JSD24

This might be my prejudice talking but why ABA for a teen? My oldest has autism (diagnosed in 7th grade) and we never did ABA. We went to all sorts of therapists to address mental health issues. Social skills therapy ended up, IMO, making the biggest impact. We did CBT & DBT but with an ODD diagnosis, I don't think ABA would have been a good match. If you're seeing progress with ABA, you might want to stick with it but if you don't see progress, it might be time to change what you're doing. Maybe more therapist & less ABA? Now would be a good time for natural consequences with not handing in work. 8th grade doesn't go on a transcript a college would see but 9th grade does. As far an "natural consequences" goes, my son would not hand in work. He didn't do the big book report project that was assigned each marking period. The school didn't average it in - like it wasn't assigned. If they averaged in the zeros on these, he would have failed English at least once. FBAs. Have you read the blog posts about them? https://adayinourshoes.com/behavior-iep-special-education/ And https://adayinourshoes.com/school-fba-behavior-plan/ An adult observing a student might get to the root of a behavior or it might not. Can you look at a child and see they are hungry & distracted? That they can't read at grade level? I was asked to sit in on an IEP meeting or 2 for a CASD student. He would have been in 11th/12th grade. He had a goal of going to college with a major requiring a lot of reading. He was reading at a 5th grade level. I told them that they need to bring up his reading level if he was going to be successful in college - that's what the transition plan that starts at age 14 should do, develop the skills needed for life after HS. He would have needed to fund college with student loans. I could see him lasting a year and failing out and having a hard time paying any loans off without a college degree. It wasn't a good IEP and he wanted to graduate in 12th grade - not stay for another year and learn to read. Does your son have academic needs & are they being addressed? Is there SDI in the IEP with a goal of catching up? Is he making progress?

I have a few thoughts. One is: He's got Afterschool Restraint Collapse with masking at school and then letting it out when he gets home. This is a real diagnosis. You can request a 504 meeting and see about putting accommodations into the 504 to help address this disability. To set the meeting up for success, you probably want to bring someone from the afterschool treatment team to the meeting to make sure the 504 supports work to support this aspect of his disability. (In other words, I don't feel the 504 team will believe a parent that he needs support they aren't already providing. They are wanting to hear this from an expert.) Not sure if anyone from outside of school did in-school observations where they have an idea of what sort of support is needed but that's the person to come to the 504 meeting - might be via phone or Zoom. Another thought I have is an IEE at school expense. You didn't say anything about academic needs. Is he pretending to read (masking) during independent reading where he knows he's different academically and this comes out at home as behavior? I'm trying to see what specially designed instruction the school needs to provide to support his disability. Knowing what support he might need, might help me to figure out why they don't see an area of suspected disability they need to assess and address with an IEP. Knowing this would also help to say what an IEE would need to look at. Do you know what the letter requesting the eval said was the areas that needed to be assessed? I can make a guess that social skills or pragmatics might need to be looked at but that's 100% guess. My final thought is to change up the 504 so the Afterschool Restraint Collapse gets accommodated better. It's possible the school is right where an IEP & SDI aren't needed and updating the 504 will help ease what happens at home. Might need to be a series of meetings if you see a little improvement and the accommodations work where more might work better. Also want to mention about Ross Greene & CPS. It's really a way of talking to kids about their problems and then working with them to fix the problem because if you don't understand the reasons for the masking, it's going to be hard to accommodate them. More info here:

In some schools, they have a 2nd person reviewing the eval before it get into the hands of a parent. This tends to push school to use all of their 60 days to do the eval. There is a timeline booklet that I tend to use when I have timeline questions. I was surprised to learn that teacher inservice before school starts are part of the 60 days. (Not sure if that's in the booklet.) https://www.pattan.net/CMSPages/GetAmazonFile.aspx?path=~\pattan\media\materials\publications\files\spec-ed-timelines-_5-24-wbl.pdf&hash=1df7d4859f62411260a429485f5d066624438b34f693c83424d59a8d9235673e&ext=.pdf Or download from: https://www.pattan.net/Publications/Special-Education-Timelines

You're good. Accommodations don't have a particular place in the PA IEP. They kind of, sort of fall under 'related services'. That's where they tend to end up. The important part is that it is in the IEP & the school is following the IEP. They don't even mention the word accommodation in the PA Annotated IEP. Maybe they should. https://www.pattan.net/assets/PaTTAN/51/51bbd07e-a8c4-46a6-ba3a-5183b8307a83.pdf The annotation on page 45 says: NOTE: Do not be overly concerned about the category of the items you write into this section (e .g . does this service/activity fall under the category of SDI, modifications, or supplementary aids and services?) . Instead, include what the student needs and write it in where you believe is the most appropriate location.

"It’s been an SDI that he can go see the guidance counselor when he wants, we’ve introduced them, etc., etc." This doesn't sound like a good SDI. He should be accessing the GC when he NEEDS to talk to someone and not when he WANTS to talk to someone. If he doesn't use this (I think it's an accommodation in the SDI section of the IEP), it should be removed...and possibly replaced with something that will actually work to help him. So he has a self advocacy goal. It sounds like this is needed to he can use the SDI/accommodation to go to the GC when needed. Who has been providing SDI to teach him the skills needed to reach this goal? How long has he had this goal? What does the progress report say about progress toward this goal when you get it (which is everytime he gets a report card)? From what you posted, you inferred he's not making progress toward this goal. The person providing the SDI needs to change up what they are doing or perhaps he needs to work on this more often so he can make some progress. With bullying, it sounds like you have concerns. You need to write this out into a parent letter of concern (because if it's not in writing, it didn't happen). It sounds like when teachers see he's been bullied, they need to share that with you. (Kids are stealth. This could be happening in stairwells, locker rooms and bathrooms where there are no adults present.) This accommodation can go into the IEP. It sounds like he needs help dealing with this so you, the school social worker or GC or an outside therapist needs to help him with this (sounds like he might be internalizing how this makes him feel) so he can work on this. You could put an SDI into the IEP on this or have him go to an outside therapist - or both. IBHS through Medicaid could have an MT working with him at home if getting him to a therapist is an issue. I'm not sure if CASD has clinical people working with students - I'm in WCASD and they have hired clinicians via CCIU to work with students. A GC isn't considered to be clinical (some may have the training in addition to school certifications but it's not required). Also, GCs are spread thin and CASD doesn't want to be out of compliance with an IEP so that's part of why meeting with a GC wouldn't be in an IEP. LCSW & MSW are clinical. What to do next is write out your concerns & request an IEP meeting. I don't feel there's a NOREP headed your way given it sounds like you didn't have an IEP meeting. Do be aware that bullying can be reported anonymously using Safe2Say in PA. Not sure if this might be a good way for him to report bullying.

I'm surprised they have 3 teachers in one classroom for 7 students. Around here, they have one teacher (there's a teacher shortage) and any other adults in the classroom tend to be instructional assistants, paraprofessionals, aides, personal care assistants... It would show up as a 1:2:7 ratio in an IEP. I would want the 3:7 ratio your grandchild has & is successful with noted in her IEP so you can show the school this when she goes to kindergarten and they want to put her into a classroom that's 1:24. It sounds like they will need at least one other adult in the room given she will need to be escorted to the nurse for diaper changes because letting her walk there alone provides an opportunity for elopement. Again, make sure the elopement tendencies and need for diaper changes are noted in the IEP. This is data that one teacher cannot meet her needs and still be teaching her classmates. My personal style is to ask questions: How will my child get to the nurse for diaper changes without attempting to elope from the school? She needs a lot of redirection because she has a hard time sitting still. Will the teacher be able to do this and still be able to provide the class with the academic instruction they need? Given her unwillingness to draw or write, has apraxia been evaluated by the school? Speech, & writing are both fine motor skills. She might need special instruction to be able to write and draw like her classmates - or it could be a skill that's out of reach due to her disability. (Behavior is communication. This might be what the refusal is trying to say.)

Several years ago, the Pupil Services Director did a presentation comparing the number of due process cases in WCASD & other districts. WCASD had more per pupil than all of the other districts in the county. I'm not sure this has changed in recent years. The amount they budget for due process does keep increasing. They had twice the number as DASD (if I remember correctly) which is close in size.

If he has issues with visual tracking, did the school evaluate that? If an area hasn't been evaluated, the assumption is the student's abilities are the same as a typical student. It sounds like the OT might need to help your child or train the para on what to do. Does he get OT via his IEP? If he needs a 1:1 aide, you need to have the school gather data and show this is what he needs. It sounds like you might need to look at what's in the eval they did to see if 'all areas of suspected disability' were evaluated (if the tracking/tracing issues were shared verbally, the para & teacher aren't going to provide extra help - they will follow what's in the IEP). State requirements are a minimum requirement. Given your child's needs, they might need a 2nd aide since your child is being removed from the classroom so often. You might want to ask for an IEP meeting so you can tweak his IEP.

There are lots of good advocates working in West Chester since WCASD seems to be a magnet for IEP issues. Let me come up with a list. (Definitely random order.) The REACH Group Educational Consultants, LLC Arc of Chester County Melissa Yelito at MY Advocacy LLC Former WCASD Pupil Services Director, Leigh Ann Ranieri now does advocacy: https://ranierieducationconsultant.com/ Marie Lewis Cris Fick Thrive Advocacy Group Who is the right advocate for you will depend on what the issue is. Advocates do tend to specialize to a degree.

Wanted to reiterate: If it's not in writing, it didn't happen. This can be looked at as a negative by the school but the Office of Civil Rights oversees 504 plans - might be under a different office with changes made since our president took office since lots of things have changed. Given the school seems to have a very, very, extremely poorly managed 504 plan office, it might be worth filing a complaint. A 504 provides accommodations like extra time or a 2nd set of books for home or breaks when a student feel overwhelmed. An IEP provides special instruction to a student to help them reach IEP goals which should align with catching up to where classmates are. I like to get paperwork and forward a copy to the school - just in case the school loses the paperwork. I also want a copy 'for my records'. Every teacher should be implementing 504s. You don't want all 504 students in the same classroom - this isn't best practice. Students shouldn't be placed into a different class to get an IEP evaluation. (After an eval, it might make sense to change classrooms so a student can get the special instruction in the IEP - like the special ed teacher is only there in the morning so they need to move core classes to the afternoon.) Feel free to post again if you have any other questions.

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.