COVID-19, out of its chaos and uncertainty, has created an opportunity to reimagine the relationships between educators and parents of students with disabilities. The relationships between school districts and parents of students with disabilities can be construed as formal in its origins and developed as a matter of necessity rather than preference. For educators, working with students with disabilities not only involves compliance and meeting state standards but also caring for their students and adapting their educational practices to meet their student and family needs. Likewise, parents are caring for their child, learning who their child is as an individual and learning to navigate the legality around special education. Each one has the interest of the child in mind and each has their set of responsibilities. This article will examine the relationships between educators and parents of students with disabilities pre- and post-COVID-19. As leaders, how do we, despite this time of uncertainty, collectively reimagine ways to improve our connection and engagement with our parents and support our teaching staff in leading the way all to create improved outcomes for our students? Over the years, with the evolution of P.L. 94-142 and more recently the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, legislation has continuously increased the inclusion of parents, their rights and procedural safeguards in the educational decision-making process of their child with a disability through the Individualized Education Program. The IEP team, composed of educators and parents, are charged with coming together to make decisions on behalf of the student to ensure a Free Appropriate Public Education. The legitimization of parents as equal members of the IEP team requires school staff to provide opportunities for collaboration and to share knowledge and decision making regarding the student. Research shows that knowing the whole child and not segmenting the student (home child and school child) leads to better outcomes for students. When this partnership collaborates, trust and respect increase (Friend and Cook, 2007). The opposite is true as well, a lack of collaboration minimizes the success of trust and respect. 

As a parent of a child with a disability and with many years of experience as an administrator, I would not be truthful if I said I’ve seen many great partnerships with great collaboration and trust between educators and parents of children with disabilities. Essentially, other than times of scheduled parent/teacher conferences or IEP meetings, some teachers of students with disabilities may not otherwise meet with a parent face-to-face. I’ve seen and worked with teachers whose typical modes of communication with parents of students with disabilities are often via phone or a communication log and more often to state how the student did or to meet a specific need (i.e., report a behavior, confirm a service was provided, etc.). As with any relationship, many factors that might limit this partnership to fully develop. Conducting professional development for special education staff over the years, I have come to hear many times over and understand the hesitation by our educators to become too involved with their students’ parents for fear of saying the wrong thing and being sued for it. I too used to live by this mantra. As a parent attending IEPs for my son with autism, I have inadvertently created fear in educators I speak of above. Stories of me and my advocacy (i.e., asking for proof of services, asking questions for clarity, checking in on 1:1, batteries for assistive technology, etc.) was not about me prepping for a lawsuit but making sure the most precious thing to me in my whole world was safe and cared for. Regardless, I became “that parent.” Stories of me were passed down through the years creating preconceptions of what it may or may not be like working with. Stories both fictional and factual not only followed me but my child as well. I know these stories. I lived with them as a parent and as an educator, I have helped in creating them about other parents. Fear and lack of trust created these stories. When COVID-19 closed our classrooms and our schools, we crossed the lines of formality and struggle of one kind and entered into the survival and struggle of a new kind. It was not that IEPs were no longer important, but that the health and safety of our students and all community members became more important. We not only worried about how we were going to meet IEP timelines and report on progress on goals, but how we were going to educate all children in a time when students could not come to the traditional school setting. We all, parents and educators, experienced the fear of a new kind — fear that our families, co-workers, children, students and so on would get sick and experience unimaginable pain and suffering and/or possibly death. This coupled with the disastrous turn of our economy and the COVID-19 pandemic, we now have greater distance (physically) between school districts and parents, which is requiring us to reimagine how we can build these relationships in a new virtual manner.