Our Story

So, what has advocacy looked like?

💙 Advocacy has been sharing our stories.

Families have spoken openly about their experiences—the successes, the struggles, the barriers, and the places where our Special Education system can and must do better.

💙 Advocacy has been showing up.

Parents, students, educators, and community members have attended San Juan Unified CAC meetings, School Board meetings, IEP meetings, community events, and countless other conversations to make sure the perspectives of our Special Education community are heard.

💙 Advocacy has been building partnerships.

We have worked to build relationships with District leadership and others who can help us move beyond identifying problems and toward finding meaningful solutions together.

💙 Advocacy has also been tears and sleepless nights.

It has been parents wondering whether they are doing enough. It has been families fighting for services, inclusion, belonging, access, and opportunities.

At the center of it all has always been something very simple:

We want the best for our kids—and for every child and family who comes after us.

In May 2024, our community showed up in force at a San Juan Unified School Board meeting.

The room was filled with members of our Special Education community who came together to make their voices heard. At that meeting, Ryan Digman—then serving as Chair of the San Juan Unified Community Advisory Committee for Special Education and now the Founding President of our PTA—presented a report to the Board about the state of Special Education in our district.

That moment helped propel an already-growing movement for change.

And our community kept going.

We kept showing up.

We kept telling our stories.

We kept asking difficult questions.

We kept building relationships.

We kept advocating.

And we kept believing that things could be better.

Since then, we have seen positive changes within our system. Things are still far from perfect, and there is much more work ahead—but progress has happened.

That progress belongs to this community.

Then, almost exactly two years after that May 2024 School Board meeting, something incredible happened.

On May 18, 2026, we officially became the Special Education Advocacy PTA of SJUSD.

Forty-three people became paid founding members that very first day.

For many of us, chartering this PTA wasn’t simply the creation of another organization.

It represented years of work.

Years of advocacy.

Years of families finding one another and realizing that none of us should have to navigate this system alone.

Today, we are taking that movement and building something sustainable—an organization that can connect families, empower students, support educators, strengthen partnerships, advocate for meaningful change, and build community across San Juan Unified.

This is our why.

This is our story.

These are our kids.

And these are their futures.

What may look like something that formed overnight was actually years in the making.

And we’re just getting started. 💙