JSD24

Good luck with this due process. BTW, social pragmatics has a huge impact at school. He'll not be able to do group projects with his skills where they currently are.

I think visual-spatial is huge in schools. I took mechanical drawing, organic chemistry & geometry. These all use a lot of visual-spatial. Always good to ask for a copy of the research they are referring to in this statement. Visual-spatial is also used in PE. It also helps you stay out of another person's personal space.

If your child need 2X time on all exams, tests, quizzes and/or assessments, ask the school to put this wording into the 504 in place of what is currently in the 504. To get accommodations on the SAT (and PSAT & AP Exams - all the same company so you do it for one & you have it for all) you need to do 2 things. 1- Show that they have this accommodation by documenting what's on the 504 (or IEP) to the College Board. In other words, you send them a copy of the 504. 2- There needs to be a statement from the school saying your child uses the accommodation at school. This is because students can have tons of accommodations listed but they only get the ones they use on the SAT. I'm wondering if the school changed the 504 to 1.5X time. Schools can do that but should document the change to the student & parent. In your situation, the 1st thing I'd do is ask the school for a current copy of the 504...in case they didn't put 2X time on it.

Asking for camp is hard to argue. The school will tend to say they can do the same type of instruction at ESY. I would go to this meeting and request an IEP meeting if you feel you have the data to argue that this camp can meet a need that the school's ESY program can't.

Data. Data drives IEP services. Who told you that he needs constant prompting to stay on-task when in his gen ed classes? Did they put this data into writing? What about his sp ed classes? Is he off task there? They might say he needs sp ed all the time because he can't stay on task in gen ed. Is he learning what he needs to stay on grade level in sp ed? This might be why he needs to have an aide: He can meet the state education standards if they give him appropriate services - namely someone to keep him on-task.

My district is 100% electronic now. When they did things on paper, it was often sent in the backpack but it was sealed in an envelope. Given the classmate almost read it, you could file a FERPA complaint.

My school does it like yours. You meet and then they write the update into the new IEP and give it to you. If there are any issues and you need to make changes, you need another meeting. Small corrections can be done via a no-meet revision.

Did the school do an AT eval to match him to software? It sounds like you feel he needs a graphic organizer embedded into the AT devise. Is an AT eval (either the SETT or the WATI) part of the RR?

I think lots of families are saving paperwork electronically. This is what I've tended to do. Does it make sense to keep a paper copy when a USB drive can hold everything & it fits in your pocket? Also, I think we need to know where you are to make a good suggestion. I did a search and I think prices are going to vary but Staples says their prices start at $.20 per page. If you really want paper copies, buying a printer might be your most cost effective option.

Yes! This is what I needed to know. I think I got 17 of these.

I saw that I got a notification through an ad at the bottom of my screen. With the ad in the way, I couldn't click on it to see what I was being notified about. How to I get to this notification?

The school can charge the parents to have the video redacted. You might want to ask for a cost estimate of this before asking to have this done. They will often show the video to a police officer w/o redaction. You might want to go this route to save $$. The police can then tell you what happened.

I wouldn't use the word 'modification'. Use accommodation. Reduced homework accommodation: XX's teacher will accommodate XX's slow processing with doing math homework by selecting 50% of what is assigned as representative of the concept being taught. XX will do the reduced assignment and it will count as 100% complete toward her grade. At her option, XX can do more than the 50% the teacher selected.

I heard it called Armstrong Group. It's something specific to PA. ESY has to be decided by 2/28 if your child falls into certain high need IEP categories. You can download the ESY booklet here: https://www.pattan.net/Publications/Extended-School-Year-Services-in-Pennsylvania Info on Armstrong Group is on pg 8 & 11. It refers to a lawsuit: Armstrong v Kline.

Either is acceptable. If you want to communicate through an advocate, you will need to sign paperwork that it's OK for the school to communicate with your advocate. If you choose to bring a lawyer, the school will want their lawyer to be present. When an IEP isn't followed, my suggestion is to file a state complaint. I view the IEP as a contract to provide something in addition to what students in gen ed get. If the school doesn't follow what they agreed to, the state dept of sp ed should be following up with them.

The parent's disability is covered under ADA. If they need written communication or a translator of some sort (ASL for deafness) the school needs to provide reasonable accommodations. Obviously, they would need to say this before the meeting. A parent with memory issues or who has difficulty taking notes could record a meeting as an accommodation, for example.

What I've found with my 2E child was that the school didn't do the correct evals so there were no areas of need that showed an IEP was needed. The areas my daughter struggled with were pragmatics and social skills. When they did evaluate social skills, my child scored in the 2nd percentile. (I was told that kids with ID - Downs Syndrome - scored around the 8th percentile.) I had to beg for pragmatics to be evaluated. They did the TOPL but not the optional extended part. She scored average but I think she was able to mask her issues due to being gifted & I was told the extended part would have pushed her past her limits. About 9 months later, I was at an IEP meeting and they said they see issues with pragmatics & I brought up the results of their testing. There are assessments for executive functioning - they tend to be rating scales where the adults fill them out. You can ask for the school to look at that. My child had a 504 for EF. She had a teacher who checked that she was writing down her assignments and bringing needed material home for homework. I feel that schools don't say what they do in sp ed because there is such a wide variety of what services a student can need. In older grades, they teach cooking, cleaning, shopping, budgeting, how to ride a bus/train, read a bus schedule, job skills through job shadowing & volunteer jobs. I was told if the school doesn't currently offer something that meets a student's needs, they have to come up with a way to meet them - could be in another school/district too. I'd rather my child get evaluated and get the support they need than be suspended. Did you share your results from the outside eval with the school? Gifted students will often not be academically challenged in the younger grades. They don't 'learn how to learn' because of this. At some point - generally toward middle school, they hit a wall and can't figure out something because they lack the skills. This is when they will tend to misbehave. Your child might not feel it's OK to ask for help but we all need help sometimes. Mention the times you ask for help. Let her know you don't know about plumbing and don't have the tools to put new tires on your car's rims...or put a roof on your home or raise cattle for beef. We all lean on each other.

If you don't feel the school's reeval was complete and accurate, you are in your rights to ask for an IEE at school expense. https://adayinourshoes.com/iee-independent-education-evaluation/

There is a section in IDEA that says schools need to teach life skills in addition to academics. Not sure what more to say w/o knowing more about your child. You mentioned about OT & PT. Can she feed herself? Can she use the bathroom w/o help? Can she get herself around the school's campus w/o help? Can she navigate the community independently like her same-age peers? PT tends to be more medical but there is a place for in in school. If the IEP is just OT & PT, a 504 with this might be appropriate.

I don't feel evals are the issue. No eval = no IEP & no help. If the child you see is not what the eval shows, you need to ask for an IEE. With a 2E child who will not want pullouts or to have a stalker (my daughter's term for a 1:1) at school, my suggestion is Ross Greene. Behavior is communication and finding a way to ask a 2E child what he's communicating is where I'd focus. CPS is researched to do this and fix things but it's not a quick solution.

Lisa has a blog that does this for schools in her area: https://adayinourshoes.com/iep-private-school-placement-list-chester-county/

Has the school done an FBA? What is the antecedent to your child acting out? Did you file a state complaint that the IEP wasn't followed when they removed recess? Advocate - yes. Lawyer - no. When the school disciplines a child as their in loco parentis, they need to follow up to be sure that the discipline worked. (To discipline is to teach. They need to teach him how to not repeat these same mistakes.) What did the school do to stop his recidivism? Have you asked them what they did?

I believe Sherry Diamond is out that way. http://www.concerningeducation.com/

If a student can pass a math test w/o word problems (because they can do calculations) but fail with word problems (because they can't read) that would be an adverse impact. If they cannot do group work due to a lack of social skills, that's an adverse impact. If your child can write an essay but it takes them 3X longer to get started because they don't know how to start/organize, that's an adverse impact. If he has weakness & strengths that balance each other out where he's passing but if the weakness were supported, he could excel, I feel those weaknesses have an adverse impact. There are lots of graphic organizers that can help with organizing writing. He'll need an assortment so he has one that helps with the particular assignment. I think giving examples to the IEP team would be helpful.

Comp ed should be bringing her to where she should have been if she would have gotten a FAPE via her IEP. She paced because she was anxious. Anxiety brings about one of 3 responses: fight, flight or freeze. I think the pacing was her freeze - she couldn't do the work. It might also be a form of 'flight' as well where she walked away but did her best to follow the rules & stay in the classroom. She chose self-case for her anxiety in a way that allowed her to follow school rules to a degree so some choice was there but she didn't have access to learning due to the anxiety. IMO, they need to help fix the anxiety because that seems to be the root of the issue and possibly due to the lack of EF instruction. My child seemed to have social anxiety because she didn't understand social rules due to her autism. She's a lot less anxious after social skills instruction - 3 years of year round, weekly sessions. The school can pay for outside therapy - including mileage - with a clinician unless they have a clinician on staff at her school. If they have a clinician, she needs weekly therapy sessions with this person on her IEP.