Potter Law

08/19/2026

Your student's IEP or 504 plan does not follow them to college. It ended at graduation, and there is no college version of it. Section 504 still applies, but nobody at the school is going to start the accommodation process for your student.

The part families are least ready for comes after that. Accommodations get approved, the letter goes out, and it feels like the problem is solved. Then a professor gives a quiz without the extended time, or an absence gets counted that should not have been, and the student is the one who has to catch it and say something.

If you are moving a student in over the next two weeks, the disability services intake is the thing to do this week.

This is educational information, not legal advice. https://nancypotterlaw.substack.com/p/why-your-students-iep-does-not-follow

07/24/2026

The Supreme Court's term ended with a few decisions that changed what schools have to do, and several the Court declined to take at all. K-12 Dive asked me to walk through both.

The short version for families: the rules your child's school follows may now depend on which state and which federal circuit you are in, and school staff are often making these calls in the moment without much settled guidance to work from.

From transgender student rights to student free speech, here is what's been decided and what's left for future terms.

07/15/2026

Most families researching a school discrimination complaint find the same answer over and over. File with the federal Office for Civil Rights. And that is one real route. But it is not the only one.
Picture a parent at the kitchen table, spending an evening trying to figure out how to file on behalf of her son. Every article points to the same federal door. What almost none of them mention is that there is often another one.
Depending on your state and the kind of discrimination involved, a state civil rights office may offer a separate complaint path. And here is the part most families do not expect: you can usually figure out what your state has in about twenty minutes.
The full walkthrough is in this week’s Practical College Guide. The link is in my bio.

06/17/2026

A lot of parents have asked what yesterday’s announcement means for their child.

Short answer: your child’s rights have not changed.

What may change is how complaints are handled and how federal enforcement works during the transition.

I explain what happened, what didn’t change, and what parents should do now.

What yesterday’s move of civil rights and special education out of the Education Department means for your family and what to do this week.

06/16/2026

A student walks into a meeting with the conduct office ready to explain what happened. They bring a few character letters and a short statement. Then someone asks about one specific text message in the file, and the student has not looked at it closely. The answer comes out incomplete.

The problem usually is not that the student did not care. It is that they prepared for the wrong stage. A conduct meeting and a disciplinary hearing are not the same thing, and what helps at one does not always help at the other. Knowing which stage a notice describes changes what a student should review, bring, and say.

Today's piece on The Practical College Guide walks through the difference, what a pre-hearing conference is good for, and the first questions to ask when a notice arrives.

Link in the first comment. You can subscribe there to get these in your inbox.

This is educational information, not legal advice.

06/11/2026

Most academic integrity cases do not start with a student deciding to cheat. They start with choices that feel harmless in the moment: assuming AI is fine because the syllabus doesn’t ban it, citing sources they never opened, working with a roommate on an assignment that was supposed to be independent. If you have a college student, this is the conversation worth having before a problem exists, not after.

This is educational information, not legal advice.

06/05/2026

There’s a new Taylor Swift song out, the Toy Story one, and if you have a student leaving this fall it is going to find you. The franchise has always been about a kid growing up and moving on. What the movie does not cover is what changes the day your student enrolls as an adult. The college talks to them now, not to you, and most parents learn that the first time they try to get an answer and cannot. There is usually a form your student can sign that lets the school share certain records with you, and it is a much easier conversation to have before move-in than after something has already come up. I put the rest of what parents need to know into a guide called Before Your Student Starts College. Link is in the comments.

This is general educational information, not legal advice.

06/03/2026

Most parents picture plagiarism as copying a whole paper. It is usually much smaller than that. An allegation can come from a few uncited sentences, paraphrasing a source too closely, reusing your own work from another class, or leaning on a source without making it clear.

The students who avoid these situations tend to have two simple habits: when they are not sure whether something needs a citation, they cite it. When they are not sure whether working together is allowed, they ask the instructor first.

If you have a student in college, those two sentences are worth passing along before finals.

This is educational information, not legal advice.

05/28/2026

The thing that comes up every time I talk to other parents isn't whether their kids are using AI. It's how a student who didn't use it can prove that.

The burden has quietly shifted. Schools used to have to show a student cheated. Now students are the ones explaining how their work got made, often weeks after they turned it in, often with nothing to point to.

The students who clear these cases fast all have one thing in common: a trail. Drafts, version history, a record of the work happening. The ones who can't show it are the ones still dealing with allegations a month later.

If your student is heading into finals or summer classes, the habit to build now is simple. And it protects the kid who never cheated in the first place.

I write the longer version of these — the actual steps, the part that doesn’t fit in a reel — on my Substack. Free, and it goes straight to your inbox. Link in the first comment.

05/22/2026

The same study group your college student was in last semester may be a violation in their next class. Different professors have different syllabi and different rules. What was allowed in one class can get a student into real trouble in another.
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The move is to read each syllabus carefully at the start of every semester. Ask the professor when something isn’t clear. Don’t assume what worked last semester is going to work this one.
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This is one of the most common reasons students who weren’t trying to cheat end up in academic integrity meetings.
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Educational information, not legal advice. Share with another parent of a college student if it’s useful.

I write the longer version of these — the actual steps, the part that doesn’t fit in a reel — on my Substack. Free, and it goes straight to your inbox. Link in the first comment.