North, South, East, West: Collaboration Works the Best

In South Dakota, collaboration works. A partnership between the state Office of Special Education and the state’s Parent Training and Information Center created and sustains an effective alternative dispute resolution effort. The South Dakota Navigator Program utilizes Peer Navigator Consultants with flexible schedules. The goals of the program are to help both schools and parents to: find and utilize resources, improve communication, build or re-build partnership, and resolve disagreements locally and voluntarily. Located all across this rural state, PNCs, or “Navigators,” work from their homes and phones and cars and in IEP meetings to help both parents and school personnel, to build bridges instead of walls, to turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones. This presentation will share the South Dakota model of the past 6 years (over 600 “cases”), including illustrative stories from the field. We will compare and contrast with CADRE’s “Four Exemplary Dispute Resolution Systems in Special Education.”