Massachusetts mandates that every school district establish and maintain a Special Education Parent Advisory Council, which is what it sounds like: Parents bound together for the purpose of advising district policy on special education. In the age of parental assertion, these bodies in Brookline, Lexington, Newton, Wellesley and elsewhere have made the most of this vital advocacy tool, in the American tradition of voluntary associations.
Why Cambridge’s group occupies the lowest-functioning part of the spectrum is a mystery. Its bylaws define a “general member” as “any interested party.” A “voting member” is any parent or guardian of a special education student. At the top of the association sits an executive committee, which must convene monthly meetings, distribute minutes and hold annual elections. The bylaws of such incorporated associations in Massachusetts “are legally binding,” according to state law.
Yet the executive committee of Cambridge’s Sepac ignores its own rules routinely, and in doing so excludes thousands of district parents from its deliberations. The executive committee has not given notice of its meetings, nor posted its minutes, nor held elections, for more than a year. The committee does not even identify all its leaders on its website.
A voting member such as me might wonder what the leaders have been doing. Advocating for their own children in private discussions with the administration, perhaps. Speaking publicly about district education policy, for certain. The co-chair gave an interview to The Boston Globe this year implying that voting members endorsed her views about the sacking of superintendent Victoria Greer.
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In low-expectation special education, such dysfunctions are easily ignored. A Sepac’s executive committee can claim that not enough parents are interested, after making no effort to engage them. Formal mechanisms to ensure compliance with state regulations are scarce. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s 2024 “Special Education and Civil Rights Monitoring Report” of Cambridge Public Schools did not bother to inquire into the status of the district’s group. The department itself has not updated its advisory for such groups for 14 years. The Federation for Children with Special Needs does maintain a statewide directory of the groups, and even offers a rundown of best practices, but affords no help to unrepresented parents in districts where associations have gone dark.
Last month, after I got to wondering a little too hard, I filed an Open Meeting Law complaint against the Cambridge Sepac. The response corroborated the pattern I alleged. On Dec. 11, the executive committee gave its first notice of a meeting since October 2023. A meeting would be held Tuesday at 11 am. “for the purpose of discussing charges brought against the Special Parents Advisory Council [sic] and its board with respect to the open meeting law complaint filed by John Summers.” The announcement stipulated that “the board may convene in executive session.”
Who would think to convene such a meeting at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday, a time guaranteed to exclude working parents? The six days of notice contravened the association’s bylaws, which mandate two weeks – and express no authorization for the committee to vanish into a closed-door session. Nor does the Open Meeting Law give the leadership any grounds to do so.
When I pointed out these violations of bylaws and common sense, the meeting was canceled.
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What comes next? The statute holds school committees and district administrations responsible for maintaining functional Sepacs. My recent conversations with the interim superintendent and the new executive director of special education have been promising. But such conversations should not continue to take place in private. Parents should raise their voices for due representation.
My voice says the executive committee of the Cambridge group (whoever they all are) should resign. A proper election, then, should encourage new candidates for the vacant positions. The bylaws should be reconstituted to ensure greater independence from the administration as well as to promote more robust engagement with members. The current “coordinator” is a paid district staffer. Sepacs are not meant to be so structurally wedded, due to the obvious conflict of interest.
An association of parents, newly conceived, could integrate family liaisons attached to individual schools into districtwide advocacy. It could challenge the bureaucratic culture of the Office of Student Services, which is notorious for stiff-arming parents (and for serving cold cheeseburgers to autistic students). A Sepac that took itself seriously could demand a seat at the table of the Cambridge School Committee, which is no less notorious in neglecting special education. A bill pending in the state Legislature, “An Act to Ensure Representation of Special Education Parent Advisory Councils on School Committees,” would compel ours to give us a seat.
Solidarity among parents would make it harder for the administration and School Committee to shut us up. Cambridge, as The Boston Globe recently reported, forces special education parents to sign nondisclosure agreements in settling grievances, appeals and complaints.
So much more is possible. At the least, we could hope to teach the administration and School Committee how to speak about our children in direct human language, rather than countenance their preferred resort to the gobbledygook of PowerPoint slides.
Let this letter serve as notice.
John Summers is a historian and special education parent. His writings are collected at his website.
A stronger
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