CYA-K – Cover Your Awesome Kid!

How and Why to Create a Paper Trail

You may have heard the acronym/expression “CYA.” AJE is adapting and editing it a little to “CYA-K” to mean “Cover Your Awesome Kid!”

Why are we doing this? Because it is one of the most important pieces of advice we give families is to document your communication with the school and create a paper trail about everything related to your child’s education. We are not saying this because we assume that every conversation is something that you might have to prove happened, but because it will reduce the amount of information you need to hold in your head, making your work as a parent and educational decision-maker a little lighter.

It is always important to have the facts you need to make well-informed decisions about your children’s education. Often it can feel like the school has all the information and all the power. However, you are entitled to meaningful participation in the educational decision-making process regarding how and where your child receives special education. In D.C. parents can also make other decisions about their child’s education program, supports in school, and what kind of school their child goes to. There are a lot of important decisions to be made about education and you need reliable information to make those decisions. Keeping good records and creating a paper trail can give you the information you need.

We created this document to help you do that.

In it we cover, 1) Obtaining and organizing the records that are already out there, 2) How and when to document conversations, and 3) Why records matters, even when there is not a problem. We think that good documentation and record keeping by parents can facilitate better communication, reduce disputes/disagreements and strengthen the home/school relationship.

So, when in doubt, write it out.

Please do it and you will be thanking yourself later.