I keep being told that "just because a child is recommended private speech & occupational therapy doesn't mean that he will qualify for the services through school."
I'm new to the IEP process and it's been a confusing year filled with misinformation from our school. Our son started speech therapy at 18 months old through (state) Early Intervention when he was referred by his pediatrician. At the time, he also was diagnosed with motor delay, adaptive delay, cognitive delay, and communication delay. At that time, he received speech therapy only because the program stated that ST was all they had funding to support. After one year, his services were discontinued when I was told the program ran out of funding. I didn't know then that what happened was not legal.
Fast forward to us moving to another state with more resources a year later. He's 4 years old. His new pediatrician refers him for (private) speech and OT evaluation, and both evaluators recommend 1 hour of each per week. At the time, I had a lot of difficulty taking off work for both, so we settled for 1 hour per week of most severe need, which was speech therapy at that time. We paid privately. At the recommendation of a friend, I contacted our current public school district to see if he could get services through the public school system (2 block from our house rather than 30 minutes away), and he had a superficial evaluation then. I was told at that time that even though his SLP and OT had recommended 1 hour of each therapy once weekly for a year, he wasn't severe enough to qualify for services through the school district. I didn't understand then that he should have been formally transitioned from Early Intervention to the public school system. We paid for his private speech therapy for about a year until the taking time off work, getting him out of school and back into school was just too much, and we spaced out appointments then stopped when the pandemic happened.
He's been struggling through 1st and 2nd grade. He was diagnosed with combined ADHD/ADD in August and she recommended referrals back to OT and SLP and also for assessment for auditory processing disorder. I emailed formally to request a 504 plan in October 2022, and the school guidance counselor delayed until April 2023. I also emailed the special education supervisor at school to request an IEP in December 2022, and we are having the referral meeting this week (June 2023) to determine whether he will qualify for evaluation for special services. Over that year of delayed accommodations, he saw a SLP who recommended speech therapy 1-2 times weekly for a year; OT who recommended OT 110 minutes (55 min x 2) per week for a year; second OT who recommended 60 minutes OT per week for a year; and an audiologist who diagnosed with auditory processing disorder and recommended weekly therapy for this. All of his deficits impact his ability to receive FAPE. I've given the school all of the reports, but they minimize their recommendations.
Repeatedly, the principal and teachers keep saying "just because a therapist recommends weekly therapy does not mean a child needs to receive services through school" and "just because a child needs therapies does not mean they are severe enough to receive their services through school." Is this true? If so, how would getting an IEE even help bc if the IEE evaluator says he needs therapy, couldn't the school still say, "it's not severe enough" and dismiss the IEE evaluator's recommendation? The school counselor was even so bold to say that the private evaluators recommended therapy to my son (intermittently throughout his entire life so far) just so that they could be paid by me, not because he actually needs them.
