It's that time again! For parents of children with special needs, “back to school” means the start of a new IEP advocacy year. Here are some tips to keep in mind:
"Back to School" Supplies for Parents
(1) New spiral book. Get a new spiral notebook to document incidents concerning your child at home and at school, and conversations with the school and professionals. Start by documenting how your child did over the summer, which is important if you plan to ask for an Extended School Year. Keep this book handy (in the kitchen, for example).
(2) New very large folder. Get a folder in which you can toss ALL school work and notes your child brings home for that year. This can be very important for you to evaluate and monitor and document the child’s progress during that year, and from year to year.
(3) New loose-leaf book: Use this to file IEPs, the latest Parental Rights book from your state Department of Education, notices, emails, official reports to and from school and doctors/therapists. Remember that your requests to the Child Study Team MUST be in writing in order to initiate certain procedural protections.
Update the School Nurse. You may want to disclose medication status and changes.
Educate the New Staff. Initiate friendly contact with your child’s new teacher, aide and therapists to describe how to best handle your child.
Monitor. Watch the progress of your child on a regular, periodic basis and report your concerns early to the teacher and your Child Study Team Case Manager. Don’t assume your child IS progressing during the year. And, don’t wait until the annual IEP meeting to find out.
Check up by Private Specialists. To whatever extent you can afford it, have your child periodically examined/treated by your own team of therapists and specialists. If you are concerned about the upcoming school year, it may be helpful to get a “baseline” picture of your child at the start of the year. Judges generally give much greater weight to an expert who has treated your child over time than a specialist who is brought in to give a report for the purpose of litigation.
Catch up on new legal developments in special education. It’s been a good summer for us. Here are some recent noteworthy developments and some older useful cases:
(a) Doug C. v. Hawaii (9th Cir. 2013) - On June 13, 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an important decision about parental participation at IEP meetings. Pete says that "All special education staff who conduct IEP meetings should be familiar with this landmark ruling about IEP meetings and parental participation." The Doug C. Court found, as a matter of law, that the failure to include the parent at the IEP meeting violated the procedural requirement of IDEA and invalidated the IEP. Click here to read Pete's comprehensive analysis about the case. The original decision as issued by the Court is located here. The YouTube video link is at the beginning of this page.
(b) U.S. Department of Education guidelines regarding Bullying (2013). On August 20, 2013, the U.S. Department of Education issued a policy letter stating that bullying can be found to deprive a special needs child of an appropriate education.
http://www.ed.gov/blog/2013/08/keeping-stu... Be aware that certain states, like New Jersey, have instituted Anti- Bullying laws which sets forth certain procedural steps to report bullying of your child. So, in addition to calling IEP meetings, you may also need to initiate bullying complaints.
- See more at:
http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/advo.school... LEARN MORE WHEN YOU VISIT HERE!:
Posted By: agnes levine
Tuesday, August 16th 2016 at 12:31PM
You can also
click
here to view all posts by this author...
