Celise Rogers

I am a pediatric school based occupational therapist who just resigned from a job I had for 9 years working for the County office of Education, Special Ed Department. At the end of the school year, we were told by leadership that we needed to send our reports, goals, and service recommendations to the district superintendents before an IEP meeting so that they could tell us what services they were going to agree to. If they disagreed with our recommendations, we were to decrease our services and the students' goals accordingly and we were told not to tell the parents. I already wanted to advocate for our families and students but this just pushed me over the edge. I could no longer work for the county or our leadership sadly. We do not currently have a lot of advocacy connections for our families and many of the districts in our county this year are taking their kids back and starting their own programs. The county providers and parents are worried about the transition and the potential for services to not be the same after the 30 day IEP. As county providers we were told not to talk to the parents about their choices by our leadership after the district superintendents told them to tell us. However the districts are not advocated or explaining their choices to them either.