Fresh out of UConn Law School in the early 1960\u2019s, Howard Klebanoff found himself in the middle of history, having landed a job in the Kennedy administration at the U.S. Department of Labor. He was as infused with the spirit of \u201cCamelot\u201d as anyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of us who were down there at that time felt we were going to change the world,\u201d Klebanoff says. Nearly 50 years later, it\u2019s clear that Klebanoff made good on his youthful aspiration for change, most dramatically in public schools across Connecticut.<\/p>\n
But before the big changes he would help create, there were small ones, centered around his family and their Hartford neighborhood in the late \u201960s and early \u201970s.<\/p>\n
Klebanoff and his wife had seen firsthand the \u201cwhite flight\u201d that had driven many families out of urban life and urban schools, but they were determined not to be one of them. \u201cI wanted our children to live in a multi-cultural area,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
At about the same time, however, their daughter developed a hearing impairment and other health problems as a result of high fevers, which brought them into a public school landscape poorly prepared to handle children with disabilities.<\/p>\n
The needed fixes were small, however\u2014\u201clittle things,\u201d as Klebanoff calls them\u2014such as \u00a0making sure his daughter\u2019s desk was in the front of the classroom, the teacher always turning to face the class before speaking , and the teacher double-checking that his daughter\u2019s hearing aids were turned on.<\/p>\n
But after the child suffered her first grand mal seizure several years later, the situation with her education became more complicated. For Klebanoff, though, it was also eye-opening. \u201cIt gave me empathy for what parents of special needs children go through,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cIt also taught me that special education is a two-way street; that we, as parents, have to provide teachers with information about these conditions. It\u2019s a partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to empathy, though, Klebanoff also had the opportunity to initiate improvements. As House chairman of the Legislature\u2019s Education Committee in the 1970s, he knew that Connecticut had relatively minimal special education laws in effect. Klebanoff built on that in an unlikely partnership that resulted from a phone call to Washington.<\/p>\n
Hoping the Education Department might be able to help him find an \u201cexpert\u201d in special education, he was told that two of the best were right at UConn, professors Jack Cawley and A.J. Pappanikou. Klebanoff invited both men to the state Capitol for a meeting, and Pappanikou set the tone right away, telling Klebanoff, \u201cWe\u2019re going to make Connecticut a showplace for special education.\u201d It wasn\u2019t a suggestion.<\/p>\n
Pappanikou put together a workshop on the Storrs campus for Klebanoff\u2019s fellow lawmakers, aimed at developing support for the passage of special education laws. It worked and \u201cwe were off and running,\u201d says Klebanoff, who, over the next 35 years, developed a close friendship with Pappanikou that lasted until his death in 2009.<\/p>\n
The laws they wrote were supposed to be simple, aimed first at establishing some basic rights for parents of children with special education needs, such as easy access to records about their child\u2019s progress. There would be a dialogue between parents and educators in determining the most effective path. Planning and placement teams (PPT) would map out what was best for the child.<\/p>\n
If there were disagreements, mediation\u2014rather than a hearing\u2013would be available to resolve them. But questions arose that weren\u2019t easily answered. What were the special education responsibilities of the school system? What were the responsibilities of the parents? PPTs became lengthy meetings, crowded with school personnel facing parents who, Klebanoff says, often felt intimidated and incapable of asking questions.<\/p>\n
Klebanoff, who up to this point had been in general practice, found himself becoming more and more involved in educational law, seeking due process for parents trying to challenge decisions from school districts. Still, Klebanoff says, 80 percent of the firm\u2019s cases were settled by what he calls \u201calternative dispute resolution.\u201d<\/p>\n
That concept of bridging the gap between parent and educator is also the mission behind the Howard Klebanoff Institute at the Neag School, which Pappanikou successfully urged UConn to establish in Klebanoff\u2019s name.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted it to be a bridge to new ideas, new techniques, with parents and teachers drawn together for the benefit of children,\u201d Klebanoff says. \u201cOur hope is to have more Neag students involved as part of their preparation to be teachers of special education students.\u201d<\/p>\n
And what would Klebanoff\u2019s perfect school system look like? \u201cThere would be a lack of defensiveness on both sides,\u201d he says. \u201cIt would have an openness, where no one feels that one side is attacking the other. We don\u2019t circle the wagons. We remember that the student is our most important consideration. Our firm\u2019s motto says it all: \u2018Of all nature\u2019s gifts, the most precious is a child.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fresh out of UConn Law School in the early 1960\u2019s, Howard Klebanoff found himself in the middle of history, having landed a job in the Kennedy administration at the U.S. Department of Labor. He was as infused with the spirit of \u201cCamelot\u201d as anyone. \u201cA lot of us who were down there at that time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":206643,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1855],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2455],"class_list":["post-206642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-neag"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-20 23:03:51","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206642"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206644,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206642\/revisions\/206644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/206643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206642"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=206642"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=206642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}