JSD24

It's on the school to initiate annual meetings. If they miss timelines, they get slapped on the wrist for messing up - at least this is how it works where I am in PA. Specifically, the case manager should be reaching out to you. You can reach out to them if you want. I wanted to talk about anxiety on an IEP. There should be SDI - specially designed instruction - being taught to him so he has the tools to minimize how this affects him. Is 'head on desk' something he's been taught to do when he's dysregulated & it helps him regulate/calms his anxiety? If not, he should be doing what helps him - and what the SDI has helped him to figure out what works. Talk to him and see what he's learned about managing his anxiety. Find out if head on desk is helpful or if he needs another tool to help with anxiety. Many of the colleges in my area, have summer programs for HS student which place them in a dorm & have them taking a college class to get a taste of what it's like. This can also show if he has all the needed tools to go to college & be successful. See if your area has these. It can be part of the IEP for him to do this.

If your child has an IEP, PDE will provide a scholarship that covers your hotel & conference registration. Conference is Feb 28 - Mar 1 at Hershey Lodge. Deadline to apply is 1/20. This is the link for more info & to register: https://www.pattan.net/Training/Conferences/Pennsylvania-Department-of-Education-Conference If you have questions, feel free to reply with your questions. Hotel is covered if you live 50+ miles from Hershey. Lots of great info plus a chance to talk to other parents. Good food too.

CBT - cognitive behavioral therapy - seems to be the go to technique for most issues. It can be hard to find a therapist because not a lot of people go into this field (I think people also get burned out from listening to other people's problems too). I'm a big fan of Ross Greene. His protocol is to go upstream, figure out where the problem comes from and solve it. He would say that anxiety is the manifestation of how your child exhibits the frustration they have due to their unsolved problem. This a DIY program and this is a link to more info: When I see a student with school related issues, one of the 1st things I'm going to do is ask what sort of support is the school providing - in other words, is this student getting FAPE via their IEP or 504? (GIEPs are strength based and they might list needs but cannot provide support.) With a 2E student, I've seen where there is denial that an individual can both be gifted and disabled so with one masking the other, the student can come across as a typical student who doesn't need any support. You have not mentioned anything about what the school is doing to help your child who has school-related anxiety. Has the school done an eval? Do they have a 504 or an IEP? What areas of suspected disability were assessed by the school? Does your child have Medicaid? An anxiety diagnosis should be sufficient to qualify under PH-95. This opens up CCBH's network to get treatment for this. I understand if you don't want to have Medicaid for your child. Coordinating benefits can be a PITA. I wouldn't worry too much about reviews on particular providers. My suggestion is to make an appointment and take a therapist for a test drive. You'll know after 3-6 appointments if they are a good match for your child or not. I'm also not sure about medication. There are meds out there that are safe for children and can help with anxiety. A therapist will not be able to prescribe but they might suggest going to your ped or a specialist to look into this option. Sometimes, parents are not open to this but you can often see more progress when therapy and medication are used together. If your child has not been assessed for their issues, Ginny Sutton is who I suggest for an assessment. She does take most insurance. She does see a limited number of clients & I know that she has experience with 2E children. I did weave some questions into my reply so if you want to provide more info about what your child's IEP or 504 has in the way of support or how to get an IEP or 504 to support your child, please feel free to add that info. Knowing how old your child is can also help. With more details, we can provide better resources - things to add to what's there. My child was identified as gifted & had a GIEP & a 504 in 4th grade. It wasn't working. She needed an IEP to get the right support and that didn't happen until 9th grade. The school didn't do her eval within PA's timeline so it wasn't until June that we sat down to write out her IEP even though the school requested permission to do an evaluation in the fall of 8th grade. The school had a perspective: 'she's gifted & will figure this out by herself' but 2E doesn't work this way. You need to give a student the tools so they can help themself.

With an IEE, the school pays for the eval & the final product is the eval report. It is on the parent to pay the evaluator to attend the meeting where they go over the report. I've not seen a school pay for this. It's not FAPE if the parent has to pay for part of the cost of the IEE. Ask the district for names of people who do psycho-educational, OT, PT and ST evals. See how much their suggestions cost and if it fits the budget they gave you. This is one eval with 4 pieces. It's going to cost more than an eval with only one or two areas that need to be assessed. IEPs are not one-size-fits-all. What they cost isn't going to be one-size either. A student with more complex needs will need a more complicated eval and complicated means it's going to cost more.

I seem to always say the same thing with kids with autism. They will struggle with pragmatics & social skills. Has the school assessed pragmatics & social skills? Seem that schools tend to skip the areas of need where they are most likely to qualify. TOPL for pragmatics - they might need the optional extended assessment. SSIS is one of the few (might be the only one) evals for social skills. Were these areas tested with the eval the school did?

With an IEP, there are goals & progress monitoring. You don't have that with a 504. There are also gen ed services called RTI & MTSS. There is a lot less paperwork with this & no evaluation is needed beyond what they do for all students. This might be a route to take. Just make sure that if your child isn't caught up by the end of the school year, that the school evaluates to see if an IEP is needed as it will provide a higher tier of instruction as well as the progress monitoring that is key to making sure the gap closes between a student with a disability & their classmates.

It's really about how the district writes the job description. It is possible that in your district, they can't per the job description. I was told if a district doesn't have something a sp ed student needs, they need to create it. (Maybe the IU has a para with this sort of training/job description.)

1) Most states don't have a timeline for arranging a meeting. At best, they have a timeline to reply to a request for a meeting which is around 10 days. There always are required members of an IEP team; you might not be able to get a quick meeting if they are not available. 2) Absenteeism is the reason they don't put names in the IEP. They will say 1:1 adult support - not Mrs Jones will provide 1:1 support. If your child is getting the services in the IEP, the school is in compliance even if the person is unfamiliar to the student and the time ends up being non-productive because it's spent establishing a trust relationship rather than having instruction happen. With a student needing help with anxiety, my thought is to have backups. If he usually goes to the TOR but has a good relationship with the GC & school nurse, have them be the backup when the TOR is out. 3) Talk to your child. Ask them what makes sense. Are there a stack of pads in the gym that he can punch if physical exercise helps them with anxiety? When a student isn't anxious, they should be learning what helps them so they can do that when they get anxious. There are calming apps and breathing patterns that can help. Maybe a quiet space where he can go & do this is the accommodation you put into the IEP. (Probably better in the long run to be able to self-calm than rely on talking to another person.)

I am in PA & familiar with some of this. A para can provide instruction but the teacher has to 1st instruct the para and then the para instructs the student. Right now, paras are in short supply and might not have the skill set to provide instruction. It really depends on the job description of the para. PA has wrap around/IBHS services. The RBTs that do this are only trained to redirect behavior and cannot do anything academic other than tell a student they need book X and page Y. I think you need to rewrite the job description of the para in the IEP. You need someone who can, in the moment, chunk an assignment or provide instructional support. Your district might call this a teaching assistant or Paraprofessional/Instructional Assistant. Then you'll need to hope they can staff this for your child.

I'd say yes, they can give a poor grade because the student did not complete all the assignments or didn't do great work. You would have needed to modify the IEP to reduce the workload for your child to be given consideration for needing to deal with the IOP. (When something gets modified like this, the school might not get the same credit as a gen ed student.) If she didn't complete the semester, can she earn credit for the classes she was enrolled in? I'm not sure that HSs offer part time options like colleges do where you can take fewer classes when something like this is happening.

You might want to look at the archived Facebook group. I believe there were posts that listed advocates. If not, there's COPAA.

Dear School- The enclosed/attached evaluation from XXX Center shows that my child, XX, has dyslexia, inattentive ADHD, and SLD in math calculation. Please place the following accommodations into place for her via a 504 while we work to find a meeting date where we can get together to put an IEP into place. Extra time on tests - 2X time Extra time (extended due date) for assignments All instructions read aloud All required reading material longer than one page provided in audio format Access to talk to text software for assignments longer than one paragraph No points taken off for spelling errors Calculator available for math assignments and tests as well as assignments that require math calculations like some science concepts that use math Thank you for putting this into place immediately so that XX doesn't need to struggle with her disabilities while we work together to figure out what remedial instruction is needed to bring her to the level of her classmates. Thank you, K-Tina And this isn't the end. After the IEP is in place, she should get comp ed. Five years ago, the school should have figured out she had dyslexia, et al. This means your daughter should receive compensatory education for the 5 years she should have been getting services but didn't because the eval done in 5th grade missed her disabilities. You might also want to talk to a doctor about medication for ADHD. It can help a lot with focus. I know my daughter was identified as gifted after we started treating her ADHD. This wasn't the whole answer because it took another several years to figure out that she also is on the autism spectrum. Unfortunately, the school was using grade school material to remediate a gifted high school student who was reading at a college level. She rejected the material they used and made little progress. She's good now - we got her outside services which really helped.

You can get this into the IEP by writing a parent concerns letter & asking them to put your concerns into the IEP. If you can't change the PWN, does this make sense?

If they are already doing it, they should be OK with spelling it out in the 504. I'd write a parent letter of concern listing out what they are doing but is not in the 504. Let them put the 'already doing this' list at the end. After all, it's just a double check.

Placement needs to be the LAST decision made by the IEP team. He's got a lot of needs that the IEP has to address (because there seems to have been a delay in identifying 'all areas of suspected disability'). How will the areas be addressed? Is the only place that can do this a self-contained classroom? Answer the questions and you will figure out the LRE placement for your child. I agree with Carolyn about child find issue & that your child might be owed compensatory services. This would be for not identifying & remediating his LDs sooner when there were evaluations showing he had these issues. Goals should be for him to catch up to same-age peers/classmates.

Around here home/hospital has a teacher coming to you for ~5 hours/week. I think it's limited to 12 weeks (rule in my state - might be different where you live). You might want to talk to the school & see how much instruction they will provide, what the hours are (it's often after school) and if they have available teachers. Independent study should be more flexible. Taking 4 classes sounds like the better option as it'll be hard for her to focus on both school & the IOP.

Schools can do a behavior plan in gen ed w/o parent permission - it's like RTI/MTSS for an academic issue with a gen ed student. What they seem to be doing is delaying doing a full sp ed FBA by doing this. Just that USDOE has rules saying this isn't allowed. Here's the letter stating that rule: https://sites.ed.gov/idea/files/osep11-07rtimemo.pdf My best advice is to file a state complaint. He doesn't have access to his education when he's in the seclusion room. Also, these have been shown to cause trauma in students. He's in 5th and doesn't have AAC? I'd be frustrated and self-harming if I didn't have a way to communicate. I'm so sorry to hear that this school doesn't seem to be providing FAPE to your child on so many different levels. If your state has facilitated or moderated IEP meetings - where someone from the state comes to the meeting - I'd try to put this into place for future IEP meetings.

PWN doesn't make sense to me. (I'm hoping someone else chimes in.) It might be a way to CYA so the school is 'protected' given they are admitting to not following the IEP. The way I'm reading this is: we thought about following the IEP but we decided not to because we don't have staff to do it. When a school (at least in PA where I live) gets a state complaint & are found out-of-compliance, the state watches them closely which creates more paperwork for them - I think they do this for 6 months. This says 'we know we're not following the IEP' and it might prevent the extra paperwork.

How is this an accommodation of "extra time" if your child has the same due date as their nondisabled classmates? If the teachers are not willing to give extra time on the back end, they can provide it on the front end. They can pre-teach the lesson to your child 3-5 days before they teach it to the class and give them the assignment 3-5 days before the rest of the class gets it. This way your child gets a jump start on the assignment which gives them more time than their classmates even though they all have the same due date. The Social Studies teacher could have the rest of the class have a due date that's 3-4 days before they end the unit and then let your child hand their assignment in the last day of the unit. There are ways to provide your child with the extra time they had in the past that helped them to be successful and still not hand in work after the end of the unit. You just need to think out of the box. I also think you need to speak with the teachers to understand their restriction of the extra time accommodation. It's possible they think having to finish the old unit is too much of a distraction with keeping up with the new unit. If they do 3 units per marking period, you don't want the 1st unit's work finished 3-4 day after where the 2nd unit's work ends up 6-8 days after the unit ends. (Do they know your child's track record where farther into the marking period the lateness doesn't get progressive? They might be judging him based on a student they had in the past who was like this.) It's possible they don't understand the disability and why it's key for your child to be given real extra time where they have time to melt down, get anxious, perseverate where they make no progress and get through the assignment eventually. When you know their backstory, you'll be better prepared to explain why your child needs the past wording.

If the placement the school has decided is appropriate for him has antecedents that trigger behavioral outbursts, my guess is that it is not an appropriate placement. You child is a "is very by the book follow the rules" person and he needs to be in a class where students who break the rules are disciplined. It is not appropriate for him to be in a classroom with students who have uncontrollable tics where he gets called names and cussed at - even if this is a manifestation of a classmate's disability and beyond their control. If they cannot get his classmates to stop calling him names and cussing him out, he needs different classmates. On the flip side, he needs therapy where he doesn't take a manifestation of a classmate's disability personally when he gets called names & cussed out. If they can't provide a different placement, he needs to be taught not to react to this. These are the only 2 options I see in this situation. You might want an FBA to see if you have the data on what's happening correct because if this isn't the trigger, the change you are requesting will not help. (I'm thinking that maybe the classmates cuss when they are given worksheets and it's the worksheets & not the cussing that's the real trigger.)

IDEA doesn't address the issue we have been seeing with schools looking to hire staff to provide services on an IEP where there are no qualified applicants. It's fairly typical that schools don't tell parents when this situation exists - again, no guidance in IDEA saying that schools should be transparent & keep parents in the loop. PWN gets written after an IEP meeting. It's the notice of what was discussed at an IEP meeting prior to implementing the updated IEP. I'm not sure the letter you got was PWN. Did they change the IEP? If they didn't, PWN isn't needed - if they did change the IEP, file a state complaint as it's not allowed without an IEP meeting that parents were invited to. My feeling is that this is a letter telling you they haven't followed the IEP and they owe services to your child - not PWN. https://adayinourshoes.com/iep-prior-written-notice-pwn/

I would write a parent letter of concern and ask that it be copied into the IEP. Make sure that it includes these points: She has nerve damage and cannot feel when her bladder is full. If she wets herself, changing clothes will mean more lost instruction time than a planned cath break - you also have concerns about teasing/bullying. If she is only emptying her bladder 0-1 time at school, she can end up hospitalized and/or with permanent damage to her kidneys. We had similar issues with my child and needed a letter from her doctor saying she needed to be told to use the restroom 3X per day. We worked with the school to make a schedule. Her whole class used the bathroom in the morning. She was told to use it around lunch time. She was sent to the nurse's office to use the bathroom in the afternoon - one of her classmates needed an afternoon snack & they went together. In MS & HS, we found logical breaks - when her classes were near the nurse's office. She eventually learned to go at prescribed times - I know she went at lunch & again before 8th period when they did a pm announcements. Her 8th period teacher started class when she got there.

School attendance laws vary a lot from state to state. I would see if this is OK per you state's laws. I'm in PA and I know the school nurse can excuse an absence if a student is sick. If they do end up suspending your child, I would want Monday to count toward the suspension. I would ask the school to document what they said during the call since a phone call isn't tangible proof the school said for him to stay home & the absence will be excused. This can be done with an email: Dear School- I'm looking to confirm the call from (school administrator) that I received on Tuesday requesting that I keep my son, XX, home on Monday, 11/27, so the school can investigate a fight of some sort that happened on Tuesday. I was told this will an excused absence but I thought that could only happen for medical reasons. I don't want keeping him home like (school administrator) requested to turn into a truancy issue since I only have a call as proof that the absence will be excused. If I have understood things correctly, there is no need to reply to this email. Thank you, There is a saying in schools: If it's not in writing, it didn't happen. This email puts things into writing.

Students who are post secondary - high school and middle school are secondary level so this is college level - do not get IEPs. In college, they expect students to self-advocate. This would include students who are 14. I'm confused with you saying your child is a high school freshman. I believe you meant to say your child is a freshman secondary school student and is transition age. Assuming that your child is 14 & in HS, I would include in any email that you will be following up in 6 school days if you do not receive a reply to your email. This sets an expectation that the school will be replying in a week which I feel is a reasonable time to respond. There are no timelines that I'm aware of with how long schools have to get back to parents. What I've seen is 'a reasonable period of time'. This tends to be defined by case law. (PA defines it as 10 calendar days; OH might be different.) I can see the school saying they got your email & will get back to you once they look into what you said where they reply in 6 days but not w/ an answer to your questions. (I've also seen in my district where email was delayed & received by a teacher months later where a timely reply wasn't possible. This teacher is a friend. She was frustrated that she got an email months after it was sent.) Not sure about saying to 'reply immediately so I know you got this in the email'. The way things work (I'm in PA, so giving their rules) is that the IEP that includes the 14th birthday is when students must be invited. In looking at the Ohio Invitation form (it's on this page: https://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Special-Education/Federal-and-State-Requirements/Ohio-Required-and-Optional-Forms-Updated) it does show the student being invited. I'm not sure if the invite was handed to your child on paper or emailed to their school email address but it is possible they got it and didn't read it. (I have an issue with Ohio Dept of Ed using Word for these forms as it requires you to pay for Word to have access.) If your transition age HS child was not invited to their IEP meeting (double check it wasn't emailed or they lost the envelope it was in), filing a state complaint is a better solution than telling the school they messed up. I've also seen where schools don't do well when an email covers more than one topic. They tend not to address everything when this happens. I'd number your questions so the person reading the email knows that it covers a few topics. For non-compliance with the IEP/not following it, filing a state complaint is a good solution if working with the school district isn't working for you.

Gebser letter with bullying from school staff.