Education Law: A Year in Review

Kaitlin Atlas concentrates her practice on student and special education related issues arising in both the public and private school sectors. Ms. Atlas regularly works with clients on due process matters, student discipline matters, and developing policies and procedures. She enjoys proactively counseling clients to maintain compliance with state and federal laws. Ms. Atlas is an active member of the Illinois Council of School Attorneys and the National Council of School Attorneys. She is a frequent speaker at the Illinois Alliance of Administrators of Special Education, the Joint Annual Conference, and at school districts throughout the state. Ms. Atlas also regularly serves as a guest lecturer for law school classes.

Miranda Johnson is a clinical professor of law and the director of the Education Law and Policy Institute at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. She teaches classes in education law and child and family law, and she supervises the representation of parents and students in school discipline, bullying, and special education cases. She has presented at national conferences and training programs in Illinois on prevention-oriented approaches to reduce the use of exclusionary school discipline practices. Professor Johnson co-edited the book Discipline Disparities Among Students with Disabilities: Creating Equitable Environments (Teachers College Press, May 2022). She received a J.D., magna cum laude, from NYU School of Law and a Master in Public Affairs from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

Amy Kosanovich Dickerson is a partner at the law firm Franczek P.C., where she serves as co-chair of the firm's K-12 Education Practice Group. Amy represents educational institutions, including public school districts, charter schools, private schools, and higher education institutions, as well as education-related organizations, in a variety of education law matters. Ms. Dickerson primarily counsels clients in student and labor and employment issues including student rights, student discipline, bullying, discrimination and harassment, civil rights, residency and homelessness, abuse and neglect and other matters involving the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), student accommodation issues, Title IX complaints and investigations, education reform initiatives, employee and teacher evaluation, employee discipline and dismissal, and policy and governance issues.

Ms. Dickerson received her JD from Loyola University Chicago School of Law. She leads the Firm’s Education Law Practicum program with Loyola and frequently serves as a faculty member for Loyola’s Childlaw Trial Practice course. She is an active member of the Illinois Council of School Attorneys and currently serves as the co-chair of the Council’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

Micki Moran is a partner with the firm of Grund & Leavitt. She was the founding partner of The Child and Family Law Center of the North Shore, a firm dedicated to serving the needs of children and families in special education, mental health, DCFS defense, juvenile law and divorce and parenting issues. Ms. Moran has been representing children and families in multiple forums for nearly twenty-five years. She is an adjunct faculty member at Loyola Law School where she supervises the representation of parents and students in school discipline, bullying, and special education cases. She also previously taught Special Education Law and Therapeutic Jurisprudence.

Ms. Moran has litigated child-related cases in both state and federal courts and lectures on special education and child related legal topics to parents and organizations including school administrators, probation officers and judges. She is a member of the American Bar Association, the Lake County and Illinois State Bar as well as serving as a volunteer on the boards of organizations serving children and adults with special education needs and or mental health issues.

Adele Rapport is currently serving as the Senior Legal Advisor to the Assistant Secretary and the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Enforcement for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. In addition to that role, Ms. Rapport is also the Chair of the Executive Committee for the Chicago Federal Executive Board and is an active member of the Great Lakes Regional Network of the White House Initiative on Asian American Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (WHIAANHPI). She is also the Chair for the ABA Government and Public Sector Lawyers Division Council, where she works with attorneys from federal, state and local government agencies as well as JAGs. Ms. Rapport is a Commissioner of the ABA Commission on Disability Rights, a liaison for the ABA Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Commission and is active in the ABA’s Labor and Employment Section. She also teaches constitutional law to middle schoolers through the CBA Lawyers in the Classroom program.

Hector Rodriguez is a governmental affairs professional with seven years of experience in state government. He currently serves as the Co-Director of Government Relations for the Illinois State Board of Education. In this role, he works as a liaison between members of the Illinois General Assembly, legislative staff, elementary and secondary education stakeholders, as well as other state entities. As a member of the legislative affairs team, Mr. Rodriguez also assists with ensuring passage of the agency’s legislative agenda, advises and coordinates analysis on legislation impacting K-12 education, provides drafting assistance on proposed bills, and responds to legislative and constituent inquiries. Mr. Rodriguez earned his bachelor’s degree from DePaul University and spent a semester abroad at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.

Caroline A. Roselli practices in the areas of special education law and student rights. She counsels school districts and colleges concerning student discipline, student records, policy development, students’ rights and other student-related matters. She assists school districts in responding to complaints from the Illinois State Board of Education and Office of Civil Rights and she regularly represents public school districts at IEP meetings, due process hearings, mediations, student expulsion and suspension hearings and residency hearings. Ms. Roselli has successfully defended school district decisions and prevailed at due process hearings on issues regarding eligibility, requests for residential placements and denial of FAPE claims.

Ms. Roselli has presented at annual conferences for both the Illinois Association for School Boards and for the Illinois Alliance of Administrators of Special Education. She is a co-author of the “Special Education” chapter of the Illinois Institute of Continuing Legal Education’s School Law treatise. She also regularly conducts workshops and in-service programs on a variety of special education related topics, including IEP compliance, response to intervention and child find, evaluation procedures, eligibility determinations, autism litigation and discipline of special education students.

Julia Strehlow is the Social-Emotional Learning Lead at the Illinois State Board of Education, where she oversees grant programs and projects related to social-emotional learning, trauma-responsive schools, mental health, and student resilience. Ms. Strehlow has worked to support youth and families in Illinois for more than 15 years in the fields of sexual violence prevention, trauma-informed care, and restorative justice. She is a licensed clinical social worker and earned a Master of Social Work in 2012.

Emily Tulloch represents clients in state and federal court and in administrative proceedings including tenured teacher discipline proceedings, student expulsion hearings, and residency hearings. She also advises clients facing complaints or administrative charges relating to harassment and discrimination. Ms. Tulloch has trained K-12 and higher education institutions on compliance with Title IX and has served as an outside investigator, decisionmaker, and advisor for Title IX complaints and complaints of sexual misconduct. She is also the co-author of the chapter entitled “School Board Practices, Procedures, and Elections” found in the Illinois School Law: Organization, Finance & Property published by the Illinois Institute of Continuing Legal Education (IICLE). Ms. Tulloch also participates in various community interest initiatives with Franczek P.C., including supervising the Firm’s Education Law Practicum program with Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

Mark Walsh is a contributing writer to Education Week, where he has covered education issues in the Supreme Court and lower courts for more than 25 years. He previously served as Washington editor of Education Week, in which he supervised coverage of federal education policy matters, as well as the 2004 and 2008 presidential and congressional elections. Walsh also writes the Supreme Court Report column for the ABA Journal, the magazine of the American Bar Association. He is a regular contributor to the SCOTUS blog, the website devoted to coverage of the Court. For that website, Mr. Walsh writes the “View from the Courtroom” feature, which documents unusual occurrences in the courtroom such as dissents from the bench. He has a degree in journalism, with a minor in political science, from Northwestern University. He has also studied political science at Georgetown University and lectured at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Samantha White is currently the Co-Director of Government Relations at the Illinois State Board of Education. Prior to this role, Ms. White served as the downstate political director for the JB Pritzker for Governor campaign. In this capacity, she managed stakeholder engagement in 93 of the 102 counties in Illinois. During her campaign tenure, Ms. White has primarily focused on successfully increasing voter turnout by building and nurturing working relationships with community leaders, stakeholders, and key constituent groups, as well as by designing and executing targeted field and political programs. She attended Eastern Illinois University and received her bachelor’s degree in political science and her master’s degree in American government and public policy.

Illinois Education Law and Policy Update:

Title IX Presentation

Hot Topics in Special Ed Law