Carolyn Rowlett

Welcome to the group! You might check with your state department of education, special education division. Sometimes they have a list of when a PWN is required.

If a behavior is related to a disability, you absolutely cannot punish that student for the behavior, which includes prohibiting them from participating in activities in which his non-disabled peers are participating. That is discrimination based on his disability. If he has an IEP with behavioral goals, that means the present levels show he struggles in that area due to his disability; therefore, excluding him based on behavior stemming from the disability would be discrimination. You need to reach out to the director of special education who should know this.

The first question this site would need the answer to is: Are you overseas 3-4 years at a time due to one of you being in the miliary?

Hi Stacey. In my opinion, you're not at the point of needing a lawyer. An advocate, maybe, but see the below first. The school doesn't need a "program" to work on written expression goals. I'm assuming from your post that your son has a goal for written expression. If so and he is not making sufficient progress, the services should be changed in some way (sufficient progress is not necessarily meeting "his potential"). The school shouldn't "always" be able to show progress if the goal is written is a correct, measurable way with a baseline and the child is not, in fact, making progress. When you say the "psych eval," do you mean the school evaluation or an outside evaluation you obtained? If it's the school evaluation and you believe that evaluation is not enough to get him the necessary services, the first step (even before getting an advocate) might be requesting an Independent Educational Evaluation (IEE), which the school has to provide at no cost to you (or take you to court to prove they don't have to provide it). Once the results of that evaluation come in, the team will hold a meeting to consider those results (they only have to consider; they don't have to use them) and at that time you can (hopefully) show his lack of progress and push for different services.

Usually what occurs (but you might check with your state department of education), assuming you can give the new school district a copy of the current evaluation and IEP, they must provide comparable services to what is listed in the current IEP until they either accept this prior IEP or develop and implement a new IEP. If they do not agree the current evaluation report, they must initial a re-evaluation. During the the time the re-evaluation is being conducted, the school district must implement the current IEP or provide comparable services. Bottom line: There should be no gap in services until and if the new school district has data supporting removal of the services.

Federal law defines educational impact broadly and that it can include social, behavioral, and emotional domains. There is no quantifying measure. But you might check your state's eligibility indicators. I do not think 15 minutes is reasonable. That's a lot of instruction time that is being missed in a one hour class. What you need to get the team to focus on is whether the student can access the educational environment the same as his/her peers. If not and it's due to a disability, then it is an educational impact. Other factors than time should be considered - are grades dropping, is s/he understanding the material, can s/he repeat back instructions, etc. Besides, how would you know how much time the student isn't focused? How are they going to measure that? Other than pointing to the things listed above.

First, you need to insist that the IEP be followed in terms of your student getting the teacher notes. I don't know how it reads, but unless it states "upon request of the student," they should be provided automatically. It doesn't matter that he's in high school now - not an excuse for not following the IEP. Reach out to the case manager about this. If it does state "upon request of the student," try to get the language changed, which may require data that he is not able to self-advocate yet. But I understand that from a practical standpoint, it may not happen. In that case, in most high school now, teacher notes are provided on Canvas or some other platform shared with students. (I do realize there would still be the problem of reading those notes, which I will get into in the next paragraph.) As far as tools for note-taking, if notes are on the whiteboard, ask for the accommodation of taking a picture of the notes. If they are lectures, as for the accommodation of recording the lecture. I don't know of any tool that will determine the important information from notes. Does your student have access to text-to-speech? That accommodation reads text to students and is very widely used by not only special education students, but all students. You definitely need to ask for that accommodation, as well as training for your student on how to use it and how to use it without embarrassment (earbuds?). You didn't mention this, but another common accommodation for dyslexic students is speech-to-text to help them with their writing. There are tools (such as a C-pen) that will read a paper document back to a student. Ask for such a tool to be included in his IEP accommodations. But those would not have the ability to take notes and determine important information. Maybe there is an AI program out there that could do this? You may need to ask for an IEP meeting to discuss your concerns. A dyslexic student should not be expected to take notes if the note-taking process is so difficult that it keeps him from accessing all the information that is being presented. The IEP needs to be followed. Tell the team what he is struggling with and ask what can be done.

I would not want the category of ED on my child's IEP (even if not primary), unless the child truly does have an emotional disturbance. There is a big difference between seeing "ED" on an IEP and writing off behavior as something that is inherent in the child and instead working to address the issues that are causing the behavior (failure on the part of his team to understand him/relate to him, frustrations with dyslexia/dysgraphia and lack of instruction/support, etc.). ED may give the IEP team and his gen ed teachers an excuse not to address the behavior properly. Request an IEE. When the results come back and an eligibility meeting is scheduled, make sure you have read and understand your state's criteria for ED and use the specific criteria and the results of the IEE to strenuously argue that he does not fall under that category.

Perhaps you need to request a Functional Behavioral Analysis and then a Behavioral Intervention Plan? So that the underlying causes/triggers of his behavior can be fleshed out, a plan can be put in place to address the behavior, and teachers can receive training to implement the plan. Instead of just sticking the label of ED on him to explain the changes in his behavior.

I believe you would need to get the program written into the IEP in order for the school district to be held responsible for transportation to the program. It being "required by an outside team" is probably not enough. I would try to get a provider (maybe by way of an IEE?) to say that the child needs this program in order to receive FAPE. Then you could get transportation covered. If not, is there anyway to get the state to provide something?

Great question! I haven't come across this issue or researched it, but my thought it that since it is the home district's responsibility to implement the IEP, it would be their responsibility to provide transportation whenever the out of district placement has school and the student is expected to attend. However, from a practical standpoint, I would give a little grace depending on what the transportation is. Such as if it's a school bus and under their contracts the drivers don't drive on certain days, etc., or if it's a cab or Uber that can't get there due to snow, etc.

There are several PA people on this site that I'm sure will respond, but my advice would be to call the state department of education and ask.

I'm not sure that the goal to stop what she is doing and Cath relates to this particular situation where she was asked to begin packing up and leave, but I may not have all the facts. l would suggest adding an IEP goal about following instructions (within so many minutes, within so many prompts, etc., and gradually reducing the minutes/prompts) and relate it so the present levels of executive functioning and task initiation. I would also add an accommodation for being late to class. But in the meantime, if you can tie this behavior to her disability, then no, this is not an appropriate response from the teacher.

The law governing special education (IDEA) states that re-evaluation MUST occur every three years UNLESS BOTH the parent and school district agree it is not necessary. So I would suggest reaching out to the school district and asking if you can agree not to do a triennial re-evaluation. State your reasons for it being unnecessary in your email - progress reports and other documentation is sufficient to determine continued eligibility and revision of IEP, etc. Also, if the testing is difficult on your child or s/he would miss too much (maybe they're in high school now?), you could point that out. You might also reach out to your state department of education (special education department) for any guidelines they might have on this issue.

My first question is: Did the team agree to the two accommodations during the meeting? If so, your argument should be they need to put in the accommodations that they agree to during the meeting held to develop the IEP document. My second question is: Is it possible the special education teacher just spaced off the rest of your email? Have you received the final copy of the IEP and does it not include those accommodations? You might try responding to the email with "so what about the accommodations of x and y not being included?" You may have already done this, but it would be helpful to provide some reasons why both of these accommodations are necessary. For the reading aloud, point to data that might show her accuracy is low, her fluency/rate of reading is slow, and her prosody is poor - all of which would be very embarrassing for her reading aloud. For the extended time on tests, ask teachers how often she fails to finish tests. For both accommodations, it would also be helpful if you could point to recommendations in an outside evaluation (if you have one) that list both of these accommodations. If the school continues to hold their ground on this, ask for an Independent Educational Evaluation (IEE) to hopefully get these recommendation. (The school will likely cave at this point - it wouldn't be worth them having to pay for an IEE.) Yes, the accommodations should be in the IEP document, even if the teachers are following them. For the following reasons: 1) The IEP year will extend into the next grade level, and you can't be sure what next year's teachers will do 2) You always write an IEP with the mindset that you could move - and you can't guarantee that the new district will follow this without it being in the IEP. If you receive a response that they are not going to add these accommodations, request (in an email) a PWN stating that "although the team agreed to these accommodations at the meeting, the team decided not to provide the accommodations of x and y." You probably won't get it, but you will have it documented in an email. I would also request another IEP meeting to discuss why the team decided to exclude these accommodations. At some point, it will just be easier for them to include them.