NC HB149:
The Story

My son was misdiagnosed three times before anyone got it right.

Three separate evaluations. Three different explanations for why a bright, curious child was struggling to read. None of them were correct. It was not until the fourth evaluation, somewhere in third or fourth grade, that we finally had an accurate diagnosis: dyslexia.

By then, years had passed. Years of frustration, of a child who believed something was wrong with him, of a mother who knew better but could not get the system to listen. When we finally had the right answer, I did not just go to work helping my son. I went to work on the system that had failed him.

My son is 24 now. He is thriving. And North Carolina has a law.

Before HB149, North Carolina had no legal obligation to screen children for dyslexia, no mandated training for educators in structured literacy, and no standardized process for identifying or supporting students who struggled to decode print.

Dyslexia affects roughly one in five people. It is the most common learning difference. It is also highly treatable when identified early with the right intervention. The science has been settled for decades. The schools simply were not required to act on it.

Children who happened to have informed, persistent, resourced parents got help. Everyone else fell through the cracks and was handed a label that followed them for life.

That was the system. I decided it needed to change.

In 2013 I became the NC State Director of Decoding Dyslexia, a grassroots parent advocacy organization that was just beginning to take shape nationally. What started as a small movement grew into chapters across all 50 states and Canada. I led the North Carolina chapter for six years.

The case we brought to legislators was not built on anecdote alone. Working with Drs. Brock and Fernette Eide of Dyslexic Advantage, leading researchers in dyslexia science, we developed a data-driven poll that I delivered directly to Superintendent June Atkinson and members of the NC legislature. The research gave the advocacy effort the scientific credibility that moved it from a parent complaint to a policy imperative.

The legislative work required building relationships on multiple fronts simultaneously across Mecklenburg County, Wilmington, and Wake County, coordinating advocates, constituent voices, and legislative champions from multiple districts at the same time. Representative Conrad of Wake County was the primary legislative champion who carried the bill across the finish line, joined by Representatives Jackson, Elmore, and Gill as primary co-sponsors.

I also served as a volunteer member of the NC Department of Public Instruction Specific Learning Disability Task Force under Superintendent June Atkinson, working directly inside the regulatory structure I was trying to change. That experience taught me something important: you cannot move a system from outside it. You have to understand how it thinks.

Every stakeholder conversation, every committee meeting, every moment of resistance was a lesson in how complex organizations actually change. Not through pressure alone, but through making the right path feel like the obvious path.