I don’t trust my iep team-help!

[katemoore]

Hi everyone, I’m a parent in Pennsylvania navigating a tough IEP situation for my 6-year-old son, who is autistic.  He’s currently in an itinerant autistic support program with a 1:1 aide, PBSP, and social skills instruction.  Even though his iep says itinerant, the program is labeled as supplemental and he spends a fair amount of his day in the as room to regulate, have sensory breaks, and finish work.  This discrepancy between what is happening and what is written was literally “laughed off” when I brought it up. 

 

The district now has proposed a change in placement to itinerant emotional support. They say it will be similar to what he’s getting now — same 1:1, social skills, access to a sensory room — but I’m concerned this is really a step down in services. He still struggles with transitions and emotional regulation due to autism, as well as level 3 behaviors including elopement and aggression. Im not sure if the ES teacher has the training to support that. They also haven’t updated the IEP yet — just issued a NOREP.

 

This whole process has been rocky. Last year:

 

• We were told they couldn’t evaluate until full-day 1st grade despite autism being flagged by his therapist.
• When we did get an eval, they initially didn’t test for autism.
• They discouraged me from getting a private diagnosis and suddenly agreed to autism evaluation when I brought in an outside developmental pediatrician.
• They began using the autistic support room as a “regulation space” without informing us, although the timing (right after my outside doctor diagnosis) shows me it was placement in practice.  
• He was suspended for behavior likely linked to his disability before the IEP was in place as retaliation from the principal to not signing the initial iep fast enough.
• A doctor’s written recommendation for an RBT has been ignored with the explanation that it is “too restrictive”

 

 

Now I’m being asked to agree to a change I’m not fully comfortable with. I’ve reached out to a lawyer and am considering mediation. Has anyone successfully pushed back in a similar situation? Do you think this kind of placement change can work for a 2e autistic child — or am I right to be cautious?

 

Thanks so much for any input or encouragement. I’m really trying to do what’s best for my son while navigating a system that hasn’t felt very collaborative.

[JSD24]

This is the definition of autism from IDEA:  

(i) Autism means a developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction, generally evident before age three, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance. Other characteristics often associated with autism are engagement in repetitive activities and stereotyped movements, resistance to environmental change or change in daily routines, and unusual responses to sensory experiences.

(ii) Autism does not apply if a child’s educational performance is adversely affected primarily because the child has an emotional disturbance, as defined in paragraph (c)(4) of this section.

(iii) A child who manifests the characteristics of autism after age three could be identified as having autism if the criteria in paragraph (c)(1)(i) of this section are satisfied.

This is section (c) (4) mentioned ^:  

(4)

(i) Emotional disturbance means a condition exhibiting one or more of the following characteristics over a long period of time and to a marked degree that adversely affects a child’s educational performance:

(A) An inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors.

(B) An inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers.

(C) Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances.

(D) A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression.

(E) A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems.

(ii) Emotional disturbance includes schizophrenia. The term does not apply to children who are socially maladjusted, unless it is determined that they have an emotional disturbance under paragraph (c)(4)(i) of this section.

I find this confusing.  From what I've seen with Aspergers type of autism is that emotional issues versus are hard to differentiate which is why autistics are sometimes labeled ED by schools.  If 'autism' is a health factor, then ASD is the right box to have checked.

Supplemental versus itinerant has to do with staffing.  This is from Chapter 14 of the school code:  

	Itinerant (20% or Less)	Supplemental (Less Than 80% but More Than 20%)	Full-Time (80% or More)
Learning Support	50	20	12
Life Skills Support	20	20	12 (Grades K-6) 15 (Grades 7-12)
Emotional Support	50	20	12
Deaf And Hearing Impaired Support	50	15	8
Blind And Visually Impaired Support	50	15	12
Speech And Language Support	65		8
Physical Support	50	15	12
Autistic Support	12	8	8
Multiple Disabilities Support	12	8	8

If the student is supplemental, max caseload is 8 - not 12.  They should be looking at how much time as a percentage of the school day he's getting special ed services and not the name of the program.  If this isn't accurate on the IEP, you could file a state complaint.  (You can see this defined her on page 58:  https://www.pattan.net/CMSPages/GetAmazonFile.aspx?path=~\pattan\media\forms\files\interactive-annotated-iep.pdf&hash=c0ea2b719d21a38a5c12f35787364505e1915c0b3618e03dec3aae2355fa263a&ext=.pdf.)  Note that the annotation says "typical school day".

My district has paraprofessionals who have RBT training so this would look the same as far as "restrictive" goes - it's just a 1:1 with different training than other aides (they also make more given the added training).  In your shoes, I'd ask that his 1:1 aide have RBT training given your outside eval said he needed an RBT.  Emotional support might be the right placement if 'upset' is the reason he needs support & the ES teacher has appropriate training - I'd still want the ASD box checked on the IEP.  I wouldn't fault them for using an AS room for a student in the evaluation process if that's where the person who helped was located.  So long as a student is in the process of being identified, they get special ed protections and students with IEPs can be suspended.  It's really when you get to 10 days that they look at manifestations of a disability because suspensions of 10+ days are a placement change where you need the IEP team to weigh in.

What does the autistic support room have that the emotional support room doesn't being you want AS and not ES to be the room where he gets services?  If I knew why you wanted this, I think I could help by providing an argument that's specific to the issue you see.  I'm aware of a school where one room had both AS & ES support.  The issue was that when there was a ES support student acting out & trying to calm down, the autistic student found this too triggering/distracting where they couldn't calm down.

There are other things in your post that you might want to file complaints with PDE on:  

We were told they couldn’t evaluate until full-day 1st grade despite autism being flagged by his therapist.

When we did get an eval, they initially didn’t test for autism.

 

I hope I covered everything - you had a lot of questions/comments.