You wouldn't believe the ludicrous comments coming out of the mouths of the yes-men/women. They basically argued with everything that I tried to say. One gifted teacher claimed that a lot of gifted kids are bad at writing and it will get better on it's own. Another teacher asked me what good it would do to have a sped teacher work with her, they can do just as well on their own in the classroom. Then the sped teacher piped in and said "Yeah, that's right, if I pull her out it would be in a group of about 6 kids anyway. What good would that do?" Meanwhile the sped director was sitting there silently. I wish I had had a tape recorder.
We had very similar experiences to blackcap when advocating. If you're anticipating the same, I have two pieces of advice:
1) Keep emotion out of your responses, and just keep your statements simple, straightforward, and focused on the facts. Repeat the same statement over and over if you have to until the arguing from the staff over it stops. For example from blackcat's note re the sped teacher who said "what good would that do anyway?" reply with a statement of what the purpose would be, what remediation it would provide, and why it's required by IDEA or ADAA etc. If something denies FAPE, just keep mentioning that. If they then argue what FAPE is, the conversation has moved on and you state what FAPE is and how it's impacted here. That probably sounds too simple, and nope, it won't always work, but it was the approach that was most effective for us, when we were faced with a school team that had clearly been instructed to claim there were no issues and our ds was "fine" and everything was "fine" and no services/accommodations were needed.
2) If past experience has you really concerned re the school trying to argue things that aren't really legal etc, find out what the laws re recording meetings are in your state, and then plan to record it. In some states you'll need to get written permission of all parties, in some states you don't need permission. We never actually recorded a meeting because I didn't want to put in a layer of the school team feeling we were coming in as adversaries (although they clearly were lol). I found that just letting them know we knew what we knew and that we weren't going to fall down and let them drive right over us made it unnecessary to record (although I've since occasionally wished I had a few of the things they said recorded!).
In your situation, with essentially a new school team and new data, I'd go in with optimistic hopes - and then if things don't go well, go from there.
Best wishes,
polarbear
