evaluate, and assemble a specialized team dedicated to programming for the needs of students with disabilities, recognizing ineffective interventions, and sometimes even addressing attendance and motivation issues, most of those protections end abruptly at high school graduation, often without the student realizing just how supported they were. Are schools teaching students the crucial skills that students will need to bridge the gap?  In this session, attorney and nationally-recognized speaker and professional development trainer, Erin D. Gilsbach, Esq., highlights this important and often-overlooked issue of truly transitioning a student with special needs from high school to college, employment, and everyday adult life. She identifies the disability laws and rights that are available in college, employment, and general life, with which every special education teacher, administrator, parent, and student should be familiar. She compares Section 504 rights at the K-12 and post-secondary levels, outlines basic employment-related ADA Title I disability rights and procedures, identifies the ADA Title III accessibility obligations available for public accommodations, and explains how all of this information is a crucial part of the transition process for students with disabilities and their parents.