34 | AUGUST 19 • 2021

EDUCATION

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graduated without Marcie’s
help,
” Sessel said.

RECENT WORK
Last year, Lipsitt helped more
than 60 families file admin-
istrative complaints against
the Department of Education.
Yes, there was a pandemic and
things abruptly turned on its
head around the world, but that
didn’t cancel out America’s stu-
dents’ rights to a FAPE.
“The IEPs were supposed to
still hold up, even in the pan-
demic,
” Lipsitt said.
She’s hoping some students
will win an additional school
year; for others she’s hoping for
varying amounts of tutoring
and/or extra speech and occu-
pational therapy.
Beyond helping individual
kids and families, Lipsitt also
works on a more global front.
In 2014, she began checking
all state education department
websites around the country
and found that all except two,
Virginia and Maryland, had
accessibility issues.
Pictures need “alt-text” in
order to be accessible for people
who are blind; videos have to be
closed-captioned properly for
people who are deaf.
Within a few years, Lipsitt
had filed about 2,400 web acces-
sibility complaints against all
of these state education depart-
ments — ironically some were
specialized schools for children
who are hearing or vision
impaired. More than 1,000
schools agreed to make changes
to their website.
“It was my biggest contribu-
tion to date,
” Lipsitt said.
In 2018, the Federal Office
for Civil Rights decided it was
waste of time to deal with so
many complaints from a sin-
gle person and dismissed 672
of them, a motion which was

quickly nicknamed the “Marcie
Lipsitt rule” by attorneys around
the country.
“I was outraged that a federal
department would unlawfully
violate my civil rights,
” Lipsitt
said, who has jokingly referred
to herself as a ‘frequent flier’
with the U.S. Office for Civil
Rights.
She promptly created a
national media storm for aware-
ness and filed a federal lawsuit
against them in June 2018. In
the February 2020 settlement,
the rule that dismissed Lipsitt’s
complaints was rescinded, and
the unlawfully dismissed com-
plaints were reopened. There’s
now an Office of Inspector
General (OIG) investigation
pending on this issue.
Most people might find the
entire public education system
daunting, and there are defi-
nitely many kinks in the system,
but Lipsitt has no plans to quit.
There’s plenty more work to do,
and, she says voters have more
power than they realize.
“People seem to refer to pub-
lic education like it’s a person,
but it’s not. Public education is a
set of federal rules, policies and
procedures that are only going
to be effective if we choose to
hold them accountable,
” said
Lipsitt. “That’s what keeps me
awake and forever fighting this
tortured mission.
”

Lipsitt wearing a custom-made
“211,000+ Kids Count” mask
for an October 2020 rally
on the steps of the Michigan
Capitol. She had masks made
for everyone who attended.

COURTESY OF MARCY LIPSITT