A Statement from PASSE

Dear Friends and PASSE Members, 

We, Alexandra DeRonde and Sue Freivald, owners of Parents Advocating for Special Services in Education (PASSE), a non-profit special education advocacy group, have recently become aware of several rumors about our organization. We want to set the record straight, and to provide each of you with sufficient information to be able to separate fact from rumor.

PASSE is not a 501c(3) organization. We have never presented PASSE as such. It's expensive and time-consuming to pursue tax-exempt status as a 501c(3), and PASSE neither focuses on fundraising nor takes in enough income to make it worth the effort. (More on the PASSE scholarship below.) We are an advocacy-oriented parents' group that exists to share information, provide support, and educate on the law.  

PASSE annually receives dues from members. Unfortunately, we receive dues from fewer than half of those whom we inform through email, phone calls, our website, and Facebook, but we answer requests for help without checking membership status. In fact, we have even responded to calls for assistance from outside of West Orange. We neither request nor accept payment for our assistance. PASSE's annual income from dues is between $200 to $400. These funds pay for basic supplies for meetings and events, as well as awards and plaques for the PASSE Awards Night. Many expenses are actually covered out of our pockets. 

PASSE encourages our guests, members, and friends to donate to the PASSE Scholarship, which is managed and run by the West Orange Scholarship Fund's board of trustees. We do not manage that fund, and donations go to the West Orange Scholarship Fund. This year we donated all proceeds from the PASSE Resource Expo to the Scholarship Fund as well, and thanks to that we were able to provide for 7 scholarships in 2013 instead of the 5 scholarships we presented last year. 

A few specific allegations and issues are worth addressing.

1. PASSE did not sue the Board of Education or former Superintendent Anthony Cavanna.

The Statewide Parent Advocacy Network (SPAN) advised the leaders of all advocacy groups to contact our districts about how federal stimulus (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA) funds for special education (under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA) were going to be used. 

We took their advice, and learned that these funds were used to spare fifteen general education teaching positions that would otherwise have been cut that year -- meaning that Support Services would not benefit from those funds. Further, we found concrete evidence that the application contained false information and the allocation of funds went against state DOE guidelines regarding the use of the stimulus funds. As a result, we contacted the County Supervisor of Child Study for guidance. That prompted the county supervisor to initiate an investigation by the county and state into the use of ARRA IDEA funds in West Orange. 

Though the resulting report did not address the specific issues we unearthed, some other irregularities were discovered. The result was a “Corrective Action Plan” that the district had to implement. The CAP is a public document. 

Questions are welcome, and we can provide more detail to interested parties, but rest assured that PASSE did not sue Dr. Cavanna or the Board of Education.

2. We are not using PASSE as a way to “get in with” the Board of Education, or as some kind of "platform." 

First, neither of us have any intentions of running for BOE. 

Second, it's impossible for the BOE to bestow favors upon any of our children because of our work with PASSE. The IEP and 504 processes specifically deny BOE members any influence. The Board has a limited role in general, but special education law is such that the BOE and even the superintendent have no role in the IEP process other than to approve payment for services -- which, by law, they cannot refuse. 

Finally, PASSE is independent of the district. We are not employed by the district, are not run by the district, and do not benefit financially from the district. We work collaboratively with the district staff and Board members, but only as any other residents can: by calling, emailing, getting up at BOE meetings, and so on. 

3. Opinions expressed by ourselves as individuals are not the opinions of PASSE or of the parents who are members of PASSE. This is, of course, even more true of opinions of our family members.

When we speak as co-presidents of PASSE, we make that clear. We regret that special needs students and their parents could be adversely affected by personal differences that third parties have with us or our family members.

Nonetheless, the potential for such effects is there. For example, Jake Freivald, husband of one of the co-presidents, wrote something unflattering about a local news editor, and the editor contacted three PASSE officers to alert us that “it would be in [our] best interest” for her to delete previous PASSE articles and press releases, as well as eliminate future coverage for PASSE and any other organizations for which any of PASSE’s officers wanted PR.  We hope that situations such as this do not hinder our mission to inform and educate parents in West Orange, or adversely affect any other community groups or activities our officers participate in.

We felt the need to clear up these rumors because parents have told us that they have been encouraged not to contact PASSE for some of these reasons.  It pains us to think that parents might not reach out to us with their questions, because directly helping parents advocate for their children is the most common and beneficial thing PASSE does.  

Our mission remains, as it always has been, to advocate for students with any special needs -- educational or medical, special education or general education -- both as a group and as individuals, mostly by helping to inform parents about the law and helping them navigate the system.

Sincerely,

Alexandra DeRonde and Susan Freivald

Co-Presidents

Parents Advocating for Special Services in Education