Sharon Saroff strode to the microphone, her skirt swishing behind her, to take her turn addressing the school board.

“It was nice to hear that at least one parent in Baltimore County who has special needs children is having a good experience,” she quipped. “I wish I could say that about my clients and numerous others.”

The room listened silently that December night as Saroff took her time walking through her criticisms of the school district, a kind of Tuesday-night ritual for the special education advocate.

The 67-year-old has spent dozens, perhaps hundreds, of evenings since 2009 inside the boardroom at Baltimore County Public Schools headquarters pushing for improvements for students with disabilities — sometimes with a little attitude.

She has made that passion into a career, representing families who need help advocating for the accommodations their children need to succeed in school.

Her sharp elbows haven’t always made her friends. One client dubbed her a pit bull in a skirt, she said. But she has earned respect from other education advocates.

Saroff can “get on everybody’s nerves, but I love this woman,” said Del. Cheryl Pasteur, a Democrat who represents Baltimore County, at an April school board meeting. “And when I’m advocating for children with disabilities, when I get stuck, I go to her.”

‘I can do these things’

It was Saroff’s own journey through special education that made her want to help others.

She has dyslexia, a learning disability that impacts reading, writing and spelling, and dyspraxia, a condition that affects planning and motor skills. But she didn’t find that out until later in life.

“I had a lot of behavior concerns because I couldn’t read, couldn’t write, couldn’t do math, I couldn’t express myself very easily,” the New York City native said.

A doctor’s solution to young Saroff’s symptoms was to institutionalize the elementary school student, but her parents disagreed. Instead, they found their daughter a special education school, the Stephen Gaynor School in Manhattan. Saroff credits the school with teaching her to read and write, and fostering her interest in the arts.

“I basically went from a person who didn’t think very highly of themselves to, ‘Hey, I can do these things,’” she said.

At the time, people in her family’s Orthodox Jewish community didn’t talk about disabilities, she said. Even her parents. When college-aged Saroff told her dad she had a reading disability, he didn’t accept it. That made it difficult for her to accept herself, she said.

Saroff studied special education in college and found a job with Bergen County Special Services School District in New Jersey, a system that serves students with disabilities.

She recalled how she reshaped one student’s mindset — a girl considered to have a “moderately low IQ” — by telling her, and all of her students, to show her what they’re capable of.

“Ms. May thinks I’m smart, therefore I must be,” Saroff remembers the student saying, calling her by her maiden name.

“And if any of my students said to me, ‘I can’t,’ I would say to them, ‘Prove it,’” she said.

‘A brick through a plate glass window’

After a short stint in Texas, she and her family moved to Baltimore County in the early 2000s. She started her own business, Special Education Disabilities Resource & Advocacy, or SEDRA, in 2004.

She serves at least 50 clients, many but not all in Baltimore County, and adjusts her pricing based on what they can afford. Single-income families, for instance, pay $65 an hour. She makes more pricing adjustments for unusually long school meetings.

Much of Saroff’s work involves joining a client‘s meeting with a school staffer to hear what services the student is or is not getting. She helps families prepare for those with talking points, she said, “and I teach my clients how to be advocates for their child.”.

The Reisterstown resident described her early tactics as “a brick through a plate glass window.” Over the years, she said, she has mellowed — but isn’t afraid to speak up.

Courtney Everette said she hired Saroff after the staff at Campfield Early Learning Center took away her daughter’s individualized education program (IEP), a legal document that spells out what special instruction and services a student needs. They didn’t think the child, who has developmental delays and autism, still needed accommodations, Everette said.

Saroff instructed Everette to request an IEP meeting when her daughter started kindergarten so the district would assess the child again. They determined she needed one after all.

The now second-grader is at Watershed Public Charter School, where IEP meetings have had mixed results for Everette, who often brings Saroff along.

In a virtual meeting, staff were “very dismissive” Everette said, and, at one point, muted Saroff’s audio when she tried offering input. Afterward, Everette asked her daughter’s independent behaviorist, who also was on the call, if she thought Saroff was being too aggressive or rude.

“And she’s like, ‘No, I’ve been to many of these meetings, and I almost feel like she had to be that way because they just weren’t even trying to listen,’” Everette said.

After Saroff emailed school officials about the experience, the following meeting was much smoother, Everette said.

A spokesperson for the system declined to speak about the meeting and about Saroff overall.

‘Healthy confrontation’

Saroff can be blunt when she participates in meetings of the Special Education Advisory Committee, a community group that makes recommendations to the school board.

“So many organizations or teams, or just in any setting, are afraid of — call it, ‘healthy confrontation,’” said Anthony Freeman, secretary of the group. “And if there’s no honesty, then it‘s hard to get things done.”

By Saroff’s measure, special education in Baltimore County schools is worse than in other school districts.

Her gripes at school board meetings often reference a lack of learning among students with disabilities. State test scores show their scores are lower compared to neighboring districts, though not by much.

At the school board meeting last month, school staff, as well as Saroff, said staff turnover and heavy workloads are making it harder for the district to meet the needs of students with disabilities.

Allison Myers, head of the county’s special education department, said Superintendent Myriam Rogers has made special education a top priority.

Rogers proposed 34 new special education staff positions, including 25 paraeducators (classroom support staff), in her fiscal 2026 budget. The goal is to have them work their way up to become special education teachers, creating a pipeline for the hard-to-fill positions.

Myers said special education positions have fewer vacancies this year than last, thanks to successful recruitment and retention initiatives.

School system officials offer training to special education staff, she said, and convert interns or recent graduates to employees. Officials give the educators additional planning time to make time to engage with families and advocates, Myers said.

Rogers recently converted school psychologists and counselors from 12-month to 10-month employees to save the system money. At the May school board meeting, Saroff advocated for them.

Not allowing the mental health staff to work the two summer months impacts her clients, Saroff argued, and so would the potential staff turnover as a result of the shortened year and lower pay.

“We need to keep those contracts for these people,” she said about the staff. “So we can keep the very well-trained individuals sitting behind me.”

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.