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A couple of suggestions. 1. Ask what the role is of each administrator. What do they bring to the table in terms of knowledge of the child? Only one administrator is required (if even that) for purposes of fulfilling the LEA role. If they don't bring any additional information to the meeting, ask that the meeting be held without them if scheduled on a time they can't make it. 2. It's not true that high school IEP team members cannot be invited to a meeting held at the end of middle school. In fact, they SHOULD be invited. Unfortunately, a lot of times school districts don't know who their staff is going to be in all positions until right before the start of the new school year. But you could at least ask that the current case manager, special education teacher, principal or vice principal, etc., in the high school attend. 3. You could file a state complaint, because you are exactly correct - it is the school district's fault that the clock is running out. The "consequence" (out of compliance) is on their end. But I'm not sure if a state complaint gets you anywhere in this situation other than upsetting the school district. It might be used as leverage to get compensatory services over the summer due to all their delays. 4. Just to avoid the argument that "you declined special education services," I agree with JSD24 that you should probably sign some version of the IEP. As JSD24 suggested, try to get as much of what you want in there, but know that you can always add a statement after your signature that you agree with the exception of "x, y, and z." 5. I also like JSD24's suggestion of holding the IEP meeting in the summer by excusing the teachers, if a date cannot be agreed upon before then. 6. Lastly and most importantly (IMO), you are correct that the data is going to be stale by the time high school starts, but since the school evaluation was done in November, they can refuse to do another one until next November. My suggestion would be to request an IEE. It can be done over the summer and you can get an IEP meeting on the calendar for the beginning of the school year to go over the results, make changes to the IEP, and have all high school team members in attendance. Remember, you don't have to give a reason for your disagreement with the school district's evaluation to get an IEE - just a statement that you do disagree. But in any event, I think a nine month old (by the time high school starts) evaluation with summer regression is a good reason.

So the team as met twice - once where the meeting started late and a 2nd time where they forgot to invite the parents. This 2nd meeting wasn't an IEP meeting because there wasn't adequate notification for parents to attend (at least IMO). You said they did meet and changed what they proposed as FAPE. I'm assuming they gave you a copy of this IEP to sign off on but your feeling is that it still needs tweaking. My thought is for you to go through the evaluation report and list out the areas of need they mention and come up with a list of what the IEP should address. Next step is to go through the IEP & see if they did address the areas where they mention a need. From there, you can write a parent concerns letter saying you are concerned that the eval says there are the following areas that need to be addressed that are not addressed. See if you can hash out the tweaks via back & forth email and come up with something you're willing to sign off on. IEP meetings tend not to happen in the summer because teachers aren't contracted to work & they are a required IEP team member - you need 2, one sp ed teacher & another gen ed teacher to have an official meeting. Excusing these team members from attending is also an option if you want to move this forward over the summer. My child's 1st IEP meeting was help on June 15. I remember the date as it's my mom's birthday. This was at the tail end of 8th grade. I believe it was mostly HS staff; the meeting was held in the HS. Are they adding HS staff with the additional people they are inviting to the meeting? With a delay like this, the fear would be that the data gets stale. There are changes to the baseline where the student's needs have changed. If you can afford it, see about having an advocate help you with going through the eval & the IEP to see if things are all addressed. If you see a need and there's nothing in the eval about it, you might need to request an eval that covers that area. Since the delays were due to how the school did things, in theory, your child should get back services to make up for this. This might not make sense. (We were told my son was going to get COVID compensatory services. His IEP was all about keeping up with his classes. They wanted to do these services during the summer when he had no class to keep up with. If this is you child's situation, it might not make sense to get make up services.) I think your urgency should be making sure HS gets off on the right foot.