IEP/Mediation Help

[TSCHM]

Hi all. I need some help with an upcoming OCR mediation meeting for my son who is disabled.

In the state and district we are in, we have had to file two due process complaints in the same year. Both of these settled, fortunately, however, within a month after settling, problems still continued.

 We noticed that accommodations were removed (completely removed) from his IEP. As our sons advocates, we reached out to the IEP team and requested a meeting. Three days went by and no one from the team responded. So, we reached out again, to a person higher up in the district, detailing our concerns (accommodations were missing for state testing and state testing was quickly approaching), and in the end, the team just flat out refused to meet with us for an IEP meeting at our request. 
 

This caused my son to not have needed accommodations for state testing, caused him a lot of anxiety and stress before, during, and after testing, and of course forced me to file an OCR complaint, which has since been pushed into mediation.  My question for you all is what would you ask for in mediation?  
 

I have very strong feelings about all of this. I feel that since we had previously filed due process complaints, the school both discriminated and retaliated against both of us and especially our son. The LEA, the principal, never even bothered to respond to our request for an IEP meeting. He seemed to not care and knew full well, my son needed the accommodations, but just flat out refused to meet as a team to discuss. Even when we went over his head, we were still denied a meeting by other district (policy) officials. 
 

My son was getting the accommodations in the classroom, all school year, but for the state tests, he would not be getting.  We even pointed out that the accommodations for in class should match accommodations for state testing, but that didn’t matter, they did not grant us a meeting before testing so we could correct the errors. 
 

In our state, these tests are required. Even if I kept him out on testing days, the minute I brought him back, they would have been required to test him.  Keeping him home I understand was an option, but how is that fair to him keeping him out for the rest of the year?  
 

Again, what would you ask for in mediation if this happened to you and your child? This has been such an uphill battle for both him and us. I want to make a statement with them so that they think twice about doing this to another family and child. The law is pretty clear that (my understanding) you cannot just refuse to meet or not bother to respond to parents when they request an IEP meeting.  You also cannot just remove accommodations in an IEP. I’m trying to wrap my head around as to how to handle this. 

 

Any thoughts are appreciated. 
 

 

[Carolyn Rowlett]

I am not familiar with OCR complaints or the process, so I may be wrong, but my understanding is that they can mediate regarding the discrimination, but may not be able to help with what you really need in terms of getting the school district to follow the terms of the IEP.  For that you may need to file a state complaint (I would highly suggest that in this case of blatant procedural violations) or another due process complaint.

[JSD24]

I'm not sure if this is an option given you are in mediation.  My thought is that changes to an IEP need to be based on data.  I'd request what data the school had in order to remove the accommodations your child relied on.  This should be an IEP team decision that was discussed at an IEP meeting that you attended where you could voice your concerns over the removal of the accommodations.  From my perspective, this is a procedural violation that a state complaint should be dealing with.  (You want the state DOE involved so they can make sure this isn't happening to other students in his district.)

If you had posted this while you were dealing with the situation, my suggestion would have been to ask to see what data they have to remove the accommodation and to put the accommodation back on the IEP with a no meet revision given the was not a discussion point at his IEP meeting.

[JSD24]

Hit enter too soon...

My other thought is this is retaliation or they don't have the staff to accommodate students during state testing so they just take the accommodations off of the IEP so they don't have to do it.  (Providing accommodations are a huge PITA for school to do.)

I agree with you that a student's accommodations should be consistent.  If they have it for a class test, it should be the same for state testing, PSATs, SATs, ACTs...  If you have data to remove an accommodation from state testing, it should be removed from other testing too.

[TSCHM]

Hi, 

 

thanks for the response. They had no data to support. In fact, the district person actually quoted that ‘he didn’t use it last year, so no…’ and again, they denied us a meeting to even talk about it. Since I posted this, this gets even more dramatic since the district I guess has refused to mediate offered by OCR. We agreed to mediate, but they will not. Now apparently OCR will continue the investigation. We have submitted emails where they refuse, we even reached out to the state (not for a complaint, but for clarification on this issue) and the state agreed. OCR has all this evidence and I’m hoping they do something about it. Praying actually because no parent or child should have to go through this. 

[TSCHM]

I’m not sure which would have been more effective, a state complaint or an OCR complaint. The state did advise us that we could file a complaint.  We decided to go with an OCR complaint. Now I’m hoping we did the right thing. This shouldn’t happen! 

[JSD24]

"He didn't use the accommodations last year."  This actually is data that can be used to remove accommodations.  On the other hand, if they were not available last year, there would have been no way to use the accommodation.

Might be good to know the accommodation he didn't get so we better understand what's going on.  Was it extra time, breaks, small/quiet room for testing, large font, instructions read to the student...?  Is it the type of accommodation the school provides or the student requests?

[TSCHM]

The accommodations that were removed were extra time, breaks every 30 minutes, 1:1 testing, he is visually impaired so he also gets a paper copy of the test, enlarged, and it is very different test from what other students get (directions are different than computer tests and directions are read out loud—which is another reason to have 1:1 testing). We weren’t super positive that his enlarged versions were even ordered, since his teachers kept telling him he had to take it on the computer, which was wrong in and of itself. These accommodations were removed completely and the team refused to meet with us so he could have these accommodations (like he had for all his other tests all year) we feel out of retaliation for filing due process and for previous OCR complaints. We are still in process and hoping OCR gets this right. 

[Carolyn Rowlett]

I personally don't have a lot of faith in OCR following through with anything to make sure that changes are made, even if they agree with your position.  I think it would be much more effective to file a state complaint based on procedural violations of not holding an IEP meeting when requested by parent, not having a meeting (or even an email chain) to discuss removal of accommodations, etc.  You can pursue both simultaneously.

[JSD24]

Dear School-

Can you please send me a copy of the PWN that explains why accommodations of enlarged font, directions read to the student and 1:1 testing were removed from my son, XX's, IEP?  These accommodations were removed during the 2023-24 school year and I do not recall a discussion at an IEP meeting or what rationale was used to make this change in his IEP.   His vision issues have not gotten better and my feeling is that these provide access to things like state testing so that his growth in learning as measured by these tests accurately reflects the effort the teachers and my son have made during the course of the school year.  Additionally, not having these accommodations made him very anxious about taking the standardized testing required by ESSA last spring.  I realize that, sometimes, testing through digital means can come with the option like enlarging the font on the screen as well as text to speech where these accommodations are available to all students.  If this is the case, XX needs to be shown how to access these options.

These digital options for access are not available on the testing done outside of what is required by ESSA.  Depending on the reason these were removed, I feel that they may need to be added back to XX's IEP so that he has the same level of access to testing and other school-related printed material as his classmates.

Please send me the documentation requested.  Once I review the material, I will get back to you with my availability so we can schedule an IEP meeting.