The Irregular Newsletter*, #2 — 31 March 2025

Thank you for being a part of our Parents Alliance for Inclusion community.

Please encourage friends to join and fill out our optional survey at registration.

With better data on our community we can represent our community better at conferences.

Our CEO Jon Springer is attending his 3rd and 4th international school conferences this year in April and May with school leaders from American, International Baccalaureate, and British curriculum schools at ECIS Leadership and COBIS conferences. At these conferences, it’s his job to represent our community to school leaders, and more registration survey data will help that representation.

“Best of” Lists

“Best of” lists are our effort to curate a mixed list of 10 to 30 media resources on a topic. They are compiled from the perspective of a generalist. These lists may not be the right fit for your child. Our goal is that these sources will be a starting point that leads to the information that is the right fit for your family. We have 100s of media resources on our website, and that can be overwhelming. We offer these “best of” lists as what we collectively think are the best places to start exploring relevant information on our community’s site on your journey to finding the information that works for your family.

Best of lists we have added (or updated) since the last newsletter:

• ADHD (updated)
• Autism (updated)
• Dyslexia (updated)
• Twice Exceptional and Gifted
• Building Positive Parenting Practices
• Social and Emotional Wellbeing
• Supporting Children with Anxiety, Depression, or Dysthymia
• Images

More are coming. If there’s a “best of” list you would like to see soon, let us know!

Crowdsourced Counsel

These are intended to become open-source community experience informed threads about what works for some community members in different situations we face as parents. They are not meant to be prescriptive. The goal is to provide a menu of ideas. We welcome your comments on what works for you to grow the menu of ideas for our community.

Crowdsourced Counsel threads we have added (or updated) since the last newsletter:

• Parent-teacher conferences (updated)
• Reading ILPs (updated)
• Lobbying Schools for Better Inclusion Services (updated)
• Questions to Ask Service Providers (updated)

More are coming. If there’s a Crowdsourced Counsel section you would like to see soon, let us know!

Total website Media Resource and Service Provider links

Our total Media Resource and Service Provider links are up to over 650 from approximately 500 as of the first newsletter. Please help us by contributing your own data points to jon@parentsallianceforinclusion.com or facilitators@parentsallianceforinclusion.com. If you have submitted resources that have not been added yet, they should be on the site by Newsletter 3 as we are streamlining our processes for adding resource and support links.

Podcast

The second episode of our Illuminating International Inclusion podcast, “Alternative Pathways”, is available now for audio listening or on YouTube. As discussed in our show notes, we mentioned ASDAN international membership. Since the recording, ASDAN has asked that only educators register interest for international membership. If you are a parent, please ask educators at your school to register interest. ASDAN stands for Award Scheme Development and Accreditation Network.

Parent Support Group Leaders Alliance

If you or someone you know runs a school or regionally based parent support group for parents of neurodivergent and disabled students, please have them contact jon@parentsallianceforinclusion.com to be added to our Parent Support Group Leaders Alliance.

Would you like support starting a Parent Support Group for Parents of Neurodivergent and Disabled Children at your school? Or in your region?

Jon, Sarah, Jenny, Francisco, Delia, and Nikki — Board and Advisory Board members — have all started support groups in the past. Reach out to us by email and one or more of us can offer you support in starting a support group.
(email jon@parentsallianceforinclusion.com or facilitators@parentsallianceforinclusion.com)

Also, in our resources there is the SENIA Parents’ Guidebook to Creating Parent Support Groups which Sarah and Jon helped author.

Outgoing and New Board Members

Due to work obligations, Donna Bracewell has stepped off our Board into an Advisory Board capacity. We thank Donna deeply for being part of our founding Board and appreciate her ongoing support.

To focus on operations, Jon Springer, our CEO is now only an ex-officio member of the Board and has stepped back from being Chair of the Board.

We are thrilled to have Angeline Aow and Delia Browne joining our Board to take over the seats from Donna and Jon. Please see their bios on our Board page.

Note on the Global Political Climate and its Impact on International School Inclusion

We are working to fundraise to have the capacity to: advocate at international school conferences and with international school accreditation agencies, and be able to send our organization leadership to speak at schools where learning support budgets are challenged. All contributions to our donate page are welcome as significant, as we work toward our vision for international schools to be the leaders of social and academic inclusive education, the best education for all students.

We know the environment is challenging for particular schools:

• some schools are losing up to 7% of their student body for next year due only to USAID cuts (United States Agency for International Development);
• schools typically supported by the United States government’s State Department Office of Overseas Schools are receiving new guidelines and inquiries;
• programs related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, at international schools are being challenged as documented by the Wall Street Journal;
• as documented by the New York Times, the United States government has placed limitations on words they do not want to hear.

Here’s our brief thoughts:

• our language is not changing;
• we are adapting;
• we think this is an opportunity for international schools to show what they mean by Global Citizenship Education and be leaders of social and academic equity and inclusion for the betterment of all student outcomes;
• this is an opportunity to grow and expand social and academic inclusion at international schools.

Invitation to Register and Share our Information — Recurring Request

When you share links to join Parents Alliance for Inclusion with your network, please encourage everyone to fill out the optional survey when they register. To that point, here is an 11 minute video invitation to join Parents Alliance for Inclusion that can be shared with your networks.

Please encourage members of your community to register with our website for free and fill out the optional survey when they do.

The optional survey is only available at the time of registration to ensure our results are as reliable as possible, the results of one snapshot in time for each member of our website. (If you missed it, no worries, we will have other membership surveys at a later date.)

The optional survey is “off site” with Jotform to ensure the data on the forms is not linked to the data submitted to register with our website (e.g. name, email).

* Why is it called “The Irregular Newsletter”?

Our intention is to share a new newsletter when we think we have enough new information to share. We aim for the newsletters to become more frequent, and at the same time, we know everyone has busy lives and full email boxes. Therefore, we would rather our newsletter be like an “irregular friend”, a friend that you don’t see often, yet is always good to see and easy to interact with.

Thank you!

Thank you for being part of our growing community!