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The post about the extraordinary burden of IEPs on Moms got me thinking today that the biggest burden I carry is the awareness of the extent of my child's challenges. He presents typically which creates an illusion of competence. The reality is that he is falling further behind grade level at school, and further behind his peers socially and with ADLs. I am holding him together in multiple ways and if something were to happen to me I have no idea what would become of him. Given his skill set I cannot imagine him living independently or supporting himself financially. I'm not worrying unrealistically. I worked with his age group for over 10 years and can see how far outside the norm he is, and how he continues to fall further behind. He'll be an adult in just a few years, the window to turn things around is rapidly closing. His school doesn't see it. They alternate between not seeing his disability and blaming all the signs of it on him. Even his father doesn't see it. The other day he said he could picture our child becoming an engineer. My child cannot do a simple jigsaw puzzle and fails every single math and science test in the lowest level of class his school offers. While we cannot know the future I am not seeing engineer without some significant intervention. I'm the one who does all the IEP correspondence, pays for the tutors, finds and pays for the advocates, while my child's father naively assumes everything will be just fine and does (and pays for) nothing. I feel so alone. I'm not looking for advice, I have an advocate helping me with his IEP. I just want to feel less alone.

Agree with JSD24. It is very state specific, so I would get a copy of your state's special education policies, parents' guide, etc., and see what the procedure is for in-state transfers. Usually, the new school district has to either accept the evaluation and IEP from the previous school district and therefore implement the IEP as is, OR the new school district can reject it, in which case it would do it's own evaluation and determine eligibility or draft a new IEP. If the latter, the new school district has to keep the "old" IEP in place and implement until they either exit the student from special education (not likely in this scenario) or develop a new IEP document. I think what you are doing is the correct approach. If I were you, I would prefer an IEP that is as specific as possible before a transfer occurs. I would also reach out to the new school for a meeting to discuss issues like tardiness and absences and how they are related to her disabilities, so you can know upfront how they will handle this rather than being blindsided when an incident actually occurs.

How do we word the request for PWN? Do we just say: "Please provide us with Prior Written Notice for the district's refusal to complete a Functional Behavioral Assessment of our student's school avoidance." Do we include the explanation for why we believe they should help with this?

Does the student at least have a 504? To give her some accommodations for her attention issues, anxiety, and depression? You might want to pursue this path WHILE you are fighting the IEP battle, just to get something in place. Or is the school saying she doesn't have a disability because she doesn't have a diagnosis of ADHD or anxiety? If so, request an IEE so that (hopefully) you can get some diagnoses on the record and they have to provide a 504. Then when the IEP is finally implemented, the accommodations can switch over to that document. They can DEFINITELY do something to support her with turning in homework. It is untrue that the school doesn't have to address the school avoidance issue. They have to look for the cause of the school avoidance and see what supports can be put in place to help the situation. Otherwise, her missing so much school results in them not providing FAPE. Request a Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA). If they refuse, ask for an IEE. What does their "reading at grade level" mean? Did they look at accuracy, fluency, AND comprehension? She may be able to read, but if she is not reading fast enough and/or not understanding/retaining what she is reading, that might be why she is "reluctant" to read. If the school eval didn't dig deep enough, again, ask for an IEE. Unfortunately, is sounds like your state's DOE will be no help, and I'm sure the school district knows that. Any legal counsel who says getting parent input is "inefficient" is ignorant regarding the IDEA.

An IEE would only be appropriate if the school already evaluated her and found no deficits in the areas that you are concerned about. Then you would "disagree" with their evaluations and request an outside professional to do the testing. While this is a little different than the question you asked, when it comes to reading, phonics, fluency, etc. I've found that the curriculum and the actual assessments the school uses can be the problem. Many schools use a balanced literacy or cuing approach that focuses on learning whole words, trying to "guess" words by the first sound or use pictures in the story for the context. While these strategies work for some students, the vast majority do not learn to read this way and need a structured literacy program that focuses on phonics and decoding words. I heard a great quote on this today. It was "if you teach a child 10 words, you teach a child 10 words. If you teach a child 10 sounds, you teach them how to make over 26,000 words." I've been able to successfully advocate for reading goals and interventions in students that weren't making grade level standards by using data that school already had, i.e. standardized test scores, grades in reading, etc. Your child is already eligible for an IEP so now the school has to address all areas of need, not just the areas related to the disability category. Show the need. If you want to learn more about literacy and the different curriculums I mentioned, I would highly suggest you start by listening to the podcast "Sold a Story." It was extremely eye opening for me and I saw it first hand in my youngest son.

It is a paper trail, I know it feels like the meeting is the most important things but the meeting is just the beginning. Start gathering the data for what you feel like your child needs and the PWN is part of that data gathering. You get the school having to write out why they are saying no (again usually its just a because we said so) but it is evidence. Then you start working to get the data to prove them wrong (perhaps an IEE perhaps just evidences from other things). Is this the first IEP? If so they can not move forward without agreement but yes for any other IEP they can move forward and that is why you need the PWN. IF this had to go before a judge you want all the information that the school is refusing reasonable parental input a PWN does that. Yes it sucks that it means this is going to take longer as a process but it is a process and this is just 1 step. Get the PWN to show you tried to participate and they refused everything you tried to tell them. I have been there and honestly got the really ridiculous PWN of we won't because we said so but I was able to use that to eventually get my kid what she needed. (And some people have had schools when told to put it in the PWN suddenly change their minds and put it in the IEP so you may win anyway if you ask for the PWN).

Murmer, I don’t understand the value of the PWN in this case. They are making it clear that they don’t care what we say. And since they can implement the IEP without family agreement what’s the benefit of PWN?

Do you mean that the school answered "no" to the question on the IEP form asking whether the child has behaviors interfering with their or other students' learning, but you feel the team should have marked "yes?" If a child has behaviors that impede their, or other students' access, to the educational environment, there should be goals working to address those behaviors. If the school said "no" to this question, but you feel the answer should be "yes," provide the team with a list of data to support why you feel the answer should be "yes" and request that they update the IEP. The data could include notes sent to you from school staff; emails regarding behavior at school; notes you've taken on any phone calls you've received from the school for behaviors, etc.