So many parents walk out of IEP meetings in tears—and it doesn’t have to be that way. In this episode of The Autism Mom Coach, Lisa talks with Melissa Gagne, a special education attorney, former educator, and autism mom, about her new membership, IEP Slay. Built as a one-stop, attorney-curated resource for navigating IEPs and 504 plans, it’s designed to make parents the most prepared people at the table. Melissa shares the personal story behind the work—including hiring an attorney for her own son at age five—and her mission to replace the misinformation and isolation of social media with reliable education and real community.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why so much of the IEP information parents find online is incomplete or unreliable, and how a single curated, attorney-built resource helps you exercise constraint over what you consume.
- What’s inside the IEP Slay system, from broken-down special education case law and ready-to-use templates and scripts to a social-emotional component for caring for yourself before, during, and after meetings.
- Why preparation—not getting everything you ask for—is what helps you walk into an IEP meeting feeling like a confident, equal member of the team, and how community can ease the isolation of this journey.
About the guest:
Melissa Gagne is a special education attorney and co-founder of the Connecticut firm Laviano & Gagne, which exclusively represents families of children with special needs. A former teacher and assistant principal, she went to law school at 44 with the mission of representing families like her own; her son Ryan is profoundly autistic. She teaches special education law at Quinnipiac Law School and created IEP Slay, an educational membership for parents navigating IEPs and 504 plans.
Resources mentioned:
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RELATED EPISODES:
- What Autism Parents Need to Know at the IEP Table (Ep #57)
- IEP Refresh: What Autism Parents Need to Know Now (Ep #108)
TRANSCRIPT
You are listening to episode 180 of the Autism Mom, coach hello everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. I am so glad you are here and I hope you are doing well In this week’s episode, I am bringing you my discussion with Melissa Gagne special education attorney, autism mom, former educator, and just a really extraordinary person about her new program called.
IEP Slay. Now, when I saw Melissa talking about this on Instagram, I needed to know everything immediately because I have never seen anything like it as special needs moms. In this day and age, we have a ton of information at our fingertips. However, not all of the information is reliable or complete.
You could spend hours and days researching or pouring through chats and Facebook posts to find your answers. This is certainly the case when it comes to IEPs and 5 0 4 plans. That is why I love the idea of having a place for one stop shopping everything you need to know about your IEP in 5 0 4.
Curated by a practicing attorney. So I also think it’s a great way for us to exercise constraint when it comes to the amount of information that we are consuming and the one-stop shopping for cutting edge information curated. By an attorney where you can go for community to get your questions answered.
All of this is part of IEP Slay, which is why I’m so excited to have Melissa talk about it today. I’ll turn it over to Melissa. I.
Welcome to the podcast, Melissa. If you could just take a few minutes and introduce yourself to the audience. Hi everyone. My name is Melissa Gagne.
I am a special education attorney here in Connecticut. My law firm is Laviano and Gagne, and we myself, along with my fabulous law partner, Jen Ano, we are exclusively a special education law firm. So we represent families that have kids with special needs, ages three to 22. We practice all over the state of Connecticut.
And so families that are in a dispute with their school district, kids who are on an IEP should be on an IEP. 5 0 4 plan. Any sort of discipline that happens with kids with disabilities legally has, there’s certain things that have to be in place. So we represent clients in those contexts. Title ix.
Both responded and complainant. And so we really do all things related to special education, LA Ano and Gagne. I’m a former educator, so before I went to law school at 44 years old, I was in education. So I was a teacher and assistant principal, i’m the mother of a 29-year-old who, his name is Ryan and he is profoundly autistic. He’s intellectually disabled, he’s mostly nonverbal. And when Ryan was just five years old, I hired an attorney for him and we worked very hard for several years to get him outplaced into a program that could meet his needs because we exhausted every program at the time in Connecticut.
And it was that attorney who suggested to me that I should be. Special education lawyer, he said, you would be perfect. You really should consider going to law school and doing this work. And he was the one who actually wrote my recommendation to get into law school, was my special education attorney for Ryan.
And I will tell you that his advocacy in that placement changed the entire trajectory of Ryan’s life. Because he was finally in a program that could. Manage him and could work with him and teach him. And he’s really living a life now that I never thought was possible. And so I did. At 44 years old, I went back to, I resigned from education, went back to law school full-time with the sole mission of ultimately being able to represent families like mine.
And I met Jen Ano, my law partner. Before I even started law school. So my attorney actually connected me with her and said, I think you guys should meet, you’re like the same age. And after stalking her on Facebook for a few months, we finally met in person and I actually ended up interning with her before I even started law school.
And so we’ve known each other for many years. And we launched Laviano and Gagne in 2022. That’s great. You have a real full circle story,
As much as I love you and would love to have you on any time , I had to have you on now because as I was scrolling through Instagram a couple weeks ago, I saw that you were coming out with this new program called IEP Slay, and immediately I needed to know everything about it.
I’ve never seen anything like it, and I think it’s extraordinary. I joined COPA at some point, and I honestly found it too overwhelming
as a parent, find this so appealing just to have a knowledge base with Google and Chat GBT and all those things. There’s a lot of information out there, but there’s quality of information and then there’s also the opportunity to be able to have face time with someone who really lives this experience.
So just tell us everything about this. I’m so curious. I will. And Lisa, you look, you actually nailed it because when you said that there, the quality of the information, because right now people are going to social media for information. That’s where people go. And there’s so much misinformation that’s out there.
And so IEP Slay, and that’s where you can find me on TikTok and Facebook and Instagram is on IEP Slay. That’s my I, changed all my social media. S-L-I-E-P Slate. S-L-A-Y-S-L-A-Y. That’s right. Yeah. It’s trademarked, so you can’t steal it. And it is a concept that I started about a year and a half ago, and there are many reasons why I believe this membership.
My hope is that it turns into a movement for parents. So in Connecticut alone, just Connecticut, nevermind the rest of the country. Anyone can join IEP Slate. It doesn’t matter where you live because the IDEA is federal and the information will be applicable no matter what state you live in.
But in Connecticut alone, right now, there are approximately 85,000 students on an IEP 85,000 just in Connecticut. And being conservative, maybe 1500 of those families have some sort of advocate or attorney that they’re working with. That’s a conservative estimate. What keeps me up at night is what’s happening with the other 80,000, 83,000 families.
Those are the things that keep me up at night. People who don’t have access to attorneys and advocates. And the truth is, I learned from doing tops like at Beans where I’ve seen you at our local coffee shop here in Connecticut. That is an inclusive employment coffee shop. There was some very basic information that I think school districts assume that parents know that they don’t.
I’m on social media. I’m a big social media person, and I started seeing video after video specifically on TikTok of. Parents in the car crying after their IEP meetings. In Connecticut, we call them PPT meetings, but basically in the rest of the country they call them IEP meetings.
And so I started really thinking about, one of the things that I also do is I developed and teach a special education law course at Quinnipiac Law School here in Connecticut. I love to teach, I was a teacher before I went to law school. It’s how can we educate more parents on special education law?
I fine tune this concept over the last year and a half to simplify it, to say, how can I make parents feel better before, during, and after IEP meetings? It’s that simple. And I think the way to do that is to make parents the most prepared people at that IEP meeting table. So what I’ve done is I’ve developed a system called Slay.
And within the membership, so Slay is an acronym. It will stand for something that you’ll learn if you join. And each letter will stand for something and underneath each letter there will be resources. There will be a legal resource section where I break down seminal special education law cases in a way that parents can use them in IEP meetings.
There’ll be templates, there’ll be scripts. There’s a social and emotional component of how to take care of yourself before, during, and after IEP meetings. How do you send that follow up email? Here’s a template for you. And to me, I am building what I wish I had when Ryan’s 29. I used to walk out of these IEP meetings in tears, and I in fact was so anxious once walking into one before I hired my attorney that I passed out in the parking lot of the school. Like literally dropped.
I’ve never passed out before. I’ve never passed out since, but I passed out and so to me. My hope is that, people will join this membership. They will have access to this system. But the other thing, Lisa, and I know that you will connect with this is there, there’s going to be a community component to it so that parents can connect with each other because this is an isolating journey and nobody gets it quite like people like us do.
Nobody understands it unless they have walked the walk. And so there will be a community that members will have access to. 24 7, and that’s where you’re going to reduce isolation. That’s where you’re going to build your own community, a safe community of peers. That’s where parents are going to connect and help each other.
There’s also going to be monthly webinars. I’m going to pop in and do q and as. I’m hosting a summit on December 5th. It’s a one day virtual summit where I’m bringing together experts, different kinds of expert.
I have someone who conducts neuropsychological exams, and she’s just going to explain what that is. Oh my gosh, that is, that’s huge. And just talk parents through it, and so members will have access to that, but I’ll open that up so people who aren’t members, but they’ll have to pay for it. And so it’s really a place, a system, a community for families to really educate themselves on special education law, feel less isolated and just, my hope is, one of the things that people always say is how do you, how will you know if you’re successful?
It’s not the number of members for me. It’s if the members that I have report back after that next IEP meeting, that they felt better. They felt better before. They felt better during, not that everything went their way, not that they got everything they asked for, but that they felt like they were a prepared member of that team.
That they were able to advocate for their child in a way that made sense and that the things that were being discussed were things that they felt. They understood. And so that’s the whole mission. And I feel like I want this to become a movement where parents in our country, we’ve normalized this idea that people are supposed to feel terrible before, during, and after these meetings that parents, are supposed to cry in the car after them.
And I just don’t think it has to be that way. And I think the way to mitigate that is to be. Educated and to be prepared, and so that’s what I’m trying to do.
That’s such a fantastic concept, and honestly, I think I plan to join just so I can stay educated for my own clients. So I always refer clients. Appropriately? No. When clients come to me and they’re come, they come to me because they’re dealing with a special ed issue. The first thing I tell them is, you got the wrong person.
. And so the launch date, the projected launch date, the system is built, it’s now building the tech part of it, the platform, the branding, which is just done and it’s gonna be beautiful.
I’m really excited about it. Really excited about it. But we’re looking at a target of October 25th as a launch date, and so I’m only going, I’m the way that this is not going to be a membership, Lisa, and I think you’ll appreciate this. I’m not, it’s not, you can’t just join anytime because I need to be able to manage it.
I need to be able to make sure that people are getting what they need from it. So I’m gonna open it for founding members probably a week before the, that I launch it. Which is why, I’ll send you the link. If you can share the link for people to sign up for my email list, that would be the most helpful because that’s where people will get notified and be kept up to date and get some bonuses.
But I’m gonna open it for a week for founding members. So for founding members, IEP Slay is going to be $30 a month or $300 for the year, and that they will have that price for life.
That price is just such an accessible price to so many families. I agree. And that’s, it’s deliberate, right? I deliberately wanna price this so people can access it. It’s education. So I will not be giving legal advice. I will not be giving legal advice to people.
I only practice law in Connecticut. But this is an educational membership. And so the other thing I’m doing, Lisa, is the first 10 people that join are going to pay for that first month, and then they’re going to get a year free.
So they’ll get IEP slay for 13 months, for $30 for the first amazing people. So it really makes sense to be a founding member. I’m only opening it up for a week. I’m closing it the day I launch. And then I’ll open it up again. I’ll open up the membership again in December before the summit, and then it will be $50 a month or $500 a year at that point.
So it makes all the sense in the world to try to get in, I think as a founding member.
I’ll say this, Melissa, I think one of the most. I think the thing that I love about this the most is the one stop shopping aspect, because it can be so overwhelming to go on the internet or sometimes even asking other people.
You get so much information thrown at you. So I really like the idea of having one place that you can go for it. You know that it’s reputable, you know that it’s curated by an attorney.
You said getting on your email list. Is that the way to ensure that we get all of the information that we need about how to become a founding member?
Yes. That’s where all of the information for IEP Slay will be. Will be through email list first. That’s how I, you will be notified of the launch. You wanna be the first, one of the first 10 to sign up because if you do, you’re only paying for one month and you’re getting an entire year free. After that the founding members will pay $30 a month or $300 a year.
It will only open up for founding members for a week, and then I will close it and reopen the membership in December before the summit, where it will be $50 a month or $500 for the year. Okay. And if you join as a founding member, is your price locked in for as long as you’re an active participant?
Correct. If a founding member for life. That pricing will be good for life. Yeah, that is fantastic. Melissa, I cannot wait to get in. Melissa, I cannot wait to get the email and I don’t know that I’ll be among the first 10 to sign up, but I will definitely be signing up because this is for sure a resource that I want access to so that.
I can just keep myself in the loop and be knowledgeable.
Thank you so much. I’m excited too. Can’t wait to see you inside the membership. I can’t wait either. All right. Again, thank you so much for joining us and we’ll see you soon. Thank you for having me.
Thanks for listening to the Autism Mom Coach. If you are ready to apply the principles you are learning in these episodes to your life, it is time to schedule a consultation call with me. Podcasts are great, but the ahas are fleeting. Real change comes from application and implementation, and this is exactly what we do in my one-on-one coaching program.
To schedule your consultation, go to my website, the autism mom coach.com, work with me and take the first step to taking better care of yourself so that you can show up as the parent you want to be for your child with autism.
