Schools are covered by governmental immunity, thus making it extremely difficult to 1, have them follow this bill and 2, get reparations when they cause emotional harm, even when there is documentation by a professional. I recently found that it would cost me approximately $1,500 in lawyer’s fees just to get the scool to comply with their own bullying and harrassment policies and more specifically, a written plan THEY created for my own child. I will spare you the details, but in essence, the laws and amendments are fantastic, who will enforce them? There has been an increase in behaviors of students that compromise the education of otjer students, even verbal threatening with firearms, that goes undocumented and is not addressed as a bullying or harrassment issue. I have seen a handful of parents pull their children from school to homeschool them due to mishandled bullying and/or situations where middle school students could not read with proficiency. In the cases I am aware of, the parents I know of tried to climb the chain of command to be met with lawsuit prevention tactics and no feasible answer. Most notably that in the bullying cases, there was zero documentation. Where does a parent go after this? Or even if it is documented in writing, as my situation is heavily documented, what power do we hold if we are forced to hire an expensive lawyer to fight for children’s civil rights? This comes at a time when the middle class is shrinking and income inequality has rapidly declined. With 3 children with special needs, I personally can not afford an education lawyer, an injury lawyer and/or a civil rights lawyer. I would need 2 of the 3 at minimum, but likely all 3, to handle my current worst case here. I would need to hire yet another one to enforce a 504 plan for another of my children. Yay for the laws, but to make them follow through is nearly impossible, and never fast while children suffer for months waiting for help or just get pulled from school in favor of homeschooling (when parents are able- as most working families can not accomplish this) because it is so emotionally damaging. How do these things get enforced? How do we make parents aware of their children’s rights at school? How can we help parents mitigate the cost of expensive attorneys when the school is not helping but harming?