Marla Kilfoyle is a teacher on Long Island, executive director of the BATs, and a leader in the Néw York opt out movement. She is also the mother of a child with special needs.
In this post, she writes a letter to her son, who was adopted from Russia when he was nine months old.
Marla writes:
“When we adopted him, we knew that he would come with cognitive delays. We were educated by the adoption agency about possible health issues that he could be born with. He had years of therapy (OT, PT, Sensory Processing Disorder Therapy, Socialization Therapy, Speech and Language Therapy, two eye surgeries to fix his strabismus) to catch him up. He worked so hard!
“He has excelled beyond our wildest dreams, and he is the joy of our lives.
“He is an accomplished trumpet player, he knows the full history of the sinking of the Titanic, he is a lover of animals, and he is an amazing son.”
And she wrote him a letter.
My son,
I adore you more than you will ever know. Having you in my life has been an utter joy and has enriched my life beyond measure. This is a hard letter to write because I have been fighting a battle that began because of you, my love for you, and my want for you to get a great education. As a teacher and a mother, I know that getting a sound education will open so many doors for you. I know that using education to find your passion will make you a happy adult. This is why I fight. This is why I travel and speak; this is why I work on the computer for hours at a time to write, organize, and join coalitions to make sure that you, and all children, have an education that opens doors and allows for discovery of a passion.
There are entities in the country that want to take away your right to a “Free and Appropriate Education.” They want to deny you the rights you are entitled to under IDEA. They want you to work to IEP goals that you could never meet. They want you to take exit assessments that are designed to set you up to fail. They want to create a cookie cutter education system that won’t help you overcome your weaknesses and will not lift your strengths to the surface. I know this, your teachers know this, but the entities that make education policy are not listening.
You are my son. I adore you. I love you and…
I will not be ignored.
So, I need to extend an apology to you.
I am sorry that adults who make education policy are ignorant about the real needs of special education children. I am sorry that adults involved in making education policy continue to marginalize special needs children. I am sorry that adults who make education policy continue to see special needs children, and their parents, as invisible.
The fight we have before us is to tell education policy makers that we will not be marginalized, and we will not be invisible.
So, I continue to fight for you, for all children with special needs, and I hope one day…
You will understand why I fight.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Keep the fight going. Your son and others like him are definitely worth it.
What many do not realize is that the severely disabled, those in special schools until they are twenty one, have also been impacted by Cuomo’s policies. The teachers at these schools are beside themselves as funding has been cut and programs deleted. These kids need the stability the school provides. They rely on their “friends”, their classmates who work beside them. As young adults, they were being trained at various tasks so they could eventually join the workforce at places like Wegmans who are willing to hire the “disabled”. This is one of the programs which has been cut (the token salary they earned at the school supervised training work sight was under minimum wage so declared illegal).
How is this helping the most needy of our youth? Parents – you are on your own.
So we need to fight. How can we watch successful programs be dismantled without making our voices heard? We need to speak as one in the best interests of ALL children. If we don’t stop the insanity now, we will have no chance of reversing the damage being inflicted on the next generation – our children and grandchildren. Just as the soldiers come back from war with psychological issues, so will the minds and attitudes of our progeny be inexplicably altered into individuals leading lives full of depression, phobias, and anxiety. It’s already happening as a result of NCLB. Now CC and Pearson are finishing up the job.
Ellen T Klock
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I liked reading this. Raising a kid with special needs is a separate, challenging world other parents cannot comprehend. Whether the cruelty experienced from strangers, the constant bullying from classmates, or the well-meaning, but clueless suggestions from other family members, the road can be isolated and difficult. The one group I found in touch was my son’s special Ed teachers. We also found support from boy scout leaders with a big heart under a tough, mountain man exterior. Sadly, our sociopathic Republican leaders in Ohio can see only Darwinistic “free markets” and just as well wish our families did not exist. Once a special needs or mentally ill child graduates from high school here, you are on your own.
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WOW…This is how God works. We will have our victory dance here, too (federal guidance, IEP goals aligned to grade level content). I love your badass passion Marla!
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We’re experiencing the same thing with our daughter, now a junior in a NYC special ed HS. She’s just been informed that she qualifies for Honor Society, but hasn’t yet been able to pass the Regents exams. They were already some of the most difficult exit exams in the country, but were just made even more difficult with the incorporation of the totally unrealistic Common Core standards. These over-the-top exams are particularly difficult for special needs students who otherwise do well in course work, & as such are discriminatory. I’ve looked at some of the questions. Though I was an Honor Roll HS student in north Jersey & graduated magna cum laude from Syacuse University, right now I couldn’t qualify for a GED in NY State. I know a Ph.D. who’s told me she didn’t think she could either. These exit exams have gotten totally out of hand.
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Love you, Marla, more than I can say. This woman lives, eats, sleeps and breathes this fight for kids. She has inspired me to do the same for both of my kids and for my students. I am so proud of the work she does daily.
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Hi Marla Kilfoyle:
Your story moves me to tear out for your unconditional love of humanity.
I only could imagine that your adopted son has shown his love, respect, and affection to your love as much as he daily displays through his effort and his joy of learning under your guidance.
Could anyone understand that Rothschild has killed his son due to his son’s compassion and kindness which has conflicted to Rothschild’s goal to be rich and powerful at any cost to society? I only heard this story from people’s conversation in a public space. Back2basic
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There are many MANY now-ex-BAT’s who would have gone to bat with Marla, who stand 200% (if not more!) behind the content of this letter, many of whom have written our own versions of this letter to our own children and students but who have been banned and blocked from BAT’s, often by Marla herself. We were stronger together; perhaps this can be a starting point toward unification? That’d be nice; I could get behind that too. 🙂
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