Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional IEP grumble

This is my not-tested-gifted DS6 (my DD10 is a DYS). He is classified as developmentally delayed (social-emotional), although he is a bright, funny boy who is doing fine academically. We just had his IEP meeting earlier this week. I didn't notice to ask about this during the meeting, but the document seemed to say he was only getting services out of the classroom now, not "push in" services, and I didn't remember getting any notification about that change. The special ed teacher (new this year), emailed me the new IEP to approve, and I asked her about it.

She told me that she hadn't received any information about him getting "push in" services, and that she didn't see it in last year's IEP. So that caused me to actually pull the old IEP and send it to her, pointing out the difference, when I discovered that not only did she change the type of services unilaterally and without notice, but she dropped one session without telling me. He used to get 3 half-hours of "push in" services and one of "pull out" services, plus one half-hour of SLP time. He's been getting 3 half-hours of pull-out services since September, and they're bumping it down to 2 now. I mean, he's still making progress, so I guess it's retroactively OK, but it grinds my gears that she's his case manager and she can't even read his IEP and schedule services accordingly. I haven't gotten a response to the latest email.

Overall, I know I should be (and I am) happy that he is making progress with his delays. But you all will understand that I am also mad. And he is so young and so uncommunicative about school that there's no way I could have caught this. I wonder how many other families have the same issues and don't even know.

This new special ed teacher also forgot to put the names in the bcc field and "outed" all of the special ed parents to one another in September. And she didn't remember to notify us of the date of the IEP meeting - it would have proceeded without us if I hadn't happened to email the SLP with a question! She's very nice, and DS really likes her, but I have yet to see her do anything without screwing it up in some fashion.

She sounds terrible. Was she really apologetic about the breach of privacy? And was formal action taken?

No formal action, and I don't know if anyone else complained. She did apologize for the breach of privacy, but in a, "I don't think this is a big deal but I understand you're mad" kind of way.

I'm not sure how she would have changed it without seeing it. It's not like she would have written a new IEP from scratch. We have had numerous "situations" with things getting screwed up with the IEP. Sometimes it seems like it's not even worth the trouble and stress. I won't get into all of it but the lastest screw-up was that DS wasn't getting adapted phy ed at his new school 2X per week like what was in the IEP, and several months went by before I confronted them with it. They apologized and he started to immediately be pulled the right amount of time. I think it was an honest mistake but it makes me wonder how often this is happening. My sister-in-law is a special ed teacher and she says that kids often do not get the services that are in the IEP. If one of the specialists like OT or whatever is out sick it just doesn't get done. She said that in her state there are "fidelety checks" though, and forms to fill out, where the IEP manager is supposed to be making sure that the IEP is being followed for each kid. DS has a "slant board" in his IEP and his classroom teacher knew that but decided she wasn't going to even bother with it and it went into a closet. I have also asked numerous times for him to do math on graph paper which is also in the IEP. I think some of it is poor training and people not understanding IEPs and that these things are not optional.

I don't know, 95%+ of the document seems to be prefab. The draft that she brought to the meeting said that he would be getting one session a week, and the classroom teacher called her out on that and said it wasn't enough, so we compromised on two. (She later said that because she isn't there on Wednesdays the other teacher has him, and she forgot about those sessions when she was writing it up.) I don't know how she came to put him in the three-a-week pull-out group in September, because I didn't even know that she had.

We had agreed to taking out his SLP sessions (that I didn't mention in the OP), because the SLP actually administered tests, after asking our permission, to determine that he was no longer having comprehension problems.

This certainly doesn't excuse any of the concerns, but I will say that periodically, school districts change IEP software, and the old documents sometimes have to be handcopied (!) into the new software (we've been through this twice in the time I've been in my current job), with many odd slips occurring in the process. So it's just possible that she didn't write the new IEP from an electronic duplicate of the old one, like one would have expected.

Also, did your DS transition from a preschool-type plan to a more academic plan this year? Systems sometimes have templates that they want liaisons to use in writing IEPs, which are different depending on the disability classification or grade level.

Again, not excusing anything, just attempting to propose explanations.

Yuck. Been there myself all I can suggests is to keep pushing and take it to the teacher, principal or district resource coordinator. It is OK if they change things for the new year but they need to at least have a conversation with you about it.

In my case the resource specialist who had been working with my daughter K-4th grade left and we got someone new in 5th grade. (6-8th was middle school and while it was the same school it had a different and wonderful resource teacher.) So we struggled through that last year of elementary with a resource specialist who was ineffectual and what turned out to be a bad classroom teacher whom I had to ask that her accommodations be met every step of the way. One week into the school year I contacted her and asked if she had read my daughter IEP and had a plan for that year. In 5th grade ALL her help was supposed to be push-in. (More and more of the help was push-in as she got older.) She told me she was still getting used to the school and that she would get to it.

A few weeks later another parent who I knew had a child with an IEP in the class mentioned to me that she had complained about the help her son was getting. The resource teacher was coming in and 'helping' the two of them during MATH rather than language arts time. Both these kids IEP's were for language arts. My daughter struggled a bit in math but this other kids did NOT and they were not getting the language arts help they needed. Her initial response was that was the time she had in her schedule and she couldn't come a different time. Seems the 5th grade teacher didn't even know until parent teacher conferences that my daughter even HAD an IEP. Everything was a struggle that year. Thankfully the next 3 years were great with someone who was wonderful.

Good Luck

No, he first got the IEP last year, when he was in kindergarten, and now he is in first grade.

I haven't gotten an email from her, and I don't expect to tomorrow, since she doesn't work on Wednesdays. Maybe later, or maybe they will just cross their fingers and hope I will forget about it.

Working my way backwards through your thread, Elizabeth - but fwiw, one thing I learned to always do in my emails when advocating with school staff is to put a request for a reply by a certain date, 5-10 days away depending on the subject of the email. Make it nice and polite, but also clear "I would appreciate a response by January 19" for example.

Now onward to read the rest of the thread!

polarbear

Can I ask why you're having an IEP meeting now, in the middle of the school year? Were you drafting next year's IEP, was the original IEP written in January so this is your one year renewal meeting (our district always did these late in the 2nd semester, which is possibly why I'm confused lol!), or did one of the team members call an IEP update meeting?


Do you have an advocate or is there any type of non-profit in your area that provides legal consults to people with disabilities? We have two groups in our area which will consult with parents at no charge, and the disability law group in particular loves looking at things like this. I'd want to show the copy of the IEP that *you* have and the copy that you were given at this meeting.


So is the IEP document she was showing you a *draft* of the new IEP the team needs to write for next year? If that's the case, I can totally envision a situation where the school staff drafts up fewer services than the child needs.

They can't change the IEP that's in place without holding a team meeting to agree on the decision. They can, however, draft the renewal of the IEP for the next year, with whatever they want to put on it (or leave off). NOTE - I am not saying they can write it up however they want to, but if they have called a team meeting and they come into the meeting with an *idea* such as reduce services to one hour, based on their observations/data/etc, then they can draft up the IEP written they way they want it to sound, and it's up to you as the parent advocating to be sure all the services and accommodations your ds needs are included. The IEP is a *group* decision.


You can request that the school staff log the time they provide each service each session, and have the team give you an accounting of time (extent and how it was spent) at the end of each grading period (a handy tip I learned from our local non-profit disability law group).


I *totally* understand being mad about this!

Gotta run - hang in there!

polarbear