JSD24

I tend to wear nice shirts or polos. Lots of option for pants but my choice tends to be jeans or pull-on pants or capris in warmer weather. In many schools, wearing a suit has you overdressed. If you ditch the suit jacket you might fit in better and still keep with a style you like.

You have a lot going on here. Where to start. First, there is a rule in education/sp ed: If it's not in writing, it didn't happen. It's great that you brought her medical provider to meetings with the school but it can be more powerful to have a provider write a report outlining what challenges a child has as well as how this can get in the way of access to an education. For example, I have convergence insufficiency like your child. Specifically, I have intermittent exotropia. Without the right glasses, I have double vision, dizziness, migraines and a lack of reading comprehension. When I don't get enough sleep, the glasses aren't enough to bring me to where I can read at 100%. A good accommodation for me would be audiobooks so I can close my eyes and still access written material. Since I'm not in school, I'm not sure if my ability to take notes would be affected but lecture notes might be a good accommodation since mine might not be great. These are accommodations (doesn't involve any special instruction) so I could have a 504 with these things on it to help me. When the school filed for truancy, they went to your child's file and see what's there. Was there doctor notes or reports that outline what the doctor diagnosed and how this affects her at school? I'm assuming you do not have credentials in mental health so the school can't tell where you got the idea from that your child needs accommodation from the school. If there was written info from a credentialed provider and they still brought truancy charges, shame on them. If there was nothing in her file, well, her paperwork makes it appear that she's cutting school for no reason or perhaps to cause trouble in the community or in this case, parents are looking to CYA for the child. You do not do sp ed advocacy as your career. Don't blame yourself for not knowing how the system works. (Even experienced advocates learn things by seeing how they play out. We don't know 100% either.) When you go to truancy court, be sure to support her reasons for not attending school by providing the judge with documentation of her mental health struggles from someone with appropriate credentials. This should help with this case. Initial meeting. I'm assuming it's to go over the screeners the school did. It's a start. It would be great if you had access to the results of these screeners beforehand so you can think about your response to what's there which I'm sure the school will do. (Send them an email asking them for this - do it today.) One thing about screeners is they don't take as much time as assessments so they do have a role but being quick, they are not comprehensive and are not as accurate as special ed assessments. It's great that you have had an IEE done but as an outside evaluation, the school will only consider it. I hope you have provided copies of this report to the school so they have time to review it as well as avoid duplicating any of the tests that were used because repeating the same tests within 12 months renders the 2nd test's results invalid. If the school doesn't see the same things outlined in the IEE report, you can request that they redo the assessments using a similar normed, assessment. Good luck with this. I'm not sure about an advocate in your area but COPPA has a list of advocates that went through their training.

There are studies that show anxiety comes with an ASD diagnosis a lot of the time. The bar for a school ASD diagnosis is different from a medical diagnosis. This is why a school can see a student with ASD as a student with an ED disability. In theory, additional ASD testing is what's needed to get the school to see that ASD is the accurate disability category. In my state, the state dept of ed penalizes schools that over-identify students in any IDEA category - my district was dinged for too many Asian students with an ASD box checked. I think this might play into why students are misidentified. The CDC keeps coming out with new numbers on how many kids have autism - latest is 1 in 34. I'm not sure if states adjust their 'over-identify limits' when this happens.

RTI & MTSS are general education things so no need to tell PDE anything about this in the report that covers sp ed. The Child Study Team (your school might give it a different name) should have a rubric for identifying students for RTI & MTSS. You can ask for a copy. If you suspect autism & issues with pragmatics, you want something like the TOPL to be done. With a bright child who masks, you want the optional extended assessment to be done or they might say your child is average. I speak from experience. Applying for Medicaid for your disabled child and having them cover speech therapy outside of school is also an option in PA. This is the application if you want to do this: https://www.dhs.pa.gov/Services/Assistance/Pages/Apply-for-Benefits.aspx

I think sticking with terms that are used and defined in IDEA is good. I do like your term 'learning boundary' where the term 'boundary' is inferring that something extra is needed to move things ahead. It's like saying 'he hit a wall' and we need to figure out a way to get around it with the way being support via IEP (or 504) services. If you use 'boundary', be sure you define it.

Forgot to mention ESY. ESY is to work on IEP goals during a time when school isn't scheduled for general ed students. Summer school for credit recovery is not the same as ESY. If he does take a summer class, he should get the same support that is in his IEP during the reg school year. You do need to have all required IEP team members at a meeting in order to make changes to the IEP. Small/minor changes could be done via a no-meet revision provided everyone is OK with this change. You need to figure out how he went from advanced 95th percentile to not participating in school. To me, it looks like anxiety is at the root of his issues.

At age 16, he should be at his IEP meeting and the loudest voice in the room. To me, anxiety seems to be his biggest issue. It looks to be what's between him & success in school. At 16, they should be looking at transition so jobs, driving, etc so this is appropriate but he's still got to pass HS & earn enough credits to graduate. Sitting in a classroom & not being engaged in learning what the teacher is teaching is not "access to an education". I think you need to talk to your son and see what his perspective is on what's getting in the way of school success. From there you see if data is needed in the way of evaluations or if you can move straight to adding support and goals so your child can be successful.

With a 1st IEP, parents do have to sign off on their child receiving sp ed services. The school cannot provide IEP services w/o written permission from the parents that it's OK. With a 2nd or 3rd or 27th IEP, another signature generally isn't required. If your OK wasn't required, they should have already started services after your March meeting.

I saw a similar post in another group. IEP meeting was on Wed & the school wants him in a new building on Monday. My state's regs say 10 days notice is required to change placement. Looks like other schools are looking to do this as well. If your child is currently in a placement outside of your local school, it means that the local school couldn't provided the services the IEP said were needed. I'd ask what changed? Did the school hire someone? Did he needs change where he needed X and has met goals so it's not needed? I don't think this is predetermination if things changed where he doesn't need the same things he did when he was placed at this other school. LRE is the law so if the local school is LRE because something changed, I don't think you can fight that. Find out what changed so you can see if the school's perception is correct or not.

You are correct that Child Find is on the school so they should be identifying students with disabilities and requesting that parents sign a PTE so they can do an evaluation. I have seen where a student's needs were no properly identified and the student graduated and they did come back & get an IEP & services. Not sure if an attorney is needed to move forward with a situation like this. (Most do offer a free 15 min consult.)

I'm in PA and the 60 days are calendar days but summer break doesn't count. Some schools will do evals over the summer - depends if they have staff who can do this. (My district adds 5 days to the contract of their school psychologists so they can be called to do some evals over the summer w/o it costing extra to the district.) Would your daughter be willing to work on learning math over the summer? There are programs like KhanAcademy that are free & do a great job with math. Look at accommodations before doing modifications. With modifications, your child might nor be eligible for a HS diploma and that can close doors with what happens after HS graduation. Lots of schools don't provide direct & explicit instruction in math on the fundamentals - especially in 5th grade. If a lack of a strong math foundation is the problem, building that foundation over the summer can help set her up for success next year.

Are you in a state that mandates gifted services at school? If you are, the school can (and should) be assessing for this. As far as communication goes, autism causes issues with communication so moving forward with an autism eval should definitely be done. There is a resource I posted on here about Ross Greene. His protocol helps with communication - the idea behind it is to work with a child & solve problems. Curious if the school looked at pragmatics & social skills. These are the 2 areas where kids like yours tend to need help. I've found that many schools don't look at this so they miss that a student needs help with these.

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.

Request a no meet revision to his IEP: Please change XX's accommodation. It currently is "any assignment for which he receives <70% can be resubmitted ". It needs to be "any assignment for which he receives <70% can be resubmitted including assignments that were handed in after their due date". I was under the impression that "any" included any assignment which would include any late assignment. I feel the accommodation needs to be clarified. Feel free to copy what I wrote. He might still have points taken off due to the assignment being late. Was this assignment under 70 due to points being taken off because it was late? This might not help that situation.

As kids grow & change, the support they need from their IEP might need to change too. Since the current IEP is preventing him from passing his classes, it makes sense to request an IEP meeting to tweak the support he gets so he can pass his classes. And hold the principal accountable. If they said they'd follow up on things, send an email and ask what they think needs to be done to help. What's going on with the lack of focus? Is it the material where it's too hard (or too easy)? If it's too hard, he might need to be pre taught so it is easier. It the zoning out an absent seizure where he's got a medical issue going on? If they touch his shoulder (and I know that teachers don't generally put hands on students - my suggestion is a touch to redirect) does he respond? I'd say it's not OK for ANY student to be failing several classes. Something different needs to be done. It could be simply implementing the current IEP to what it says to do or he could need more than what the IEP says to do. The squeaky wheel get the grease. Squeak to get your child what they need. With sports, it's the state HS sport association that requires passing grades so it cannot be accommodated through the IEP process. The school needs to help him so he can continue to do sports.

The only way to ensure the ASD box is checked on the IEP is to refuse to sign the IEP unless that's what they check. It might delay the IEP getting put in place as this can take time to do. You might want to request a facilitated IEP meeting. Not sure if the parent education group in your state can help you advocate. Every state has one. I'd reach out to them for help.

Will he be in a different building next year? Schools have their own policies on this. I had this happen with my son - not a speech IEP nor are we in TX. (Sometimes they are just looking to make sure they don't have a bunch of IEP meetings that have to happen around the same time so they do some earlier than required.)

So the disability is Afterschool Restraint Collapse. Get that documented and request 504 accommodations because it effects homework which is part of what needs to be done for school success. I think it's going to be a fight. (School should know that masking happens - especially with gifted kids.)

It happens. I would send them a link to what they should already know. I have a friend who printed out IDEA & gave it to the sp ed director. This was a bigger school district (1000's of students). Put it in writing so you have a paper trail. You can start the email: Confirming our conversation on 5/11 when I requested Prior Written Notice. This is a link to what PWN is...

I would have asked to see a copy of the evaluation report with the testing they did where he tested out. IMO, you need to email the school a copy of the report so they are prepared to consider that their offer of FAPE being no IEP might not be an offer of FAPE. (I think you might need a lawyer. The school will likely stick by their eval and give minimal consideration to the IEE report.) They might say that they saw these issues but it doesn't effect him at school.

Dear Sp Ed Chairperson- Thanks for the heads up that XYZ School District will not be offering co-taught HS classes. My child, XXX, has had these in the past and it was a services he found helpful. I appreciate that you let me know this is not an option for 9th grade. Sincerely, Have the mom write an email like this ^. It gets the phone conversation into writing because there is a saying in sp ed: If it's not it writing, it didn't happen. This verifies that the mom recalls the conversation correctly. If co-taught classes are FAPE, the school has to provide them. Yes, it's expensive to provide this to one student but the school still needs to provide FAPE even if it bankrupts them. If they don't want to do this in-house, the other option is to send the student to another school that can provide this - can either be a public school in another district or a private school. (You can force them to provide FAPE but you cannot force them to do it the way you want it done which I'm assuming is in-district.) There should be a way for families to force the school to provide FAPE w/o hiring a lawyer. If you have 20 families in a district with 247 students writing the same complaint letter to the state, they will help the families - or at least they should. https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-01487 or try https://www.justia.com/lawyers/education-law/new-york/legal-aid-and-pro-bono-services or https://www.drny.org/ You might want to talk to families about a class action suit.

So the school assessed in all areas of suspected disability & he doesn't qualify for an IEP? I'm surprised. I suspect he has delays in social skills & pragmatics. Were those areas assessed? You can ask for an IEE at school expense if the school missed an area of need when they assessed him.

Most districts will allow a parent to scan or take photos of the documents you look at via a FERPA request. I'd give them the courtesy of asking if it's OK to take photos. Might be good to ask via email so you have a papertrail of the fact that you asked & are allowed. The cost of copies adds up when your child has a thick file.

Parent input goes into the IEP. The eval report is what's due in 60 days - not the IEP. They have 30 days from eval report to IEP meeting (if the student qualifies for an IEP). There is a booklet of PA timelines on PATTAN. This is the link to get to it: https://www.pattan.net/Publications/Special-Education-Timelines You have a bit of time to provide your input and have it in the IEP.

(((Hugs))) With an IEP, he can stay in school up until age 21 so the school can teach him some of the skills he's missing. There are assessments of ADL that he school could do. They are supposed to set him up for success after HS graduation with the transition plan in his IEP. What does your son want to do after HS? IMO, you should start there.