That is quickly becoming our new approach with the school district. We received the date for Little Bug's evaluations- June 5- and a detailed list of who would be attending as well as what tests would be included.
When I asked about the eligibility meeting and the IEP meeting, I was told that the school will have the eligibility meeting and let us know. The district with decide his placement and then that team will write his IEP for us.
Excuse me while I roll around on the floor laughing to tears.
Obviously, the administrator has not gotten it through his head that we know better than this. Nick and I have spent the last week reading the *entire* IDEA Act of 2004, No Child Left Behind, as well as Special Education law cases that went before the Supreme court to help further iron out things such as placement- remember, appropriate not best- and whether a medical need- CIC (clean intermittent catheterization), etc.- can keep a child out of school.
Needless to say, I know that what he is suggesting- a placement decision as well as a pre-written IEP without the parents- is bullshit.
I wrote him the following email:
Hi XXXX.
After reviewing your response and sharing it with Nick, we are a little confused.
Our understanding of this process was that parents were to be included in the eligibility meeting. If that is incorrect, can you tell us how school district XX normally works it. Specifically, how will you inform us of your decision? How long will it take to get a decision?
After reading the Idea Act of 2004, we understood it to mean that parents were an equal member of the IEP team and should be included in placement decisions and the creation and writing of the IEP. Specifically, we understood portions of it to detail that the IEP shouldn't be pre-written without the parents' vital knowledge of their children.
If I misunderstood your response, I apologize. we are simply parents who are passionate about being involved in our son's school like as well as advocating for him.
Thank you,
Blake
I call this the Columbo technique. Basically, it involves giving the district enough rope to either hang themselves or come back and do the right thing. If they should select the option to hang themselves, we are ready to fight.
The thing is that my normal instinct tells me to go in crazy style and dominate and win. While I know that I could do that, and that I want to, I also know that we are going to be at this for years. While I don't need these people to be my friends, I do need a less hostile relationship.
Wish the school district luck. For us, just hope that this works out right.
2 comments:
I about died when I read this. My response to them saying they'd write the IEP for me would be "no, no, and hell no." In our county, the only stuff that's filled out ahead of time are the evaluation reports and the general information on the eligibility and IEP forms (like name, address, etc.). They may draft a few paragraphs of stuff and pre-insert those when they are just copy-and-paste from the evaluations, but we discuss them before they are locked in.
Neither eligibility nor IEP content nor placement are decided before the meeting here. This is not only how it should be, doing it any other way is just wrong and probably borderline illegal - or at least puts them in a position to get killed in any sort of arbitration.
My God, you can't decide on a placement without an official determination of eligibility, and there can't be an official determination of eligibility until you all agree to it and sign it. For example, parents of a child who is "multiply disabled" can actually decline certain parts of the eligibility and still get services by choosing which disability to use, though it's not that clear why you would. We had to agree to use "autism" as our eligibility criteria before we proceeded, because theoretically we could have used another one, though it would have been dumb if we did.
Tell them you'll be drafting your own IEP and bringing it to the meeting, at which time everyone can negotiate what will be in the final IEP. That should perk things up.
Sorry. This kind of stuff pisses me off. I'm just ranting now. Totally call their bluff. They cannot force an IEP on you. If you don't like how that meeting ends up going, just sign your name as 'present' (you at least have to sign the roll to show that you all were at the meeting - but this obligates you to nothing) and say you're going to take their recommendations home, review them, and propose your changes. You can do this without committing yourself to any sort of appeal or arbitration.
There may be IEP advocates in your area who would be willing to help you all out. Also, there's an IEP e-mail list on Yahoo Groups where plenty of people will offer advice too.
It sounds like you have the evaluations end covered. I'd get all of the credentials of the evaluators (which they also have to provide, though you're probably better off looking for them online first) and verify whether they meet the standards of being able to provide a proper eval. You can refuse an eval based on lack of qualifications or use it as the basis for an appeal later.
This is total BS. You're being very civil with them, which I applaud. At this point, I'd conduct everything by e-mail. I did find that once our IEP team realized that we knew what we were talking about and were not interested in screwing around, we got much better treatment. We were prepared to go to battle if necessary, but firmness and civility got us what we wanted. I know that's not always the case, though.
Congrats on reading IDEA. That thing is boring as hell. Those two books I told you about turn it into better English.
OK. End rant. Sorry you all have to go through this.
Tim, I totally appreciate your passion. Thank you for the great resources. We have found NOLO to be vital in this process.
We really appreciate your support and knowledge in this.
Take care!
Blake
Post a Comment