dropping the ball on IEP meeting - 04/17/09 05:03 AM
sometimes I feel like banging my head on the wall...my son has had an IEP since he was 3 for both speech and OT.
Last year I called a meeting at the end of the year IEP meeting and asked for gifted and/or achievement testing to be done since he would be going into kindergarten...they said that we would have to wait until he was a K student to do any testing....so at the beginning of this years IEP meeting, I again requested it. The whole group "ganged" up on me and stated that "it would be a total waste of time" completing gifted testing on my son since he was being homeschooled and they would not be able to offer any gifted services for him (with budget cuts, homeschooled students can no longer receive gifted services)so they all stated that it would not be in his best interest. I felt totally sideswiped and left with my tail between my legs despite the fact that I knew, by law, I had a right to demand testing. Fast forward to the past few weeks....his speech teacher has been completing some assessment called the Battelle on him and it basically took several hours (all off and on over a few weeks) to complete. She said he ceilinged out the test on every subsection and the test is normed up to age 7.5 (my son is 6)...she said she had no doubt in her mind he is highly gifted. I started to make mental notes of exactly what I wanted to bring up at the end of the year IEP meeting and that I will stand my ground and demand testing to be done no matter what they whine about with homeschooling.
Well, today, I got a call from the speech teacher saying that she is dreadfully sorry to say but that my son's IEP was out of compliance as of today since they were supposed to have called his end of the year eval meeting before this date. She then had the NERVE to state that this was the first time that she had actually read his IEP - and she had been giving services to him ALL YEAR LONG???? So she begged if I could please be at school tomorrow afternoon for his IEP meeting so that everyone can sign off so that they were in compliance. I was completely put off by the whole thing - like this was a massive rush to get down and then she sounded totally annoyed that I actually had an agenda that I wanted to discuss at the meeting. I told her that it wasn't my job to keep track of his eval meetings and that I didn't appreciate being given a one days notice to try to get my poor husband to leave work early so that he could come home to be with my son. She then whined about how hopefully she had a job after tomorrow since he was out of compliance and all I could think is...gee..just how much do you actually care about the needs of my son over the needs of whether or not a piece of paper is signed???
Last year I called a meeting at the end of the year IEP meeting and asked for gifted and/or achievement testing to be done since he would be going into kindergarten...they said that we would have to wait until he was a K student to do any testing....so at the beginning of this years IEP meeting, I again requested it. The whole group "ganged" up on me and stated that "it would be a total waste of time" completing gifted testing on my son since he was being homeschooled and they would not be able to offer any gifted services for him (with budget cuts, homeschooled students can no longer receive gifted services)so they all stated that it would not be in his best interest. I felt totally sideswiped and left with my tail between my legs despite the fact that I knew, by law, I had a right to demand testing. Fast forward to the past few weeks....his speech teacher has been completing some assessment called the Battelle on him and it basically took several hours (all off and on over a few weeks) to complete. She said he ceilinged out the test on every subsection and the test is normed up to age 7.5 (my son is 6)...she said she had no doubt in her mind he is highly gifted. I started to make mental notes of exactly what I wanted to bring up at the end of the year IEP meeting and that I will stand my ground and demand testing to be done no matter what they whine about with homeschooling.
Well, today, I got a call from the speech teacher saying that she is dreadfully sorry to say but that my son's IEP was out of compliance as of today since they were supposed to have called his end of the year eval meeting before this date. She then had the NERVE to state that this was the first time that she had actually read his IEP - and she had been giving services to him ALL YEAR LONG???? So she begged if I could please be at school tomorrow afternoon for his IEP meeting so that everyone can sign off so that they were in compliance. I was completely put off by the whole thing - like this was a massive rush to get down and then she sounded totally annoyed that I actually had an agenda that I wanted to discuss at the meeting. I told her that it wasn't my job to keep track of his eval meetings and that I didn't appreciate being given a one days notice to try to get my poor husband to leave work early so that he could come home to be with my son. She then whined about how hopefully she had a job after tomorrow since he was out of compliance and all I could think is...gee..just how much do you actually care about the needs of my son over the needs of whether or not a piece of paper is signed???