The records
Special education disputes are decided on records: what was asked for, what was refused, what notice was given, and when. The school district keeps its records as a matter of routine — every notice it sends, every evaluation it conducts, every meeting it documents. This page is about keeping yours to the same standard. Nothing here is legal advice; it is the ordinary discipline of a dated file, applied to your side of the table.
What experienced families keep
A workable file has three properties: nothing is altered, everything is dated, and it reads in order. The practices below are how advocates and parent centers commonly describe a well-kept record.
- Every notice, as received. Prior written notices (in some states a combined form, like Pennsylvania's NOREP), evaluation consents and refusals, meeting invitations, disciplinary notices. Keep the original; note the date it arrived, which can differ from the date it carries.
- Every evaluation and IEP, every version. Drafts and finals both. When a document is revised, the earlier version stays in the file — the differences between versions are often the story.
- A correspondence log. One running list: date, who, method, what was said or asked. Phone calls get an entry the same day, with a follow-up email in your own words ("Confirming what we discussed…") so the call leaves a written trace.
- Emails, exported. Saved out of the inbox on a regular schedule, in a folder by school year. An inbox is not a file; access to it can be lost.
- Meeting notes, dated. Written during or immediately after, with who attended. Where a state or district addresses recording of meetings, its own published rule is the reference — the state pages record what the sources state, and where they state nothing.
- Requests in writing. A request that was only spoken is hard to establish later. The written version can be short and civil; what matters is the date on it.
- Originals unmodified. Annotations go on copies or in the log, never on the document itself. A clean original is worth more than a marked-up one.
- A chronology. One page, newest at the bottom: date, event, document. This is the sheet a new advocate, a mediator, or a hearing officer can absorb in two minutes, and it is built from everything above.
The organizer
A free tool that assembles your own files into the format above — correspondence log, notice log, evaluation timeline, exhibit index, chronology — as a packet a meeting or hearing can follow. It runs entirely on your own computer: all processing is local, and nothing about you or your child ever reaches this site. It selects nothing and pre-fills nothing based on anyone's state or circumstances. There is nothing to buy and no account to create.
This first version reads text-bearing PDFs and saved email. Scans and photographs can be listed as exhibits, but their dates have to be typed in. Nothing is filed without you checking it first. The checklist above is free, needs no tool at all, and remains most of the discipline.
If an outcome could affect your child's placement, services, or eligibility, consider obtaining qualified assistance — a parent center listed on your state's page, an advocate, or an attorney — before responding.