I think this might depend on the school district - teachers are required to attend the meetings here.
It probably also depends on the level of the school - at DD12's middle school, only one teacher (the "advisor") attends 504/IEP meetings, probably because it would be very difficult to schedule a meeting for all seven teachers. (The other teachers are invited but do not attend, in my experience.)
Most likely - depending upon where you are. Our ds is in high school, and that's what I was referring to re our school district. He has multiple teachers and the teacher for each class is required to attend. 504 planning meetings are held once per school year, immediately after school gets out in the afternoon so teachers don't miss a class. It's inconvenient, but the school does their best to be sure that the meeting is conducted as time-effciently as possible. I've also found that, in high school in particular, it's important to have the teachers at the meeting. Chances are 9 out of 10 teachers aren't going to have an issue or will be understanding, but we've had at least one teacher each year who's been hung up on some very specific detail of a very basically typical 504 accommodation for a very clearly-defined disability. I've also found it's helpful for ds to have the teachers at the meeting because some accommodations such as extended time (as one example) will be handled a bit differently depending on the teacher. This doesn't mean the accommodation is different - it's the nuts and bolts of when does he take the extended time, how does he let the teacher know he needs it for an assignment or test, if it's a test, where/when will he take the extended time, nuts and bolts details like that. With 7+ teachers in a semester, the details of how to make accommodations work in real life get too detailed to include within the body of the 504 - the way it's handled here is by stating in the 504 "a mutual agreement" between student and teacher (not the accommodation, but essentially how to access the accommodation), the 504 meeting gives the teachers a chance to discuss issues with how-tos etc and also serves as a vehicle for the parent to know that those specific details either have been or will be determined for each teacher/class. It also gives the student an opportunity to advocate in a place where, if his/her advocacy falls short with a not-so-cooperative teacher, there is a parent and/or counselor etc to step in.
Ultimately, I also think it saves the 504 counselor a lot of follow-up work. If the teachers weren't at the meeting, they'd still have to agree to the plan and sign off on it. I'm guessing it might be a bit easier to get teachers to agree in some districts, but ds has had several teachers who would not have agreed to his accommodations had they not been in a room with other teachers who were happy to accommodate. Hope that makes sense!
polarbear
