JSD24

In Chester County, there are a lot of public charter schools. PASD must bus your children to any charter school that is within 10 miles of PASD as the bus drives. I'm not sure which fit this profile and I'm also not sure which might have an opening in K. A friend of mine recently switched her child from CCDC to an online charter school. She's 2nd grade. That's also an option and these being public schools, they would need to follow her IEP which a private school doesn't have to do. Private schools can also expel a child for any number of reasons. IMO, this isn't going to be a good choice for your daughters. Have you reported the incident where you were not informed by the school of your child attempt to self harm to Children, Youth & Families? Chain of command does include any oversight agencies. IMO, you need to do this so there is documentation as to why you withdrew your children from this school. This is child neglect (and endangerment) because the en loco parentis failed to inform the parent of the nature and seriousness of what happened at school. (How did things get that far? Where was the adult supervision?) You want to make sure that the powers that be follow up to make sure corrective action is taken by the school so this doesn't happen to another family. The medication combination also has me upset. Uppers & downers together in a 6 year old. Yikes! Was an FBA done when behaviors escalated? That's the correct action to take. The process puts data together to add a PBSP to the IEP. This sounds like what should have happened when behahios got worse at school. They cannot change the IEP w/o data on which to base what new support is needed. What did the suspension paperwork say? There's a movement not to suspend younger students. Philly schools have rules about this - I wish others did too (better yet would be a statewide rule). I kept my twins in the same classroom so they could look out for each other. I'm not sure what I would have done if one seemed OK with going to the neighborhood school and the other wasn't served well by the same school. (I kept them together because their older sister had lots of issues and we didn't get enough help from the school with her 504 & GIEP. They missed that she had autism until she was in 8th grade. I have medical issues & tried to keep things simple & keeping them in the same classroom made things a bit easier for me. My medical issues started when my twins were 4 & my oldest was 12.) It's late as I'm writing this. I will think some more about this. I think you have other posts I haven't read.

With a speech only IEP, only an SLP and LEA is needed for an IEP meeting. If this is the case where one of your children only qualifies for speech then a sp ed teacher isn't needed. The SLP is the case manager & will write the IEP.

IDEA allows the school to change placement w/o the IEP team deciding for 10 days. After 10 days, it's looked upon as a change of placement where the IEP team needs to decide if this is appropriate.

I look at special ed (IEPs & 504s) as a contract that the school makes with a student & their family to provide more than what they provide in general education. Anything your child needs beyond what his classmates get should be spelled out in the IEP or 504. It's up to you to figure out what your child needs & bring it to the team so it can be added to the 'contract'. Having data to support the need is key to the school adding it to the IEP.

Travel training assessment will look at your child crossing the street, riding the bus, etc. With freezing, I'd ask for an FBA. IMO, it's a sign of overwhelm & shutting down. Recess & hallways can also be looked at through an FBA.

I'm with you. Impulsivity comes with an ADHD diagnosis. It comes from the frontal lobe not being as well developed due to the disability. It's not willful, it's developmental (I'm also not sure the SDI to stop this will be all that effective). I see blurting out as coming for the disability where it needs to be accommodated for by the school - not punished by the principal. I wish that adults in schools had better training on disabilities - especially common ones like ADHD - and what to expect from a student with that disability. I'd go into the meeting with documentation that this comes from the disability and ask what can be put into the IEP to accommodate your child and his disability...as required under IDEA, Section 504 and the ADA.

There are strategies that teachers can teach to help students do better with paying attention and remembering what they will be tested on. For example, as you read something, you need to ask yourself: Do I have a grasp on what the author is saying? If the answer is no, you need to reread, ask for help, look up the topic in a different book/website that might explain it in a way that clicks or whatever works for you. They way you are breaking things out might not be the way that makes things click for her. (BTW, there are skills kids should be taught early on in school - like before 3rd grade. It's something to do at any age when it comes to reading for comprehension and reviewing for a test.) If she doesn't know and practice these strategies, they can be SDI in her IEP.

What schools use are normed assessments. These are tests that a large cross section of children have answered and based on your child's score, they can determine where they are on the bell curve for the skill being tested. Standardized tests are not normed. They are supposed to be a measure of how well a student has met the state standards for a subject. If they do this, why did my son pass the algebra standardized test for my state and fail algebra? I believe things played out this way because the test didn't work. With your son, I'd want his reading and listening comprehension tested. I'd expect he does OK with listening but not with reading comprehension.

Just an FYI. If the IEP say aide from 9 to 3. The school has to follow the IEP. If he were to go & there was no aide, the school is out of compliance with the IEP. And then you can file a state complaint that the IEP wasn't followed. Same goes when the IEP says nurse and the nurse is out. You can request make-up days for the days that he missed due to no aide.

I go to my SD's school board meetings so I'm up on what they do with records retention. They might really purge the records you're looking for. FERPA is a federal law. There has to be someone at the federal level to figure out if cloud storage violates FERPA or not. I know my district takes this stuff very seriously and they have all sorts of things that protect confidentiality. It seems like they have a form for this: https://studentprivacy.ed.gov/file-a-complaint

Good luck with this due process. BTW, social pragmatics has a huge impact at school. He'll not be able to do group projects with his skills where they currently are.

I think visual-spatial is huge in schools. I took mechanical drawing, organic chemistry & geometry. These all use a lot of visual-spatial. Always good to ask for a copy of the research they are referring to in this statement. Visual-spatial is also used in PE. It also helps you stay out of another person's personal space.

If your child need 2X time on all exams, tests, quizzes and/or assessments, ask the school to put this wording into the 504 in place of what is currently in the 504. To get accommodations on the SAT (and PSAT & AP Exams - all the same company so you do it for one & you have it for all) you need to do 2 things. 1- Show that they have this accommodation by documenting what's on the 504 (or IEP) to the College Board. In other words, you send them a copy of the 504. 2- There needs to be a statement from the school saying your child uses the accommodation at school. This is because students can have tons of accommodations listed but they only get the ones they use on the SAT. I'm wondering if the school changed the 504 to 1.5X time. Schools can do that but should document the change to the student & parent. In your situation, the 1st thing I'd do is ask the school for a current copy of the 504...in case they didn't put 2X time on it.

Asking for camp is hard to argue. The school will tend to say they can do the same type of instruction at ESY. I would go to this meeting and request an IEP meeting if you feel you have the data to argue that this camp can meet a need that the school's ESY program can't.

Data. Data drives IEP services. Who told you that he needs constant prompting to stay on-task when in his gen ed classes? Did they put this data into writing? What about his sp ed classes? Is he off task there? They might say he needs sp ed all the time because he can't stay on task in gen ed. Is he learning what he needs to stay on grade level in sp ed? This might be why he needs to have an aide: He can meet the state education standards if they give him appropriate services - namely someone to keep him on-task.

My district is 100% electronic now. When they did things on paper, it was often sent in the backpack but it was sealed in an envelope. Given the classmate almost read it, you could file a FERPA complaint.

My school does it like yours. You meet and then they write the update into the new IEP and give it to you. If there are any issues and you need to make changes, you need another meeting. Small corrections can be done via a no-meet revision.

Did the school do an AT eval to match him to software? It sounds like you feel he needs a graphic organizer embedded into the AT devise. Is an AT eval (either the SETT or the WATI) part of the RR?

I think lots of families are saving paperwork electronically. This is what I've tended to do. Does it make sense to keep a paper copy when a USB drive can hold everything & it fits in your pocket? Also, I think we need to know where you are to make a good suggestion. I did a search and I think prices are going to vary but Staples says their prices start at $.20 per page. If you really want paper copies, buying a printer might be your most cost effective option.

Yes! This is what I needed to know. I think I got 17 of these.

I saw that I got a notification through an ad at the bottom of my screen. With the ad in the way, I couldn't click on it to see what I was being notified about. How to I get to this notification?

The school can charge the parents to have the video redacted. You might want to ask for a cost estimate of this before asking to have this done. They will often show the video to a police officer w/o redaction. You might want to go this route to save $$. The police can then tell you what happened.

I wouldn't use the word 'modification'. Use accommodation. Reduced homework accommodation: XX's teacher will accommodate XX's slow processing with doing math homework by selecting 50% of what is assigned as representative of the concept being taught. XX will do the reduced assignment and it will count as 100% complete toward her grade. At her option, XX can do more than the 50% the teacher selected.

I heard it called Armstrong Group. It's something specific to PA. ESY has to be decided by 2/28 if your child falls into certain high need IEP categories. You can download the ESY booklet here: https://www.pattan.net/Publications/Extended-School-Year-Services-in-Pennsylvania Info on Armstrong Group is on pg 8 & 11. It refers to a lawsuit: Armstrong v Kline.

Either is acceptable. If you want to communicate through an advocate, you will need to sign paperwork that it's OK for the school to communicate with your advocate. If you choose to bring a lawyer, the school will want their lawyer to be present. When an IEP isn't followed, my suggestion is to file a state complaint. I view the IEP as a contract to provide something in addition to what students in gen ed get. If the school doesn't follow what they agreed to, the state dept of sp ed should be following up with them.