JSD24

Does your granddaughter currently have a preschool IEP? Does she have an aide at preschool? If she's currently getting an aide, you have data showing an aide is FAPE for her. That would make it easier to show that an aide is going to be needed in kindergarten.

Posted too soon - wanted to add: what changes have been made to the IEP so there isn't another similar issue in the future? A special ed student getting into trouble to the point of being suspended can be a red flag that the IEP isn't providing FAPE. If this school cannot support your child's needs, they might need a different placement.

If your child is in gen ed for part of the day, they would have gen ed teachers in school so it's no difference with having them with homebound too. You do need a special ed teacher to deliver SDI in the IEP.

I think you're going to need a lawyer. Someone who knows both special ed as well as criminal issues. Your child committed a crime because his in loco parentis failed to follow the agreed upon IEP. It sounds like the 9 page threat assessment will be evidence this lawyer will use when they defend your child in court - that's when the DA will see this. Not sure if you have a counter suit for damages caused by how the school allowed things to play out. Your child was traumatized and you now have legal expenses in order for him to have a defense to the criminal charges that resulted due to non-compliance with the IEP as well as not curtailing the bullying your child endured at school. This could be a case the ACLU or disability rights group in your state might be able to take on. Both groups employ lawyers who have experience with dealing with issues like this.

You can request a travel training assessment to see if she is capable of walking home safely from this sort of activity. If she can't, the school need to provide transportation given what Carolyn posted. Hint: The school might need to contract with a 3rd party for this is their drivers don't work late enough to accommodate the team's practices. And there is Uber for teens - they need to be at least 13.

What's going through my brain is: what did the eval cover? You posted that your concerns included reading, writing & spelling. Did you let the school know these are the areas you suspect he has a disability in? School evals should look at 'all areas of suspected disability'. Since these are not areas of concern with the school, I can see them not looking at these but if you said you thought there were issues in these areas, they should have provided you with data to support him doing OK with this or they should have evaluated this. (You could ask for them to show you why they aren't concerned.) Now if you didn't mention this to the school, now is the time to tell them. They may want to do their own eval before okaying a neuropsych or an IEE. I'm also curious what he scored on PSSAs. I'm not a fan of state testing but if he did OK on the PSSAs, that can assure you (to a degree) that he's on grade level. Basic & Below basic are failing - Proficient & Advanced are passing. If your school uses a platform like PowerSchool, they should have PSSA grades there. These should also be mailed home sometime in August, September or October - depends on when all the tests are graded. PSSAs are given in grades 3-8 and in HS, they do Keystones which are now a graduation requirement.

Families who receive settlement agreements for comp time (or any other reason) need to sign non-disclosure agreements so it's hard for info to be shared. In my area, there was an article about this (Philadelphia Inquirer carried it - see below). Like Carolyn said, filing a state complaint is one route to getting funds when a school fails to provide FAPE. I'm in PA and the complaint form asks what would the person filling out the form want to see as the resolution of the complaint. Saying that having the school provide funding for compensatory services is something to put on the form if this is what a family wants. I've heard stories where lawyers got involved and were able to get a settlement agreement for compensatory services for families outside of mediation or due process as going these route cost school districts additional lawyer fees. In my area, there are law firms who take cases on a contingency basis. With a contingency basis, the lawyers are only paid when the case results in a settlement from the school. Needless to say, it's the bigger law forms that do this. Link to article: https://www.inquirer.com/education/special-education-programs-philadelphia-region-deficiencies-due-process-settlements-20250805.html?id=hw81GFuWaPeFr&utm_source=social&utm_campaign=gift_link&utm_medium=referral&fbclid=IwY2xjawMIVVJleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFjcExDWm5rMGdvbFdWa2dqAR7mEMHyrBBqBJukiofL2ZzR_xBduS9zjCCZTF7WStIB10l_aO7BK_LPTf8XEQ_aem_R_1oOUbJvrgZz5nodeTiVg

What state are you in? PA has a Consult Line to call & get questions answered. There should also be a parent training center. There should be a way to cancel the due process and they should be able to tell you how that gets done. This needs to come from the school - they took you to DP. They would need to drop it.

Many schools in PA use an MTSS framework for providing extra support to students in general ed. I don't believe that progress reports are part of what's done in MTSS. From what I'm aware of, only IEP goals require that progress reports are given to parents. Since RTI & MTSS are part of general ed, I don't expect any type of regular parent communication about what's going on. What I would expect is for something to be mentioned during parent/teacher conferences. Something like: He sees the reading specialist 2X a week and seems to be making progress. Saying 'we have no concerns' and then providing extra support seems like an outright lie. I was able to open the attachment. The way I read this was that progress monitoring was turned on in 2019-2020 and turned off/disabled for the 2020-2021 school year. This might have been due to COVID and not seeing students for MTSS that year with social distancing and only having 50% of students in the building at a time. My kids brought home some school work. These are 'writing samples'. They aren't part of an eval, simply 'classwork'. If you feel what you see being brought home isn't at his grade level, you can use this as data to base concerns on. (Protol with evals is you gather the sample, write the eval report and then shred the sample.) My suggestion and I'm not sure if this will work (it did work for me) is this. Let the school know that you have concerns about academics with your child. You're read through the evaluation report and you feel the report doesn't describe the struggles you see your child having. You'd like the school to do a neuropsychological evaluation to see if there is something more than the autism diagnosis/what was looked at during the school's eval. You feel there might be an element of him masking at school because he's smart. Based on him saying "he couldn't understand why other kids were reading chapter books and he wasn't." my guess would be SLD reading or dyslexia. Could also be dysgraphia. It could be executive function or having difficult starting a project. Difficulty starting things can be an autism thing. They lied to you. Shouldn't this change your perspective of the school?

So the school decided to ignore the BIP and things spiraled out of control. That's what I'm getting from your post. He needed the support that's written into his IEP & the school failed to provide it. Not sure why they are taking you to Due Process over their non-compliance with his IEP. On top of that, they decided to further traumatise him by cuffing him and having him spend the night in a detention center. My guess is the school is looking only at what your child did and following school board policy - 'you hit a classmate and destroyed school property and you're expelled' is probably what the policy says. What they aren't looking at is the non-compliance with the IEP and the lack of support they were supposed to provide that led up to this happening. I'm thinking you want to bring an attorney with you to this hearing. They aren't going to listen to your side of things without one. I could say more about how this school allows classmates to bully (it's bullying because it's repeated) your child. They shouldn't allow this to be happening - pretty sure there's a federal regulation about bullying in schools not being allowed. I'm thinking this might not be the right placement for your child. If the bullying happened with the school following the BIP, the BIP might not be FAPE. This is something to also bring to the attorney's attention. Sorry to hear that the school messed up and you now need to deal with this.

Did you make your request for your child to be placed with her friend in writing? If you did, include a copy of that when you ask why they aren't together. There is a saying in education: If it's not in writing, it didn't happen. I feel this is something parents should be aware of. My mom-to-mom suggestion: Get your child formally diagnosed. This way, when you want to start meds, you're not waiting months to get in to see someone who can diagnose. I did this with my oldest. Diagnosed in K; started meds in 4th. (Also, it can take months to get in to see a psychiatrist to prescribe meds. You might want to also find someone who takes insurance & will prescribe - this could be your PCP or someone else. When the time is right to start meds, you don't want to have these roadblocks and delays to starting them.)

I live in a 2-party state. We have a form to fill out if we want to record. They want 7-10 days notice because the district wants to record if the parents are recording. Allow sufficient time with telling them you plan to record in case they also want to record. (They might need to dig out and dust off an old cassette recorder. ) It's hard to participate and take good notes at an IEP meeting. IMO, recording the meeting should be something all schools allow.

I found this which says that parents can observe - it's silent on a behavior specialist observing. https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/education-code/edc-sect-49091-10/ I'm wondering if this is why the school is saying the parent needs to be there. You might be able to get around this by granting the BCBA educational guardianship for the sole purpose of doing this observation of your child. Ask the school if this would be OK per their rules. There's probably a website where you can find out how to do this without getting a lawyer to draft the paperwork. My school does have a policy on this and a professional is allowed to observe longer than a parent since observations are often required as part of a comprehensive educational evaluation. The wording with my school is 40 minutes per quarter but it also says per subject (this is for parents). This means a parent could come in one week and see math for 40 minutes and then come back and see science and PE and ELA and... Did the BCBA say how long/how many times they would need to observe to have sufficient data to do the evaluation they are looking to do. If they're looking to provide an FBA, 20 minutes isn't long enough to have sufficient data on which to do a private evaluation. Also, it's not best practice to have a parent present when a professional is doing an FBA. If the professional guidance on FBAs doesn't fit with the school's rules, I think you have a good case for the BCBA being able to observe more than 20 minutes. This is something central admin would need to OK - in other words, you'd need to go over the principal's head.

One thing that hasn't been said: An IEE is an outside evaluation. Outside evals are 'considered'. School evals are followed by the school. I'd ask their SLP if they are familiar with the TOPL. You want this test if the SLP can do it but you'd like them to do the optional extended assessment as well because you feel he might mask at school where their assessment might not be accurate w/o this extra bit of testing. Meanwhile, get on a list or 2 for an IEE. If the SLP doesn't do a great job, you can ask for the IEE again. My SD has electronic report cards. There are a bunch of different ways to code an absence on the report card. Look up how his being removed from general ed was recorded. Being removed for 3 hours a week amounts to missing one school day every-other week or around 20 days of school over a year. If this isn't reflected on the school's records, I'd file a complaint with your state's dept of ed because their records aren't accurate. Or, if you have this data, you can request through FERPA that your child's school records are corrected given the school hasn't been correctly recording when he had in-school suspensions the prior school year. Not sure about starting with a request to see his records in person so you can determine how often he was given ISS w/o you being informed. School policy should show how this should be handled (and my guess is that parents should be in the loop when this is happening). Policies are generally on the school district's website.

If you are in PA, then Chapter 14 applies. In other states, it's § 300.303 Reevaluations and any local case law that applies. And the federal law seems vague to me. You can file a state complaint for not following timelines - it's a procedural violation in PA: https://odr-pa.org/parent-resources/state-complaint-process/ Without knowing for certian what state's rules apply, it's possible that your school is OK with timelines and the new eval is due in October 2025 or March 2026. In most state, I believe you can request an IEE at school expense when a school fails to do a timely triennial eval. Most state also allow the school & parent to agree that an eval isn't needed. In this case, the progress reports are what defines the stude's baseline on which to determine goals & services. The Stay Put process varies from state to state. If you are not in PA, you should look at the procedural safeguards in your state as that should explain what to do. Given this is a national group, unless a question is posted in a Pennsylvania-specific part of this site, I tend not to assume that the poster is in PA - especially when they call an IEP meeting a CSE meeting. CSE seems to be a New York term. I tried to confirm what the reeval timeline is for NY & I didn't see where it said 3 years from the school's evaluation. It said reevaluations every 3 years or sooner if needed but not more than once a year. And there are exceptions to the once a year rule as well.