Laura DeCencio, Esq. - Employment and Education Law
Laura DeCencio began here legal career in 1994 as Judicial Law Clerk for the Honorable Lee Laskin in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Camden County. Thereafter, she was a litigation associate at the Margolis Edelstein law firm from 1995-1997. While at Margolis Edelstein she worked in all phases of civil litigation including personal injury and employment law.
In 1997, her work in employment litigation led to her being recruited as Assistant Corporate Counsel for Inductotherm Industries a Fortune 500 privately owed corporation in Rancocas, New Jersey. There she managed the corporation’s national litigation portfolio. She was responsible for the corporate wide harassment and discrimination training for over 50 subsidiaries nationwide. In 2002, she left Inductotherm to devote time to her small children.
Since 2005, she has worked at the Mininno Law office in all phases of litigation work. While she still remains interested in employment law and personal injury, recently Laura has developed a special interest in Education Law.
As parents have learned, many times school systems refuse to recognize a child’s learning difficulties and special needs. The student continues to come home with poor grades despite their best efforts at studying. Educators continue to “blame†the student or even the parents for the poor performance when in fact, there may be an undiagnosed learning difficulty which is causing the difficulty. As a parent and a lawyer, Laura understands that parents need an advocate, a trained lawyer, to battle the school district for their child's unique educational needs or services.
Laura knows that a school system may ignore parents’ informal requests for assistance, but the law requires that the school system follow specific guidelines when a formal request for assistance is made. For example, the school district must refer a child for an evaluation when the parent makes a written request for a special education evaluation. A written parental request for evaluation is considered a formal referral for evaluation. Once a request has been made, the law requires that a district is required to make the referral, and may not attempt to make interventions in the general school program first.
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Laura will ensure that the school does not unlawfully delay in responding to the formal request. Within 20 calendar days (excluding school holidays but not summer vacation) of this request, Laura and you will be in a formal meeting with the full child study team, and general education teacher who is knowledgeable about your child’s educational performance. She will work with the child study team at the school district to ensure that the school is providing services that the law requires. She
will work to help create or modify and student's individualized
education plan ("IEP").
Laura will make sure that a child study team is responsible-together with the parent, the child's teachers, and other specialists in the areas of the child’s weakness. She will ensure that the child study team members deliver related services to children with disabilities and provide services, support and training to the general education staff who work with children.
In short, Laura’s goal it to make sure the school is doing everything the law requires them to do to provide a fulfilling and meaningful education for your child.
Laura graduated from LaSalle University in 1991 with a BS in Business. She went on to law school at Rutgers University-Camden. She graduated in 1994 and began her legal career.
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