JSD24

Wanted to let parents know that registration is open for the PDE conference. They offer scholarships - deadline to apply is 2/1. The scholarship covers registration & hotel (for hotel, you need to live 50 miles away from Hershey). They have a great lineup of speakers with authors Ross Greene - The Explosive Child - and Peg Dawson - Smart but Scattered - scheduled to present. You can attend virtually too. I'll be there. Look for me at the Right to Education Task Force breakfast. You can get to the registration and scholarship links from this page: https://www.pattan.net/Training/Conferences/Pennsylvania-Department-of-Education-Conference

That doesn't sound right. The provider needs to follow the protocol of the test they are doing. It shouldn't take 6 months to get through the observation portion because of restrictions the school wants to put on observation time. Can you change the title of this to include 'California' since they seem to have a lot of rules that the other 49 states don't have. This is definitely a CA specific question and I'm not sure how to answer this. This link (https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/se/lr/om031121.asp) says: LEAs may not impose other conditions or timelines that are inconsistent with the LEA’s criteria used to initiate its own evaluations and/or would deny the student’s and parent’s right to obtain an IEE at public expense. If the LEA only allows their evaluators 1 hour a month of observation, then they can restrict this on the IEE is what this seems to say.

Interoception is a sensory thing. OTs work on sensory. Has she had an OT eval? What about asking for parent training on teaching safety so you can do a bit of this when she's not in school? You want to be using the same system that the school uses so she's taught with consistency.

I'm in Chester County & our Arc has advocates. Not sure if the one near you will have them. I think PEAL is on the procedural Safeguards list. They will help you understand the school's side and let you know if you have a case to change the IEP or if it's already FAPE. As an advocate, I don't take anyone's side. What I do it evaluate what's going on to see if the student needs more than the IEP has them getting. There are parents who want the moon and an IEP only gets you appropriate interventions.

I found something that looks like it will be helpful: http://www.brainy-child.com/experts/WAIS-IV-and-MMPI-II.shtml

Impulses are controlled by the frontal lobe. It tends to be less-developed in children with ADHD & autism. It really is beyond his control. Best solution is to not get him dysregulated so there's less to be impulsive about. You can teach them strategies but it's hard to use them when you're dysregulated.

Read through the IEP carefully. When a student has an IEP & an ISFP, only one tends to say that the child will be provided with 1:1 support. If his IEP does say that he needs 1:1 support to access gen ed, this puts it on the school (not the IBHS agency) to provide the support and they need to follow the IEP - not provide an excuse for not following it. Most school district solicitors will not put a school into the position where they are relying on a 3rd party in order for the IEP to be followed. I'm not sure what the solution is for you without having more details. If the school is relying on the IBHS agency to provide a 1:1 for a student's IEP to be followed, they have put themself into a situation where they should be providing an aide or paraprofessional to be 1:1 with your child when the RBT is unavailable either due to illness or schedule conflict. If the IEP is worded where it should work this way, the teacher needs to hire someone to fill in for the RBT. They should also provide makeup services for when the IEP isn't being followed. The thing is that admin handles staffing - not the teacher - so that's who should be working to hire someone. (Are they even aware that your child has this need going unfulfilled?) Now if the IEP says nothing about a 1:1 being needed to access gen ed, you're out of luck when the RBT isn't available. Since your assigned RBT cannot be there when your child needs them, you should ask the IBHS agency to provide another RBT for the days when this RBT can't be there. (I'm not sure that this is going to happen. I've not seen a child with 2 RBTs and there's a huge staffing issue with all IBHS agencies which is likely why your RBT can't be there in the morning.) The other factor is that with autism, kids do a lot better with consistency which could be a negative with only being in ged ed 2 days/week or having a different RBT when the main RBT isn't available. For your own piece of mind, you should find out who is responsible for staffing your child's time in gen ed so you can better advocate for making sure there is staff for your child to get what they need in the future.

In PA, supervision of IEPs is given to the superintendent (or equivalent at a charter school). They all tend to delegate this responsibility to a special ed supervisor/director. If the position of special ed supervisor/director is open , the responsibility falls back on the superintendent. They can designate a principal or other school employee to cover the job responsibilities until a replacement is found. (I was told that the most stressful job in any school district is that of the person who oversees special ed so I'm not surprised to see high turnover.) Changes like this shouldn't have an effect on your child or their IEP.

I'm all for accommodating a student who cannot do for themself. The thing is that independance should also be a goal so coaching doesn't need to go on forever. Teaching a student how to manage this for themself needs to be part of what gets looked at - and not just for homework. Executive Functioning deficits seems to be associated with poor social skills. You use Executive Functioning to do a lot of things.

Chester County is full of advocates. I do advocacy & live in Chester County. The Arc of Chester County has a bunch of advocates. Lisa (the woman who runs this group) also lives in Chester County. Rachel Yevel, the parent mentor at CCIU, is also available to go to meetings with parents. IMO, the IEP is not FAPE if there are known safety issues and they aren't mentioned in the IEP. Parentis in loco are responsible for dealing with/preventing issues at school. Are they wanting you to be your child's 1:1 so you can prevent these issues? (I know a bunch more advocates. The advocacy class I took had lots of people who are in the area.)

It sounds to me like the step plan in the IEP isn't sufficiently clear because it is not being followed by the adults at school the same way that these same words were followed last year by the para that wrote them. IMO, you need an IEP meeting ASAP to clarify what is meant by the step plan in the IEP on how to deescalate him. If he should have the autonomy to determine how many laps he needs to get calm, the IEP should explicitly state this. Don't leave the wording up to interpretation. Be specific! When a teacher fails to follow school policy, you should go up the chain of command so the teacher can be retrained on how to follow policy. The principal would be the 1st person to bring this to.

Your child can qualify for services with the school using a discrepancy model. (Page 5 of this does a great job of explaining this model: https://fs24.formsite.com/edweek/images/WP-n2y-The_Shortest_Distance_Between_Two_Points_Is_RTI.pdf.) There is a lot of difference between fluency (8th percentile) and IQ of 133 (99th percentile). If they will not remediate, will they accommodate? What about an IEE paid by the school since you feel the recommendations aren't appropriate? IMO, you will help the anxiety when you fix the limits your child has with accessing school. Does your child have audiobooks/textbooks as an accommodation?

Systemic change takes time. When you change out one cog in a system, you often find that lots of other things get effected as well. I know that I'd like to see schools align reading instruction to the Science of Reading or structured literacy. The list of other things that need to change when you do this include: Books, teacher training (both new & current teachers), college curriculum, praxis exams that teachers take, state standards for education... All of these things take time. I'm in a group that discusses this and I see teachers asking how to come up with a grade to put on a report card since making this change at the school level. I guess I'm saying to look for the ripple effect when you ask for a systemic change. (If you can anticipate the ripple & have answers to solve the problems that will be encountered, you'll do better at advocating for the change you want to see.) Can you post what systemic change you're looking for? You can better crowdsource here by posting specifics.

Many school psychologists are not trained to identify reading problems and, unfortunately, they are the people who do evaluations for sp ed. Layer on top of this that the "skills" teachers teach in the early grades are the things non-readers do to mask their reading disability which will make it harder to figure out who is disabled. In your shoes, I would request an IEE done by someone trained to identify a reading issues that includes dyslexia. Any person in the 7th percentile for word reading fluency and comprehension, IMO, needs more testing to see why that component is so low. One test cannot be used to say a student is dyslexic so there should be a deeper dive when you see scores like this. https://adayinourshoes.com/iee-independent-education-evaluation/ You will probably need a neuropsychologist to do the IEE. One thing you can request in the short term is RTI or MTSS in reading. This is a gen ed program and given your child's low scores, they should meet the criteria for this sort of help even though the school's eval said IEP level of intervention isn't needed.

I don't feel that parents really want 'the best for their child' (#6 in the article). When a student is the best in their class, that can come with another set of issues like boredom. A student who isn't being taught anything new doesn't learn how to learn. When things get harder and they lack this ability, self-esteem tends to take a hit. The end result is a gifted child not reaching their full potential as well as the mental health issues that come with low self-esteem. They may end up setting a low bar for themself because they feel they don't know how to get to a higher bar. What I've said about middle school is students want to fit in yet stand out at the same time. IMO, parents want this too. They want their child to have a 'just right' education. There needs to be a bit of struggle for growth to happen and a student with the need for special ed needs to be identified early so they don't stand out..like being the only one who hasn't finished the chapter when the discussion starts.

The downside is that if another evaluator wants to use the same test, they can't. You cannot redo the same assessment unless it's been 12 months. With an ASD identification from the school, he will get more appropriate to ASD support. The support you provide w/ ASD is a bit different from DS alone. When you go to apply for SSI or a waiver, having the ASD dx will open up a few extra options. If you do not have an appointment for an ASD eval outside of school, I'd be OK with the school doing these assessments.

This really seems like special instruction. The sort of special instruction you get with an IEP. In my school district, you need an IEP to have study skills class. This doesn't sound like an accommodation to me.

Don't use the 'M' word. Modifications change what he's taught. This can prevent getting a diploma after HS. 504s offer accommodations. This can be extra time, help with packing the backpack, a 2nd set of books to keep at home. IMO, all students need strategies to help them remember things. Having a fidget to hold if this helps him to concentrate can be a 504 accommodation. He may not look like he's focusing but if he's passing the schools tests, the info is getting through. Does your state mandated gifted enrichment? Sometimes, bored students go of task because what the teacher is covering is all review to them. You might want to talk to him about school and if he feels he needs more support as well as what sort of support he needs. (Some schools use Universal Design and support is available to every student no matter if they are gen ed, sp ed or have a gifted IEP. You might want to ask if his school is doing this.)

Rather than requesting an interim eval to see if dyscalculia or SDL in math is present, my suggestion is to request that the triennial is moved up. I think things are cleaner this way. Meanwhile, I'd keep a log of what you see. Note down how much you help her with homework, how long things take her to do, write out what she says like 'I don't remember the reacher going over this' or 'I forget how the teacher said to do this' along with the date & the assignment. Ex: 10/11/22. Chapter 2.4 1-8, 10, 12, 14. Started at 3:30, finished at 4:15. Redirected her to look at 4-7, 12 & 14. 'This doesn't look like the problems we did in class.' My guess is 11 math problems shouldn't take 45 minutes - should be 20-30 minutes. This provides data on her struggles as well as the type of problems she had problems with.

The toolbar I see Has BIU - bold, italics, underline. Then there are symbols for link, quote and Emoji. After that is bullets & numbered lists. Last 2 are preview & GIF. Nothing that I see to change font color, size, etc. I'm not sure if Chrome is limiting me. I'm on a laptop. I did play with this on a few posts. If I copy and then type within the black, that will come out black. I know when I've had this happen on other platforms, I've copied into WordPad which clears the formatting. Then I can copy it back w/o color or whatever it was that made it look off.

I tend to borrow (copy & paste) but when I copy something, it comes out white on black. I do have a black background with Chrome so I'm sure that where is comes from. Let's say I want to recommend a book on toilet training & want to copy the title & author to the forum, this is what happens: Toilet Training for Individuals with Autism by Maria Wheeler I think this looks sloppy but I can't change it unless I retype it. I think I might just need to be less fussy with how my posts and replies look.

The ones that I got the most out of are the series 'How to Talk so Kids will Listen and Listen so Kids will Talk'. The other book that I feel every parent/adult working with children should read is Ross Greene's The Explosive Child. I've also read his Lost at School but he has a book for more typical kids called Raising Human Beings. (The plots are all the same - it's the characters in the books that are different.) Mona Delahooke's Beyond Behaviors explains why children have behaviors but doesn't have the concrete examples that Ross Greene has in his books. It's a good book if you are looking for validation that there is more to behavior than attention, escape, access, and sensory needs. (I don't like that when I copy from the internet that the text is white on black. On Facebook, no one could tell.)

My friend had a 1:1 in her home with her children attending a virtual charter school. If you don't ask, the answer is no. My suggestion is to ask. If your plan is to coach after you get off of work & someone is needed during instructional hours, I'm not sure how that should play out. My friend is a SAHM with a disability & had more than one child attending cyber school.

I'm in PA where a transition plan is needed starting at age 14. It's 16 in IDEA. If the public school is doing regular evals, IMO, they should be doing transition assessments at the age required by state regs. I recently discovered that the ASVAB has a complementary eval that matches strengths as shown in the test with careers. You can take the ASVAB & not go into the military. It might be a good thing to look into if your child is unsure of what they want to do after HS. The way the timeline works, 11th grade is when they take SAT/ACT and October/November is when they start applying to colleges in 12th grade.

The way IDEA is written, Child Find is on the school. Schools can & do sent out requests to parents for them to OK a sp ed eval to happen for their child. Has the school done this? The next time the parent tells you they want an IEP, I'd take that as a verbal request for a sp ed eval to be put in motion. (My state, PA, even has timelines on when this has to happen.) The next time this mom asks for an IEP, tell them that the school can reach out to her but she needs to provide a written OK for a sp ed assessment. That's the 1st step in the IEP process. (It is a complicated process. I know I didn't understand that when I saw my child had needs for sp ed.)