Leaderboard

I am a facilitator for the state of Missouri, and we are trained and told to reach out to both the school district and the parents via phone before the IEP meeting to gather facts and points of concerns and disagreements. We also ask for copies of the current IEP, evaluation, and draft IEP. As far as what a facilitator would think about one of the case managers not being there, neutral facilitators are usually not allowed to point out anything that a school district is doing "wrong." But if you bring this up with the facilitator in your teleconference, it would give him/her an opening to broach the matter with the school district in terms of it being a parent concern.

I would first ask for a copy of the current ETR so you could thoroughly review it for accuracy. ETRs are required every three years. A new ETR does not have to be written each time a new evaluation is performed. However, the evaluations must be done by qualified individuals following their profession's standards, and, evaluations also must be performed with fidelity to the test maker's instructions. Ask that the facilitated meeting time be moved to a time in which the appropriate school staff (such as the case manager) could attend. I'd talk with your private providers and see if you can find 3 times that would work for them to attend an IEP meeting, and let the district and the facilitator know those dates/times, and ask if those dates would work for them. To help control your costs in cases of long IEP meetings covering several different areas that may not be relevant to your private providers, it's OK for them to attend only part of the meeting. Holding meetings via Zoom is also more economical than paying travel expenses. Bring up your concern that the team didn't list his strengths. There's usually a checkbox on the IEP for the team to mark that they've considered the strengths of the child. Don't let them check that box until they have. You can ask that your parent letter of concern be included, in its entirety, in the parent input section.