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504 Plan Clinic icon — Ellis Abel Learns neurodivergent parent mastermind group serving families in Apache County, AZ

Ages 4-18 · Apache County, AZ county

504 Plan Clinic — Apache County, AZ

Right now in Apache County, AZ, families raising a neurodivergent child are doing it one household at a time. Same district, same waitlists, same paperwork, same fights — and almost none of them have met each other. Apache County is one of 15 counties in Arizona.

Section 504 covers children who need accommodations without special education services, and it is the plan schools most often treat as optional. This clinic works on getting it written properly and enforced.

A monthly meeting in Apache County

  1. 1

    What a 504 covers that an IEP does not

  2. 2

    Accommodation wording that has held up locally

  3. 3

    What to do when a teacher ignores the plan

  4. 4

    Moving between 504 and IEP

  5. 5

    One family gets their draft reviewed

What families in Apache County, AZ ask first

Which do we need, 504 or IEP?

Depends on whether services or accommodations are needed. The clinic works through it.

Can a school refuse a 504?

They must evaluate. Refusal has a process attached to it.

Is this only for school?

It also reaches extracurriculars and field trips, which most families do not know.

From a room in Apache County to a national count

  1. Step 1

    Your circle, in Apache County, AZ

    Eight to twenty families who meet monthly. Local operations stay local: your meeting time, your venue, your rules, your members. Nothing about joining changes how your group runs.

  2. Step 2

    The Apache County chapter

    Every circle in Apache County reports one number — how many families it speaks for — and agrees on three asks per school year. The chapter is who a school board, a superintendent or a county commission talks to.

  3. Step 3

    The Arizona coalition

    County chapters send one delegate each. The coalition tracks state bills, testifies at hearings, and works alongside the structures Arizona families already have a legal right to: the state's federally funded Parent Training and Information Center under IDEA, its Protection and Advocacy agency, and its Developmental Disabilities Council.

  4. Step 4

    The national assembly

    State coalitions meet quarterly. One count, one set of federal priorities — IDEA funding, evaluation timelines, restraint and seclusion, transition services, and the gap between what the law says and what a district does.

Arizona families are not starting from nothing. Under IDEA, every state has a federally funded Parent Training and Information Center; every state also has a Protection and Advocacy agency and a Developmental Disabilities Council. Those exist to be used. What is missing almost everywhere is a local group organized enough to use them together. Apache County is one of 15 counties in Arizona, and each one needs its own chapter.

If you already run something in Apache County

Keep running it. There is no merger, no renaming, no handing over your members or your money. A group that has been meeting in Apache County for years knows things no statewide organization can generate on its own. Affiliation adds two things and takes nothing: your families are counted in the Arizona total, and your ask is worded the same as everyone else’s so it cannot be answered separately.

Affiliate a Apache County group · What autonomy means here · Start a county chapter

The rules that make it work

Local groups keep local control

Your meetings, your members, your money, your name. Affiliation adds a count and a shared ask. It never adds a boss.

Nobody is diagnosed here

This is a working group of parents, not a clinical service. Families share what they did and what happened. Nobody prescribes, nobody treats, nobody assesses.

Experience is shared as experience

What one district approved is a fact worth passing on. What worked for one child is a data point, not a prescription. That distinction is enforced in every meeting.

The child is not the problem to be solved

The systems around the child are. Meetings are about paperwork, access, instruction and policy — not about fixing children.

One ask, said the same way

A group of forty saying forty different things is still forty individuals. The count only becomes power when the ask is identical.

The infinity symbol, not the puzzle piece

Neurodivergent people are not missing a piece. The language and the symbols used here follow the community that lives it.

Other circles in Apache County, AZ

Autism Parent Mastermind — Ellis Abel Learns neurodivergent parent mastermind group icon, for families of children aged 4-18.Autism CircleAges 4-18ADHD Parent Mastermind — Ellis Abel Learns neurodivergent parent mastermind group icon, for families of children aged 4-18.ADHD CircleAges 4-18Dyslexia Parent Mastermind — Ellis Abel Learns neurodivergent parent mastermind group icon, for families of children aged 4-18.Dyslexia CircleAges 4-18Dyscalculia Parent Mastermind — Ellis Abel Learns neurodivergent parent mastermind group icon, for families of children aged 4-18.Dyscalculia CircleAges 4-18Dysgraphia Parent Mastermind — Ellis Abel Learns neurodivergent parent mastermind group icon, for families of children aged 4-18.Dysgraphia CircleAges 4-18Dyspraxia & DCD Parent Mastermind — Ellis Abel Learns neurodivergent parent mastermind group icon, for families of children aged 4-18.Dyspraxia CircleAges 4-18Tourette & Tic Parent Mastermind — Ellis Abel Learns neurodivergent parent mastermind group icon, for families of children aged 4-18.Tourette CircleAges 4-18Sensory Processing Parent Mastermind — Ellis Abel Learns neurodivergent parent mastermind group icon, for families of children aged 4-18.Sensory CircleAges 4-18

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