R.E.A.C.H. - Resources and Educational Advocacy for Classroom Help -

Naica Cavazos

Kara is very compassionate and has a passion for what she does. She's such an AMAZING WOMAN! I'm so blessed to have crossed paths with her. she helped my daughter feel heard and made me feel more confident and knowledgeable. My daughter can finally receive the appropriate and perfect IEP!

James Coleman (Friends of RSA)

I cannot say enough positive things about Kara Pierce, and her help and support she provided my family. My twins, who are both in SPED, were not receiving their FAPE, and I was constantly walking away from the IEP meetings frustrated. After bringing Kara on my team, I am finally feeling less frustrated, have better, more appropriate goals in place, and am finally getting the needs of my children to the forefront of discussions. Kara is professional, extremely knowledgeable about the IEP and EDCode, and 100% for the kids!

Trisha Olson

I was a desperate mother looking for ways to get my son's IEP to meet his need. I branched out and contacted a company called C.A.R.D. This company told me that I should get in touch with Kara Pierce. I contacted Kara and she spent over an hour on the phone listing to me and explaining the right of my son, myself, and the school. Kara has always made her self available to answer my phone calls, or call me back in a timely fashion. I can tell that she knows that I want to be an advocate for my son, but I do not currently have all the proper knowledge to do so. I know that my sons voice is being heard because Kara always provides me with explanation as to what is going on. She has provided "teachable moments" for families to learn how to meaningfully participate in IEP meetings. I can tell she is passionate about her work because she has such a bleeding heart to get children the resources they need in order to have children educational rights met.
I think of Kara as our families blessing in disguise. She has helped my son, and she has helped me to learn how to advocate for my child. She is so sweet, and one of the most caring, and amazing people I know. I can honestly say any child is truly blessed to have the women on their team.

Chrissy Kelly

We worked with Kara Pierce to advocate for my son with autism. Several professionals outside of the District warned me in advance, but we were desperate for help.

Red flags: She mentioned other parents and students by name. Sharing specific and private stories. I was concerned for our privacy.

Phone calls that should have been 15 minutes turned into an hour or more. Once we had a two hour conversation that didn’t result in anything concrete being discussed or accomplished. It was hard to get her to stay on task or get off the phone with her. A lot of time was spent discussing things that weren’t related to my child or our needs. She would sometimes repeat the same stories over and over again, or confuse me with someone else she was working with.

At our first IEP meeting with Ms. Pierce, I didn’t feel listened to by her. I felt like I had to advocate against her, which was very disappointing. I didn’t feel like my husband or I were allowed to have our own opinion about something unless it agreed with hers. I repeatedly tried to get the meeting back on track, but Kara would focus on things we had requested to move on from. I asked that we not edit Speech Goals because there was not an SLP in attendance. After the third time saying that, my husband jumped in and repeated this. He was direct but extremely professional. Later she called him a bully and said she felt attacked. I couldn’t understand how her assessment could be so different from what I had witnessed. Kara created unnecessary drama in our life and in situations that required a higher level of professionalism.

Kara Pierce may have great knowledge of education and teaching but unfortunately for us that was overshadowed by everything else. After 1.5 months, we were left with a bill of 1200, and great disappointment.

Elaine Byrd

Kara is a compassionate and caring person who knows how to get things done for struggling families with children who have disabilities. My child was discriminated against and harassed for years by two different school districts until Kara put an end to it. She was able to compel the school district to provide meaningful, not boilerplate, accommodations to support his special needs. I highly recommend working with Kara if you want your child to have the best opportunity for a successful future.

Richard Reither

As a Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice, it has been a challenge over the years to help frustrated and often desperate parents deal with obtaining through the schools appropriate services, such as IEPs and 504 Plans, for their special needs children. Over the past five years, I have been referring my clients to Kara Pierce who is the Central Valley's only teacher/Nationally Certificated Educational Advocate. Ms. Pierce has done an excellent job in supporting and representing my clients and their children. Her knowledge of the law, her focus on the details of a case and her ability to write extremely practical goals and objectives that give life to an IEP or 504 is exemplary. Ms. Pierce is an honest and powerful voice for parents and the academic needs of their children.

Juls & Luis R

We were misled multiple times by our sons IEP team and he had gone a year without academic goals, even though the school’s assessment showed he needed them. The school couldn’t agree on their own assessments or on what supports our son needed to be successful in the school environment. We finally changed his placement, got a new IEP team, and opted for an outside assessment by a third party. We still felt we desperately needed an advocate. We felt blessed to have met Kara Pierce after speaking to her, explaining our situation, and being told by her that she could help our son. For a $300 retainer she would read our sons assessments and interpret them for us. She would help us identify the supports he needs, curate SMART academic and support goals that were desperately needed, and attend our IEP meetings to advocate side by side with us as a support role. We were told upfront that we can expect a $700 - $800 dollar bill at first. We had 2 professionals that have worked with Kara in the past, warn us that while she is very knowledgeable and gets the job done, it often comes at an expense of ruining any collaboration one may have or be trying to build with the IEP team and that she seems to unnecessarily prolong meetings. We weighed it out and decided to give it a chance and hope this wouldn’t be the case with us. We shared with her that it was important for us to build a collaborative team because we will be with this team for several years.

Once the assessments were finished and we met to go over the results, Kara suggested that we have the school give us goals first, then we would change and add to them as needed. The 3rd meeting was to do exactly that. However, almost 3 hours in we never got to the goals. The concerns of the 2 professional opinions had come to light. At times, she would insert her knowledge or questions and she came across rude and disrespectful to the team members. Even though they still had no idea what our son needed, this new IEP team appeared to have a more collaborative mindset. We could see the confusion & uncomfortable looks on their faces. At the end of this meeting Kara mentioned to us, we would be having SEVERAL more meetings.

We were concerned because our son needed these supports and SMART goals sooner than later. Still hoping for the best, we wrote her a letter explaining our heartfelt disappointed that we didn’t get to address the goals. We requested, in interest of time, our son still needing proper supports and goals sooner than later, and a lack of a money tree, if she could please help us by creating the goals so we could bring them to the next meeting (why we hired her). That evening we received a bullet point letter that listed all the reasons things played out how they did. One of which said she could not create goals because the district couldn’t agree on what goals and supports, he needs (again, why we hired her). Ending her letter that if we no longer wish to use her services she understands and sent us our first bill with a balance of $1140. She left us feeling abandoned.

We asked for her notes and interpretation of the assessments. She agreed only once we paid our bill in full. Reviewing our bill, we noticed we were charged an extra hour at each meeting, $150 for an email that was half cut/pasted, and things we didn’t know about like private conversations with our district RIM that we should have been included in. It was at this point we felt taken advantage of and mislead by her. It wasn’t smart for us to continue with her as we had little to show for the $1440 investment. We took out the fees we didn’t feel were accurately billed and sent her a check for the balance. Kara responded that she wouldn’t be cashing our check as we weren’t satisfied with her services and wished us well. We would have rather received the services we hired her for. We were left disappointed. We struggled writing this review as it’s not something we typically do, however we felt it important to do so.

Michael Kelly

My wife and I were desperate, and needed an advocate to help with our IEP and take some of the stress off of us. IEP meetings are difficult to plan for and are often an unpleasant experience. Special Education Administrators and other district entities make it harder than should be necessary. We hired Kara despite negative feedback we received from people that had experience with her.
My first red flag was that she asked that we pay her in cash for the initial deposit to hold a space for our children, we have two boys we needed help with. The initial deposit was $300 for each, she requested we pay her in cash. I withdrew $600 cash from an ATM and drove to her house to deliver the money. The deposit was an advance on her future billings for her services.
The next red flag was the excessively long phone calls with my wife. She literally was on the phone for 3 ½ hours before she even received any documentation from us. Often the conversation veered from our children. It was Kara talking about other cases with other parents that had no relevance to our situation. Yet we were billed for all of the time on the phone.
Once we sent her documentation, she billed us for almost 4 hours of review time. Considering how long the initial consult and follow up phone call were, most of the information could have been covered in the calls had she stayed focused on our case instead of talking about other cases.
She had difficulty collaborating with our IEP team before and during the meeting. Her ego was frequently placed above collaboration. She often tried to control the meeting and spoke excessively about matters that we requested to move on from.
She wrote an email she wanted to send to school administration despite our repeated request that all communication with the District come through us. She billed us for 5 hours to write this particular email.
Lastly, she singlehandedly extended our IEP meeting time with side conversations and disagreements with us during the meeting. On top of that, she billed us from 9:00 - 12:15 and our meeting started at 9:30 and ended at 11:45, an extra hour @ $75/hour.
We felt preyed upon and taken advantage of. She extended and manipulated her services beyond what is necessary at our expense. We eventually let Kara go, she brought more drama into the situation when her role was supposed to alleviate stress. We were disappointed with her unprofessional behavior after we dismissed her. She contacted the district administration to inform them that we were no longer working together. This reinforced that our decision to let her go was the right one.