JSD24

The new school has to follow the old IEP. The old school messed up if they didn't have an IEP meeting to change the placement following release from the RTF. "They felt my child was ready for a less restrictive environment" but failed to document this so the new school district knew this. Schools (teachers and subs) should not be expected to be omniscient and magically figure out how the other school felt. Without documentation, this appears to have been the expectation. There is a saying in education: If it's not in writing, it didn't happen. To facilitate moving forward, you might want to email the KS school and tell them the 'New school is having difficulty following the plan to move to a less restrictive placement following discharge from the RTF. Can you please show me where this was documented in the IEP? Was there a letter or email that stated this? If there is no documentation showing that this was the plan, can you please create it? New school is attempting to follow the old IEP and cannot find a similar RTF with an empty bed to place XX in. Meanwhile, XX doesn't have a school placement to go to. Help!' Not sure if a no-meet revision to the old IEP is appropriate since it doesn't seem to say that a self contained classroom within the public school following discharge from the RTF is where he needs to be.

I think you need to contact Marcie Lipsitt - https://marcielipsitt.com/. She should have ideas on how to get this child an IEP w/o needing to fail first. They need to be behind - not failing. Limited participation and ADLs makes them sound behind. They need access. You might end up with a 504.

Let's start at the beginning. What does the old IEP say is the placement? What are the supports & services? This is what the new school needs to do. Ask to meet with the sp ed supervisor and go over what's in the IEP that's holding your child up from attending. Write a parental concerns letter outlining that your child graduated from an RTF and was looking forward to the move and consistency of being back in the neighborhood school. Meanwhile, she regressed because she has no structure with being out of school. Ask them what needs to happen so she can start attending. PA has facilitated IEP meetings, I think you might want to ask for that.

Create a paper trail. Email the teacher & cc the SLP. Hi- I'm waiting for the Permission to Evaluate form from the school since I requested an evaluation for speech verbally. We have a hard to understanding XX & feel she should qualify for speech therapy services once the evaluation is complete. I'm looking to help move this forward. Thanks,

Does the person doing the current reeval have experience w/ the ADOS? If they don't, the results won't be accurate & you don't want it done by them. I'd ask which teachers will be doing the GARS. The homeroom teacher might be one of 3.

I'm not going to answer your question. What I'm going to do is to say that school evaluations need to be complete & accurate. Asking one adult in a child's life doesn't sound complete to me. The person who did this eval, IMO, failed to follow best practices with evaluating the sensory integration issue this student deals with. (Kids will mask at school so they can fit in & not get teased. Then they come home and have symptoms of Afterschool Restraint Collapse.) There is wording in IDEA that says multiple measures. Not following IDEA if this is all they did. I'm not sure that a teacher in front of 20+ students has the bandwidth to nuance the sensory difficulties one student might have going on. My feeling is to ask the student and have the parent fill out the parent version of this rating scale so there are multiple measures. A parent letter of concern might also be something to do if the OT doing this eval doesn't request info from the parent & student.

I'm not familiar with FMD so I had to look it up. Functional Mental Disability looks to be a term that only KY uses which is why I wasn't familiar with it. If he's average except for math & writing, he doesn't have a intellectual disability but it seems like that's how his placement treats him. My feeling is that if he's got processing issues, you add special instruction to help him learn to process better. I'm curious how well he did when he had a 1:1 helping him in K-5. Was the 1:1 strictly a scribe or did they do things for him where he appeared to be more capable? In reading between the lines, I see you questioning the accuracy (or maybe the interpretation) of the eval that was done before MS that moved him into his current self-contained classroom. I also see concern about the competency of the teacher/appropriateness of the class given how your son reacted to going to school with them when the year started. You have a lot in your post. I'm not too sure about the rules in KY. I'm in PA & the alt assessment can only be given to the lowest 1% of students in a district. My district has 12,000 students so only 120 can take the alt assessment. Not sure if your school has limits like this - might be worth poking around to see how your school compares to other in your area with the numbers taking the alt assessment. This should be on a website with the tests scores. Here, the alt assessment a simpler test of the same state standards that all students get tested on in grades 3-8 and once in HS (as mandated under ESSA). IMO, these tests are meaningless with some disabled students. If your child had READING issues, I can see them not doing well on these tests as it's a lot of reading comprehension that's needed. You said his only low areas were math and writing. If he's grade level with reading, it doesn't make sense to put him in a self-contained remedial class - it follows he should be with same-age classmates so he's in the Least Restrictive Environment. I've seen students have behaviors when the instruction isn't at a good level for them. Gifted kids will be bored and act out while those that can't keep up will get frustrated and act out. My feeling is he's bored because he's average except for a math & writing disability which is what his eval showed. Rather than remediate, the school wrote him off by putting him into this class. He's not getting appropriate instruction. So, what can you do? You want to match the child the eval describes to the services they need. He needs access to grade level for all but math & writing since these are the only areas of need. He needs remedial instruction in math & writing to see about him catching up. He might need a dysgraphia assessment given his writing issues. He might need assistive technology in math & writing (talk to text) until he's closer to where classmates are or it might be for the long term. When you looked at what he was being taught, it seemed to be well below what he's capable of doing. He's pulled from the grade level classes he was attending so they can give him work below his classmates...and it seems like things would be similar if he went to a different school. I remember being in a meeting with my director of pupil services. What she said was that the school needed to meet the needs of the students and if the classes they had didn't do this, they needed to create a class that did. If I had to guess, the other kids in your son's classes might be similar to your child. I think you need a lawyer to get your child an IEP that is appropriate for him. My suggestion is to reach out to the Disability Rights group in your state or your local Arc. Tell them what's going on and get them to help you to work with (fight ?) the school for an education that's appropriate for your son. Bring in other families and make it a class action suit - there is strength in numbers.

Proactive consequence - not a punitive one. I think the teacher did class discussions so it became a teachable moment. Whenever there is misbehavior in a classroom, IMO, there is problematic impact to the class. I think the philosophy the teacher had was to minimize these by turning them into teachable moments. It boils down to self-regulation. If students aren't approaching mastery of self-regulation, lessons will be interrupted. (I'm not sure you can expect kids in K-2 to be 100% with self-reg but you can maximize their skills by teaching by example.)

Which teacher being assigned to what student is an HR decision - the principal might be involved but it is on the employer to assign staff and he's the 'manager' for this employee. If you feel that your child is not getting FAPE because of this teacher's lack of training, you do have a case for having a different teacher providing what on his IEP. I know in my district, there are some teachers who have been trained in autism. They are the ones who tend to have a caseload of mostly students with autism. Autism is a disability that is difficult to understand without extensive training specific to the disability. In your shoes, I would ask for your son to be transferred to another teacher. Now go back to the 1st thing I wrote and the part you wrote about when this teacher was hired. There is a teacher shortage and this is especially true with sp ed teachers. There might not be another teacher with autism training. The good autism teachers might already have a full caseload. The answer might be no. The other thing to ask for is teacher training in autism. I've seen where that can help. Not your role to suggest this, but I've seen where a new teacher gets assigned a mentor and that can help although she's not a new teacher - she did work in other districts. (I'm wondering if her skillset prevented her from getting tenure in other districts.) I'll also mention this because it's researched to work: Ross Greene and Collaborative & Proactive Solutions. It might be a way to get her up to speed on how to help your son. https://forums.adayinourshoes.com/forums/topic/221-ross-greene-–-collaborative-proactive-solutions/#comment-834

If you are looking to fight this, I feel contacting the disability rights group for your state would be the place to start. Anything below 70 is failing so my feeling is that 70 is a good threshold for retakes. (My district gives grades A, B, C & F. 70-80 is a C, below is an F because we don't have D. If your district has D and a D is passing, this might be their logic.) Realistically, the I in IEP is for Individualized. The school having one set cut off for this seems like predetermination & the inability to individualize. The ability to demonstrate mastery and have points added to a test should he get between 60 & 70 might be a way around their rules. It's not fair that the other students aren't disabled. Seems like an advantage to them in taking tests. Can the school do something like they do in horse racing where better horses have to carry a heavier jockey & saddle?

I am in PA & our IEPs all say that 21 is the age of majority for educational decisions in a K-12 school. (In college, it's 18 - although it might be younger.) A parent needs to sign off on an IEP; a student (even one who is 19) cannot. I know that it's different in Florida. The person accused of bringing a gun to Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS had signed himself out of sp ed. If this was PA, he would have been assigned a surrogate parent & they would have had to do the signing. Varies by state (not mentioned in IDEA) is the bottom line but I'd assume it's 18 if you had to make an assumption.

I'd like to see some research that shows that consequences teaches better behavior - especially when you're 5 and have an IEP. I had read about a teacher who didn't do the required traffic light chart in their classroom. Rather than a child moving their clip from green to yellow, they discussed what a better approach would be for next time. The teacher ended up with better behaved students. I've also seen where school districts have eliminated suspension in grades K-2. I think Philly did this - except for things like weapons & drugs that there are state & federal laws about consequences. I am for children learning to improve, to develop skills on how to deal with frustration and 'using their words' rather than misbehaving. I don't feel that consequences teach that. (It can with some children but not every child.)

ISS is relatively new so there isn't a lot of rules on it nor is there a lot of research. As a parent, you can pick up your child at school (legally) whenever you see fit. (This would be an unexcused absence in my district.) If they end up missing too much school, truancy will kick in. Truancy rules start when you register your child for public school - even if your state doesn't mandate school attendance until they are older. ISS isn't always punishment in the eyes of the student. You end up with a small group of students and they are able to do quiet work. If they are trying to catch up on math & they have questions, the ISS teacher could provide 1:1 support they cannot get in a classroom with 24 other students. The one thing I dislike about ISS or OSS is that (especially with a younger child) they learn quickly that doing XXX (behavior) gets them removed from their classroom. If a child cannot read and does XXX when it's time to read aloud, they are now sanctioned by the school to avoid reading aloud because, all they need to do is XXX. The school has given them a ticket to escape something they find hard & want to avoid. The behavior gets disciplined but the upstream inability to read flies under the radar. IMO, it is a reasonable request to know when your child is placed in ISS. Not sure if it is reasonable to ask that your child be given OSS and not ISS when they are suspended. I am curious how you are defining 'punishment'. I found two definitions. (1) the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offense. (2) the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon a group or individual, meted out by an authority. Does your child find ISS as 'undesirable or unpleasant' or simply a 'penalty'?

(Second post because I hit ctrl enter and my post posted.) I think you should file a state complaint that they dragged their feet too long with starting the FBA. Do you have email showing when you requested the FBA? Always good to have a papertrail in case stuff like this happens. There is a saying in education: If it's not in writing, it didn't happen. I always suggest putting important things like this into an email - just in case. Keep track of how long they are suspending him. After 10 days, it's looked at as a 'change of placement' and for a kid with an IEP, the IEP team has to decide that. IMO, your child's IEP isn't FAPE if he keeps having behavior issues at school where they are removing him from from his classroom. If he's removed, he doesn't have access to his education and the school should be accommodating that. Disabled kids get accommodations so they have access. Don't ask for accommodations. You want special instruction so he's taught to do better. They can accommodate him along with teaching him but the teaching should be the main part they're doing.

They are allowed to suspend a student for breaking school rules. I think they can do this if this is a manifestation of their disability because a manifestation hearing isn't mandated until the suspension is longer than 3 days - might be different where you live. IMHO, it's stupid to suspend a 5 year old child when you dragged your feet in coming up with the Permission to Evaluate for going home where it's months after the parent gave a verbal request for an FBA. I'm in PA & our rule says the school has a "reasonable period of time" to get a parent this form when they request an eval. Our law defines 'a reasonable period of time' as 10 days. It looks like Florida might define this the same way: https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/19861/urlt/IDEACOVID.pdf

If this is your only option for school & time, there isn't much you can do other than trying to change your child's schedule so their nap doesn't overlap the 2.75 hours that school is scheduled for. I know with work and other children, etc, this might not be possible. When we change the clocks in a few weeks, what will you do so your son adjusts to getting up an hour earlier? Will this makes things better or worse with his nap & school overlapping?

It's BS that you can't revisit an IEP because it's 'too soon'. I remember when my child had a rough year and we met 3X between September & December. You especially need to tweak if an IEP is written for MS and now the child is in HS. Best practice is to include people from the HS and have some things change with how the IEP gets done between June & August. I'm not aware of a law about interpreters. The PA IEP Invite has a box to check if you need an interpreter. If you don't check it, you'll not have an interpreter at the meeting. Can you share what state you're in as there could be a state law that governs this. This is all I found: https://sites.ed.gov/idea/regs/b/d/300.322/e If the eval was completed outside of allowable timelines, a complaint should be filed IMO. PA rules are 60 calendar days but many states use school days where it could stretch things out quite a bit. (Student also needs to be available. If they are out sick, I think most places give the school more time.) If the parent signed off on the IEP, the school should be implementing it. In every state, a 1st IEP needs to be signed to be implemented.

There a list of goals out on the Adayinourshoes website: https://adayinourshoes.com/iep-goal-bank/ I'm hoping that he's got goals in areas other than OT. ASD tends to have areas of need with pragmatics as well as social skills. From what I've learned, this is related to issues with executive functioning. The IEP needs with this disability - well, there tends to be a lot of needs.

Great that you've done the COPAA training. When this group was on Facebook, I remember seeing a lot of people suggest looking there for an advocate. I'm also an FDU alum. I got my MBA there back when they had a campus in East Rutherford. I recently did a dyslexia webinar through Coursera with Sally Shaywitz (it was free). She had a lot of practical advice. It always amazes me that the Connecticut Longitudinal Study that she did found that 20% of people have dyslexia yet only ~17% of students have IEPs. You'd think that closer to 20% of students would need one for dyslexia and then there would be more for all the other disabilities out there.

When an IEP or 504 isn't being followed, there are only a few options available. First, I want to say that it is part of the teacher's job responsibilities to follow IEPs & 504s just like it's their responsibility to teach the state standards, arrive on time, be dressed appropriately, etc. The 1st thing a parent can do is remind the child's team. Email would be a good way to do this. To all of XX's teachers- My son has an IEP and the IEP has him getting the accommodation of XXX everytime there is an assignment that includes YYY. XX has mentioned to me that his teachers have not been consistent with providing XXX when he needs it. My ask is simple: Please follow my son's IEP. Thank you for your continued cooperation with this, The 2nd thing that can be done is to move up the chain of command. That can also be done with an email. Dear Principal- As part of my son, XX, IEP, he has an accommodation of XXX. His teachers are not consistently providing him with XXX. Last week, he had a social studies assignment where XXX should have been done and it didn't happen. (You might want to add 'as a result, the assignment was late and he lost points' or what happened because the IEP wasn't followed.) 2 weeks ago, the same thing happened in science. His English teacher consistently follow the IEP and XX has A's and B's in their class. I emailed his teachers to remind them what accommodations XX should be getting when an assignment includes YYY. I'm at a loss as to what else I can do to get his teachers to follow the IEP. Please let me know what follow-up is needed from me. Thanks, (The case manager should also be included in email like this.) If this doesn't get things to change, you can send a similar email to the sp ed supervisor, director of pupil services, director of elementary (or secondary) ed, asst superintendent, superintendent, or lastly, the school board. Beyond that, with accommodations not being followed, you can file a complaint with the sp ed dept in your state or with the Office of Civil Rights at the federal level. (OCR would be the only option outside of the school district with a 504 plan.) How the teachers in his school deal with remembering to provide him with accommodation XXX is on the school to figure out. Your child isn't the only one in this district with accommodations and there should be a way for all teachers to be consistently following all IEPs - not just your child's. In all honesty, I'm not sure what you want the school to do beyond accommodate your child with what the IEP says to do. These are professionals and they should be able to figure out how to follow an IEP every time they need to.

IMO, defiant behavior warrants an FBA so the school can develop a PBSP/BIP and teach him to be less defiant. Your child needs to learn to work with all types of teachers. He might need to be taught this - specially designed instruction. Conversely, teachers need to work with all types of students. They are all different so different approaches might need to be used so their approach doesn't trigger his defiance. I'd request that both teachers attend the IEP meeting. You want the one that's good with him to work with the one that's not so they can be taught to use an approach that triggers cooperation & not defiance.

From what I've been told, it's the school's party & up to them to invite the people who are needed and parents don't get a say in this. I'd tell the dad to let them have the interpreter there but then have him tell them their services aren't needed. Parents have to sign a form to excuse a required IEP team member. An interpreter is not required under IDEA. (If the parent asked for the IEP to be written in their native language, it might be required by state regs.) Realistically, an IEP meeting will take longer if an interpreter is needed. If they usually do 30 min IEP meetings, an hour sounds right with using an interpreter.

My daughter stayed for a bit & left. I'd want to see the school's written policy that she has to stay for the whole meeting. What happens if she doesn't? Does she get Saturday school like what happens with cutting class? IMO, it should be her choice just like it's your choice of you attend her IEP meetings or blow them off.

They cannot be copied due to being copyrighted so you would have to go there & look them over. They tend to be shredded after the results are tallied so act quickly. IDEA requires multiple measures to determine present levels. This might be parents & one teacher doing rating scales.

So the evaluation shows low IQ but, in the meeting, the school IEP team members attributed his academic struggles to lack of focus (and not the low IQ shown by their evaluation). You say he's taking ADHD meds which are supposed to help with focus. Taking ADHD meds shouldn't change IQ results. I feel a new eval is not needed. What I would do is write a parent concerns letter. Your child could be unfocused because the material is too hard for him to understand because his IQ is low. What is in the IEP to help him understand things being taught in light of his low IQ? Is that part of the IEP being followed? You could ask for the teacher to prompt him to pay better attention and have him seated away from distractions/closer to instruction. This could be added to the IEP as an accommodation. Is this MS where he now has 5+ teachers with different expectations & has to change classes through the day? ADHD tend to come with issues in Executive Functioning and he might needed extra support given the extra focus MS requires. It's also possible that this year, the teacher has higher expectation and your child can't meet them. This could be due to low IQ.