The Story of a Mother Who Refused to Stop Asking

When Nick was in first grade, his mother noticed he was struggling with reading in ways that felt different. She requested a dyslexia assessment from San Francisco Unified School District.

She was told it was too early.

She was told that boys can be slower than girls.

She kept asking. SFUSD eventually completed a psychoeducational evaluation — but the tests they selected were not designed to detect dyslexia. This is not an isolated failure. It is a known, systemic problem with SFUSD's assessment practices, one that the district's own Community Advisory Committee attempted to address by forming a dedicated assessment subcommittee. SFUSD walked away from that committee. Nothing changed.

The result: Nick's evaluation came back "normal." He received no reading intervention. First grade passed without the support he needed.

The Fight Gets Harder

Nick's mother came to the Decoding Dyslexia Parent Support Group and explained what had happened. The advice she received was clear: she had the legal right to request an Independent Educational Evaluation, and the district had a responsibility to provide one.

She made the request. That's when her relationship with SFUSD began to deteriorate.

The IEE was approved at the end of first grade — but it took until November to secure a contract, and the results didn't arrive until February of second grade. The findings were unambiguous: Nick was dyslexic.

The district's response was not to provide reading support. Instead, a special education supervisor suggested that Nick — a child with autism, speech and language needs, occupational therapy needs, and now a dyslexia diagnosis — should be removed from his general education classroom entirely and placed in a special day class. Nick’s mother disagreed.

At the start of third grade, the district refused the services recommended by the IEE outright. Their reason: too much time had passed since the evaluation was completed. Time that had passed, it bears noting, because the district had spent months delaying, contracting, and failing to respond.

The Meetings That Brought Change

In October of Nick’s third grade Stillman Academy donated our services to provide Nick’s mother with a comprehensive literacy assessment. Our findings were that Nick definitely had the capacity to learn to read and write. In October, November and December, Stillman Academy joined Nick's mother at three IEP meetings.

In October, Nick's goals were rewritten. By November, progress monitoring language was being revised. By December — two full years after his mother first asked for help — structured literacy was finally added to Nick's IEP.

Structured literacy should have been provided in first grade. It took until third grade.

The Fight Wasn't Over

Even with the right language finally in his plan, Nick still wasn't receiving the instruction.

In January, his resource specialist — the teacher responsible for his structured literacy — injured her foot. In February, SFUSD teachers went on strike. By March, a substitute was pushing into Nick's classroom but not delivering the structured literacy his IEP required.

When his mother raised the issue, the school principal told her she would have to wait until the end of the year to file a claim for compensatory education. That is not true — but it is the kind of misdirection that wears families down.

Nick is now heading into fourth grade. He is reading at a first-grade level. And the instruction that was supposed to help him still hasn't been consistently delivered.

Why This Summer Is Critical

Fourth grade is the year school changes. Students are expected to read to learn — to absorb science, history, and math through text. For a child still building foundational reading skills, that transition can become a wall that defines the rest of his academic life.

Nick is walking toward that wall right now.

Daily lessons of intensive, structured literacy tutoring this summer won't undo years of institutional failure. But they can do something real:

• Build the decoding and word recognition skills Nick has been waiting to develop

• Strengthen his reading fluency

• Give him confidence through actual, successful reading experiences

• Help him move into a higher-level reading group at the start of fourth grade

• Create documented, measurable evidence of what Nick can achieve with the right instruction

That last piece matters enormously. When Nick makes progress — and he will — it becomes harder for any district official to argue that progress isn't possible. It puts pressure on SFUSD to deliver the services he is owed. It gives his mother's advocacy sharper teeth.

How the Bessie Stillman Scholarship Fund Works

The Bessie Stillman Scholarship Fund, administered in partnership with the California Education Justice Alliance (CEJA), exists for students like Nick — children who are capable of meaningful progress and who have not been given instruction that matches how they learn.

For this summer's placement:

• Stillman Academy is contributing one-third of tuition: $3,750

• Nick's family is contributing what they can: $1,875

• The remaining $6,187 — including a CEJA administrative fee — needs to be raised

Ninety cents of every dollar raised goes directly toward lessons of structured literacy instruction, rigorous progress monitoring, and the documented evidence Nick's mother will need to keep fighting for her son.

This Is What Accountability Looks Like

Nick's mother did everything right. She asked early. She joined advocacy groups. She learned her rights. She pushed through delays, bad-faith assessments, stonewalling administrators, and a system that seemed designed to exhaust families into silence.

She is still standing. And her son still needs help.

You can be part of what finally goes right for Nick.