We have a local parents help group that does advocacy training based on the Wright's Law book "From Emotions to Advocacy". Some times (in my SD, at least) such groups are listed as part of the parents procedural safeguards notice that they hand out at least once a year.
If you could give a rough location (e.g., central CA) maybe someone in your area could help out.
Incidentally the last COPAA conference is available to members. The agenda is on line, the slides can be purchased as a huge PDF file and the audio recording can be purchased (per session is what I did). That might be too much all at once, but you could pick out some titles that sound interesting you like.
I took the SEAT program in NY this year and it was BEYOND AWESOME! However, it was the last year on either coast. Next year (the last year ever) it will most likely be in Oklahoma. This is the ONLY formal Special Education Advocacy training program of its kind and it was funded for only 3 years. It's a government demostration project. The first two years were used to develop the curriculum (using us as guinea pigs, of course) and next year is being used to show that the newly developed curriculum can be used somewhere else with someone else teaching it and replicate the results. We got LOTS of test plus as very involved final exam PLUS each of us is going to be graded on our 115 hour practicums. I have only 22.5 hours left! Next year's course, wherever it's held, is supposed to be able to replicate the results shown by the partipants from the first two "cohorts." Us.
I have to say that the Wrightslaw Boot Camps are the next best thing. Also, you might try to see if you can do volunteer work in the office of an advocate or special ed lawyer in exchange for them teaching you what you need to know.
I sometimes give Advocacy Training for parents. I think I'm going to offer another course in this this fall. But I live on Eastern Long Island and I bet you don't. It's rare for advocates to give this training because it takes up a lot of time that could otherwise be spent making more money per hour helping individual parents. But one of the reasons I've become an advocate is so that I can help educate parent and they can advocate for their OWN children. The more parents are informed, the better-behaved school districts will be!
What you can do TODAY is go to www.wrightslaw.com and get FROM EMOTIONS TO ADVOCACY. I use this as the text in my parent training classes and I know it's used in Boot Camp. I use it as a reference myself when I'm on a case, professionally, too. Plus order a copy of SPECIAL EDUCATION LAW. Also, go to your state's education website and download a copy of your states special education regulations. Each state is required to provide free advocacy help for parents. Some states do a better job than others. Still, it's vital that you get your STATE's laws because not everything is covered under Federal law.
Good luck.
Since relations with schools have been much trickier than naive meIt's funny you bring up the fact that the Wrightlaw seminars are too far away. They sent me the following e-mail this past week: