The problem is not 'the government' or 'society'. 
  The problem is our neighbors: citizens like you and me...

I fail to see how my neighbors caused this problem (aside from demonstrating a tendency to vote for legislators who themselves had a latent tendency to write the laws creating the bureaucracy which assailed us). The problem is in fact those legislators (and a system that offers minimal checks on the legislation they pass into law), and an apparent collective swoon they fall into, where they think that every "issue de jour" needs a new law in response, and every law is a good law (and more laws, new laws, are better than no new laws) so they spend all their time writing and passing laws, thousands upon thousands of pages of new laws (and often vote to pass same w/o having read the laws being voted upon), many of which require new bureaucracies to enforce. Basically they are busy with their long term project (driven to some degree by the constant cajoling of "advocates" of all stripes who wish to inflict, by rule of law, their point of view on everyone) of legislating a straitjacket for each citizen. Do you like yours?

  the teachers that immediately distrust you

Even aside from our CPS experience, this is true: the classroom is their kingdom, and any parent who dares to question a teacher, or come across with an attitude other than "we worship the ground you walk on" (with smiley faces all around), is going to have trouble. NB: we were (parents) "in the special ed system" (another fine bureaucracy ... not!) so got to "get up close and personal" in ways most parents do not. Our ultimate solution? Home Schooling. I had assumed that switching to this schooling mode would, if not simply impossible, at least be a bureaucratic nightmare, but to my complete surprise, here in CA it is so easy to switch to Home Schooling (this improbable result is thanks entirely to HS groups fighting and winning a number of court cases), and you are (can be if you choose) completely cut loose from the government education bureaucracy.

You're probably thinking "aha! He's Home Schooling, therefore he's a Fundamentalist Christian therefore he's a loony tune, and I can scoff at him"; wrong; I am areligious. My bible, if any: http://www.amazon.com/How-Found-Freedom-Unfree-World/dp/0380...

EDIT: formatting