Who is Supposed to Be at the IEP Meeting?

Our district has always had a habit of avoiding doing what they are supposed to do for as long as possible. They know they will eventually have to do what the law says but if they can put it off it will save them money (they think!). One of the ways they have done this is by not inviting decision makers to the meeting.

We don’t often know who the decision makers are when we first begin the IEP process. As you go along you figure out who in your district needs to be there, but early on it’s often impossible to know. If you are looking at a change say between districts or from County schools to district or district to County schools there must be a representative from the place you hope to change to at the meeting or no change will happen. There must be someone at the meeting who can make the decision and not inviting them is the easiest way to avoid doing what you are asking for them to do.

When our daughter was in pre-school we decided we needed to change her placement. The school where she went first was about a 30 minute drive away. We were told she HAD to go to that particular school because she was non-ambulatory (she didn't walk until 3 years, 4 months. We agreed to that school originally because we believed this lie, and then when she could walk and we were told by her regional center case worker that she didn't like how the staff was treating our daughter we decided it was time to make a change.

I requested an IEP meeting and told them that we wanted to change her placement. We had a meeting, but no one from the new school came so we couldn't make the change. Another meeting was set - for 30 days later (the maximum allowed by law) and once again, whoever needed to be there wasn't there, so another meeting was scheduled, again, 30 days later. Again, the right people weren't there. At this point I said "Fine, but my daughter will not be attending school until you get this meeting set and we get the new placement worked out." They were able to get a meeting put together, with the right people, and get her placed before that 30 day time limit once they knew they would not be getting their paycheck for her unless they made a new placement happen.

This taught me a few of things. We can play hardball with them, especially when it comes to attendance before they legally have to attend school. Also, we often hear that our kids cost a lot of money but I have had at least one school do everything they could through four IEP meetings to keep her, so my bet is they get more money than it costs to provide the services they actually provide in most cases. If they are fighting to keep your kid, they are probably making a bundle on my child and I probably need to be looking at what they aren't doing that they should. My child should not be a money maker for the district - they should see her as a child to invest in, not as a cash cow.

EXAMPLE: Letter Re: Prior Written Notice

This isn't like the sample letters I have written, it is more an idea of how to go with this sort of letter. Since a response to a letter of Prior Written Notice could be about so many different services or assessments, etc. it becomes apparent why I have chosen to use our letter as an example rather than offering a sample. I believe that if one goes with a generic sort of letter in this case, one will get a generic sort of response which is not at all meaningful or helpful. Just a warning - my sarcastic sense of humor comes through in this particular post, but not in the meat and potatoes of the letter. Our director of special education has a name so close I couldn't help but use the pseudonym Dr. Do-Little. =)
"Chlöe"


Address
City, State, Zip
September 29, 2010


Dr. Do-Little
Director of Special Education
Unified School District
Address
City, State, Zip

RE: My Beautiful Child – D.O.B. 00-00-0000
Letter of Prior Written notice dated 9/24/2010

SENT VIA FAX AND MAIL

Dear Dr. Do-Little,

The purpose of this letter is to determine your reasoning behind denying my daughter, further outside speech therapy. In your letter of Prior Written Notice you simply state that you “respectfully deny” the request. Even with the additional two hours per week of therapy that she was receiving through Speech and Language Center for four months she was not able to meet all of her speech and language goals in the past. Now another expert has recommended that in order to overcome the issues of her Central Auditory Processing Disorder and gain from her education she requires two hours per week of Speech and Language Therapy outside of school hours, yet the district continues to say “no”.

I would think the district would take the recommendations of this expert seriously, especially considering that she is the district’s expert. I point this out to make it clear that although the district has repeatedly referred to this evaluation as an Independent Educational Evaluation it is not. It is the initial evaluation for CAPD offered by the district. This evaluation was only offered after several phone calls and my instructing district personnel on the fact that although district personnel have stated that CAPD had already been tested for, it had not since there is no district personnel legally qualified to test for CAPD. The only person qualified by law to administer testing for CAPD are audiologists, not school psychologists or speech therapists as I have been told by district personnel. Those people are only legally qualified to administer a screening test for CAPD, and given the significance of her CAPD I do not believe that the district was making even a minimal effort to screen for CAPD or it would have been revealed years ago when it could have been addressed with less difficulty and expense. In fact, had this been addressed early on, as it should have been, the district may have saved itself several thousands of dollars in overall special education expenses since from what I can gather, my beautiful daughter’s need for special education lies primarily, if not completely in her processing difficulties.

In addition, I do believe it is against the rules set forth in IDEA to conduct an IEP meeting without decision makers in attendance. Ms. DiGoo-Goo was not able to answer the question of additional speech therapy at the meeting, when in fact I believe you could have foreseen that the question might come up since the recommendation had been made in the report that the district was in receipt of well in advance of the IEP meeting on September 00, 2010.

Finally, I would ask that the district provide more than a cursory response in its Prior Written Notice, the law is clear that the district must provide an explanation, with factors that are relevant to the district’s refusal to provide necessary services as demonstrated by the expert who reported on this need in my daughter’s IEP meeting. Can you point to literature and/or other experts who would disagree with the expert the district referred us to? If so, I would wonder why the district would have referred us to her in the first place, but I believe we are owed more than a baseless opinion before we are willing to accept that this is the correct way to treat this educational condition.

Please get back to me at your earliest possible convenience and respond to my questions as well as letting me know how you intend to proceed to meet my daughter’s auditory processing disorder and speech and language issues since it is obvious that the IEP offer will not meet her needs at this time. When she was offered the services in her current IEP the district did not even realize that she had CAPD and so the district is apparently not willing to address this issue without adding further services to help her to overcome a condition that can be overcome with appropriate services.

Should you have any questions regarding this correspondence, please feel free to contact me. 000-000-0000.

Sincerely,


Really Tired of the District Avoiding It's Duty to Educate our kids

cc: My attorney