Melony Friedlander is a senior who has had a 504 Plan for the last three years of her high school career. A 504 Plan is a plan that is developed in order to give students who have disabilities accommodations that will make sure they are academically successful in a learning environment fit for them. Melony’s 504 was given due to her dyslexia during her sophomore year, and she has been given the proper accommodations since.

How long did it take you to receive a 504 Plan?

In my total school life, fourth grade to sophomore year was how long it took. When I tried to get one in fourth grade, I was declined for one because they believed that my dyslexia was not a learning disability. In my sophomore year, I was able to try again. And it took a couple of months to get situated. I had to have meetings with all of my teachers and parents so that they could understand what was going on. 

What exactly is a 504 and what are the accommodations like for you?

It’s a document that has certain accommodations depending on the student and there are a bunch of them. If you get injured and have a broken arm you could get a 504 for about two months to get accommodations while you have a broken arm. It really depends on the situation. Mine will last through college. I recently had a lot of things added to mine. I have extended time on assignments, teachers have to give me printed out copies of the notes, and I can go to different rooms if I can’t focus. I can also read aloud to myself. 

How have the accommodations changed since starting e-learning?

I am having a meeting sometime soon to rework the accommodations for online school. Right now everything is kind of the same. I still get the extended time if I need it and things like that, but it hasn’t been completely worked out yet.

Do you think having a 504 has been beneficial to your overall learning experience?

For me, I say it’s really good because I definitely need it with the writing assignments. I never finished those, it takes me forever to read anything so I never finished anything in English class on time. For some classes, I don’t need it much, but for English and history it really comes in handy. 

How do you think the school handled SAT announcements and testing specifically for students with accommodations?

With the SAT I found the communication very poor because they did not send an email until a week before that the test would be over two days for me. I would be missing class the second day and we would be excused from it, but we are missing an extra day of instruction. Now I have a lot of work to do for the classes that I was not there for, which is very inconvenient. We were also told last minute that the second test day would be starting an hour earlier than the previous day, so that was not the best news I had heard that day.