JSD24

I asked for a goal: Handing in 100% of the homework assigned. The LEA said she needed to talk to the district solicitor before it could be added. They added it. (He has a twin brother who was doing this. It's what's expected of students.)

The arrow that points right & up opens the post with more info on Ross Greene. Wanted to make sure you knew how this worked.

I'm a big fan of Ross Greene's protocol called Collaborative & Proactive Solutions. It's a way to get people to open up and talk about the root cause of the "problems" they are having. With an FBA, you look at what is going on and try to come up with a reason for it. Let's take test avoidance as an example. Lots of reasons for this. One could be anxiety over tests where the thought makes you want to just throw up. Another reason could be that you just don't feel prepared. It could be that you can't read so you don't understand the instructions or the questions and staring at the paper for the time allotted for the test is boring where you know you're either going to misbehave and get sent to the principal's office or start to cry and get bullied for that (in addition to the F on the paper) and you just don't want to go there. (It could also be that the test is supposed to be read to you as an accommodation and that's not happening - or it is happening & you're embarrassed by it or how it's being done.) I'm sort of in agreement with the school on this one - an FBA will see the avoidance but will not read his mind to understand the root cause. If you were to follow the CPS protocol - well it takes a good 5 months to master so I'll try to give you a mini lesson. Don't mention the behavior. When your child is calm & in a decent mood simply say: What's going on with tests at school? Your child's answer will probably be 'I don't know.' You come back and say something like: You're smart & I think you know what's going on. I'd like to help you...when you're ready. Then drop the subject. A few days later, you might say: I believe you have a test in math tomorrow. Do you want to talk about it? Then follow his lead. It might take a while for him to open up & share the root issue. You can also go to Ross Greene's website & see if there is a trained practitioner in your area. More info on that here: My feeling is that when the BCBA does observe, it will be a lot like an FBA. You can request that you be provided with a written report showing when your child was observed as well as what the BCBA felt was going on. BTW, write down what your son's responses are when you talk to him about tests. This is also data the BCBA can use to plan how to address the behavior. (The example with throwing up is how I felt about tests. I finally was prescribed something in college so I could get through finals. I like to keep a supply of this on hand for other stressful situations like IEP meetings.) Lisa has a blog post with a lot more info about FBAs on her website. Notice the Ross Greene quotes scattered through the article: https://adayinourshoes.com/school-fba-behavior-plan/

If it's not in the IEP, the school doesn't have to do it. I would have encouraged you to ask for this to be put in the IEP if you had posted when the decision was made to allow the siblings to ride together. Do you have anything in writing, like old email, showing the thought process behind why this was decided? I'm curious if there is any data showing your younger child had issues with anxiety on the bus (or with getting to school) before the sibling started riding with them. IEP decisions should be based on data. The accommodation of having a sibling on the bus might be providing access to their preschool IEP. As they say in education: If it's not in writing, it didn't happen. This is why we encourage a paper trail of the things that are helping or trials that have failed. It becomes proof in situations like this that the accommodation serves a bigger purpose than being a convenience for parents.

When a public school modifies curriculum, this often takes a student off of a graduation track and puts them on a 'certificate of completion' track. From what I know, accommodations - like extra time, where the same work is expected - are different from modifications. Accommodations provide access and fall under the Office of Civil Rights. It's often a matter of perspective if something is a modification or an accommodation. I'm not sure if a private school has to answer to OCR or not. I know that churches are not required to be ADA compliant & I think that falls under OCR. Definitely a murky area - especially w/o an example of the modification.

With younger children, especially, it's been shown that you need to correct behavior 'in the moment'. My child started having wetting accidents at school as they were coming home on the bus wet. I asked the teacher to make sure they got changed when they were wet. The teacher said that with 25 kindergarteners, she couldn't do this for my child. The teacher had said she had seen this in the past and that it was a phase and would correct itself. I didn't know about special ed back then. I probably should have asked for an IEP or 504 but I just didn't know they existed. My solution was to buy pull-ups and have my child wear them to school - kindergarten was a half day so they wouldn't need to be changed at school. With using my strategy, the accidents got worse and my toilet trained child stopped being toilet trained. This teacher retired 2 years later but the "phase" persisted past graduation from HS. Mine is a great example of a behavior strategy fail in working with the school. I'm not sure if having the school cooperate and correct this behavior (peeing their pants rather than using the toilet) in kindergarten would have prevented this from getting worse and worse as it was partly due to a medical issue - constipation. The behavior & medical issue was so intertwined it is hard to tell when one left off & the other started. Holding in going #2 put pressure on the bladder which caused it to spasm resulting in wet pants accidents. We would need for a doctor to recognise this and properly treat the constipation before we could stop the accidents from happening. (We needed more than one OTC med to stop the cycle of constipation.) Other things contributed like not taking in enough fluids and not being in tune with interoceptive signals due to autism (autism was diagnosed at age 13). We did put this into a 504 in 4th grade. They identified the autism in 8th grade and this transferred into the IEP when we met for the 1st IEP meeting in June of 8th grade. (The reminders didn't happen in 8th grade which led to the autism being recognized by the school and getting the IEP.) A classroom aide that monitored my child for accidents might have been the solution. Instead, we did timed voiding - where the teacher told my child to use the bathroom once a day at school (and later 3X a day when school became full day). We'll never know if this strategy would have got us to a solution sooner. What helped is having the school use timed voiding - same strategy we used at home - to manage wetting accidents. This didn't eliminate them though. There were a few times where there was a change in the schedule like a field trip or event at school where a reminder didn't happen and there were accidents.

DOE or parent training center? I'm not sure if every state has a hotline to the DOE for these types of questions but I do know there is a parent training agency set up in every state. If the poster mentioned which state they are in, it's easier to come up with state-specific answers.

My child had a disconnect with her body. Not sure if hunger signals were at a low level or not recognized but I'd see 'hangry' and check my watch to see it's been hours since I last served food. Food fixed the hangries every time. I think you need to write a parent concerns letter that your child will be dysregulated & might elop along with other 'bad behaviors' until they are comfortable with the new adults in his life. This way it will be anticipated at the beginning of each school year as well as if the teacher takes any time off. Meet with the teacher and see if they can tell your child that you might be modifying homework and he can do that homework or what was sent home but no complaining about homework or not doing anything. (Taking things literally is definitely an ASD sort of thing.) I think the 'NO' might be a sensory thing as he wants the food he's familiar with and not what he's being offered. Does the school have data on how 'wait & see' works? When I've seen this done, it generally ends up bad but I've not seen a research study on this that shows it's evidence based. I'd say he's 2E and I feel they are the hardest kids to figure out what to do with.

Find out what the school is doing for the remedial reading instruction he should be getting via his IEP. He needs an Orton Gillingham based remedial program that's more intense than what students in general ed are getting. Multimodal is what works so the material is presented with reinforcement. Wilson Reading has a protocol of 40-60 minutes of daily instruction. Whatever program the school is using, they should also be following the protocol for that program. Read what the IEP says. Is the school doing what they said they would do to remediate the disability? Look at progress reports. Is he catching up or falling farther behind? You want to see the gap closing at a rate where he'll be at grade level sooner rather than later. He could have an IEP but be getting RTI/MTSS for reading if he's not far enough behind to have an IEP level of intervention.

If the behavior is coming from academic instruction that isn't at an appropriate level of rigor for a student, the fix would be to provide appropriately rigorous instruction. Has the school done an FBA? A BIP/PBSP needs to be based on data and an FBA is where this data comes from. I'm not sure what state you are in so I'm not sure what the rules are on how gifted has to be done. I'm in PA & GIEPs go from K to 12 even though the formal gifted program in many schools doesn't start until 3rd grade. I do have a suggestion for homework. Modify it to his level. If the assignment is addition of single digit numbers, find a worksheet with double digit addition or change the one he brought home and have him do it and hand it in. Write a note that he was bored and uncooperative with the assigned homework, so you modified it. This also provides data on how mismatched his ability is to the work the class is doing. If you feel your child needs sensory breaks and enrichment, figure out what the school needs to do to come up with data on that being the need so they can tweak the IEP so he has the right support. There are evals for social skills. Has any been done? I'm also thinking that this might not be ADHD & anxiety. My oldest was like this - got an ADHD diagnosis in kindergarten. As it turned out, she's on the autism spectrum. She was diagnosed with Aspergers in 7th grade. This was changed to autism level one when the DSM 5 came out. She's 2E. Very bright - had a GIEP. Communication skills & social skills were low. It's a hard combination to deal with. The school saw the intelligence but not the deficits. She finally got an IEP at the end of 8th grade.

Things like this don't work the same way in every state. I know that in Delaware, the school district the private school is in does the eval & writes the IEP. Pennsylvania works differently. The district you live in does the eval & the IEP no matter where the private school is located. (I didn't realize there was a scenario where one district would do the eval & another would write the IEP.) I have also seen where 'enrolled' means that you show the school that you live in the district because they will only write an IEP for families who pay school taxes to them. Enroll does not mean attend in this situation. What you might want to do is verify with the school what the process is to get an IEP written so a private school can use it as the framework to provide a service plan to the student. Also, my advice is to communicate via email so you have a paper trail of what's going on. If they do call you, write an email summarizing the call to verify what was said. If you do file a state complaint, they will want evidence of what happened. You'll be able to copy the email to show this. I feel you need to do a bit of follow up with the school that received the evals - to see if a step in the process was missed - before you move forward with a state complaint. I've seen where not everyone is aware of the nuances of all situations. I'd make sure the pupil services director/head of special ed as well as a special ed supervisor gets copied on email correspondence when you ask your questions.

I'll add to what Carolyn posted. If audio recording isn't allowed (it's hard to get this accommodation in a 2-party state), allow the student to take photos of the board so they do not need to copy what the teacher has written. Teacher provided notes might be cloze notes. Writing by hand has been shown to help students remember things better than typing the same notes. Allow for homework (any/every assignment) to be typed rather than handwritten. Software & a device that works with the math being taught so math assignments are more easily able to be completed. Access to this for tests would be needed too. Use of a scribe - this might be a personal preference. I'm aware of a student with shoulder issues that resulted in arm & hand weakness. This person preferred extra time to the use of a scribe which is what was offered for taking the Bar Exam. This person had brachial plexus injury from shoulder dystocia at birth. I feel extra time is going to be key with this disability. As your grandson moves through high school, someone will need to makes sure that the school applies in advance so the accommodations provide by the school extends to SAT, PSAT, ACT, AP, state mandated testing, etc. Colleges will often look for a recent evaluation in order to provide accommodations. The high school he goes to can provide this so the family doesn't need to pay for this. (It tends to be very expensive if you need to pay out of pocket for this.)

Temple Grandin talks about a gentle push. With younger kids you want to see growth and they might need to be pushed a little to grow. Ex: if they can count to ten, you might encourage them to learn 11 to 20. If they recognise letters of the alphabet, you can teach what sounds the letters make. At any age or ability, you need to have a growth mindset. My mom was a bookkeeper. She had worked for a company for over 10 years when they went from manual records to computerized records. She was around 60 when they did this. She learned the computer at this age.

I'm not in NYC and my district put into their school board policy around the same time they started giving all students in grades 7-12 a laptop that all teachers will post all assignments online. Checking the assignment book was a thing with my oldest but it wasn't needed with her younger brother with the change in policy. They even made assignment books optional for all students when they made this change. If K-12 is getting students ready for college, I'd say that 99.99% of colleges have their assignments posted online. My other thought is: are teachers posting the assignments on the portal when they are assigned? If they are, you & your child could be checking the portal to see the assignments. Pretty sure our portal said if the assignment was an in-class assignment or a homework assignment. This could also be an IEP accommodation: Teachers will post all assignments on the school portal when assigned or they much check student's assignment book that all assignments are written in the book. Like Carolyn said: teachers need to follow the IEP. If they are supposed to check the assignment book & it's not happening, they are out of compliance with the IEP. The solution is to go up the chain of command or file a state complaint. You can also do both & file a complaint if talking to the school isn't working.

My school district policy is if you want your child to go to a different school other than the one assigned to your home, you need to provide transportation. (And most of the time, they will not give the OK for this.) If the district/IEP team decides on a different school from your neighborhood school, they provide transportation. I'd ask if there is room on the bus for an extra student and if there is, can my child ride the bus so there is one less vehicle going to the school/less traffic on the road. I'm not sure what this school's policy is with this sort of situation. Is biking to school an option? Should take less time on a bike than walking. Another option is to say that going to school B is no longer an option due to the change in work schedule & you want your child back in the neighborhood school because getting him there is now a hardship. If torn down school is their neighborhood school, you'd be at the district's mercy as to which school the child gets bussed to. This gets them out of the 40 minute walk to school which might not be very fun in bad weather. I think an IEP meeting is going to be needed with a lot of these options.

IEP changes are based on data. If there isn't sufficient data to move a student who is getting itinerant (special ed for less than 20% of the day) support to supplemental (special ed for between 20 & 80% of the day) support, the student stays where they are. Similarly, a student getting a supplemental level of support will not be moved to full support (special ed for 80% of the day or more) if there is no data to show this is needed. (The terms you used are from PA Chapter 14 of the school code which advocates outside of PA might not know about.) Full support is given to the most severely disabled students. My district has 3 types of full support classrooms: Autistic support, Life skills support (generally for a downs syndrome diagnosis) and multi-disability support (this room tends to have nurses as these are the medically complex students). Special ed services should be increased gradually. Schools shouldn't be moving a student from under 20% of the day getting special ed services to over 80% without trying a supplemental level. A big jump might give the impression the prior IEP wasn't FAPE so a school would most likely only do this if there was a significant change to the student's needs. Struggle can be hard to measure. Struggle is a good thing too. It means the curriculum isn't something the student already knows. You want to see students grow and they grow with the appropriate level of struggle. Do you feel the homework requires too much parental assistance? If the school sees homework getting done and the parent doesn't note that it took 3 hours to get through the assignments and the parents helped a lot with it, the school assumes the student did it with minimal help. A specific example of the struggle you are seeing might be helpful with providing more suggestions to get this student more support.

IEP identification/child find should be based on multiple measures. Same with exiting from IEP services. Was the eval that showed 95th percentile a normed evaluation? Given that background knowledge will increase comprehension levels, were the topics in the assessment that was used something this student was familiar with where this was why the comprehension levels were so high? Given the student is gifted, the giftedness could be masking the inability to decode with automaticity which is the hallmark of dyslexia - or it could be due to background knowledge. It's also possible that the prior school held students to a higher level of academic rigor where there was a need for specially designed instruction. I'd want to see additional testing in case this one test score was an anomaly. Do you have any data on this sort of testing from his prior school? What tests did they use? How did he do on them? I think you were OK to make a suggestion based on the data you saw. I believe you want to see 4 or 5 data points before you can determine if the data has statistical significance. Was oral reading fluency assessed? How does he do with nonsense words?

If your child can produce average test scores without their accommodations of calculator, testing setting, math aids, etc then it might be OK to not provide the accommodations. What data does the school have that your child is an average performer without accommodations? Has he taken tests w/o these accommodations? How did he do? Are they basing this on a reeval? If he has only been tested with these accommodations and there was no reeval, the school has no data on how he will do without access to the accommodations. I'd assume he'd do worse given the lack of focus from the ADHD and the fatigue and need to conserve energy. Ask to see the data that is part of his records showing his test scores are average when he doesn't have accommodations. If the school doesn't have data, there is nothing to base removing accommodations on. If they insist, ask for an IEE at school expense so there is data on which to base removing accommodations and request accommodations remain in place until the IEE is none. I'm not sure if you can file a state complaint if the school is looking to remove accommodations w/o data to base this change.

If there is staff prejudice, I can see how the observations will be biased. They might look at the non-compliance which is more noticeable - although this would show he's regressed and might need more services.

So this was the 7th (or so) meeting grandpa attended and this is the 1st time the district is saying anything about this. IMO, it might be where your husband questions: When he attended meetings in the past, his former occupation was not mentioned as an issue. Why is this an issue now? Given that I am not in a position to attend my child's IEP meetings, I've had my dad attend in my place. He knows my child, his grandson, and attended the IEP meeting as a family member. This is what IDEA says about who can attend IEP meetings: (vi) at the discretion of the parent or the agency, other individuals who have knowledge or special expertise regarding the child, including related services personnel as appropriate Would the school be willing to schedule meetings at a time where your husband can attend? (If your FIL worked as a special ed attorney, I could see the school complaining.) I feel it is reasonable for grandparents to come to a meeting - especially if dad can't be there. I'm in PA & we have a consult like we can call with questions like this. Other states have disability rights groups or The Arc as well as Parent Centers who can help with questions like this. It might make sense to file a state complaint or it might make more sense to drop the issue depending on if real retaliation takes place - you don't want to escalate this if it might make things more difficult for your husband. Are they going to transfer your husband to a school that's 20 minutes farther from your home? Not provide comp ed for missed sessions? This would be retaliation IMO. In my area, there was a practicing special ed lawyer who had a child with an IEP. I'd be curious if the school attorney attended these meeting. It does change the tone of the meeting when legal council is present. Carolyn's reply posted as I was composing my reply. I agree with her: It might be that your husband, as a school administrator, should have been aware of the 'rule' that you should be letting the school know when a lawyer attends an IEP meeting even if they are not wearing their 'legal council' hat but their grandpa/family member hat.

Many goals are measured by staff observation. The goal in plain English is: frequency at which he will follow adult (verbal) directions. Other than staff observation, how do you measure this? You need a human to see when a direction is given and if it is followed. You could add in the amount of prompting needed for him to follow a direction. It could be broken down. If there are issues with him 'taking out your math book and turning to page XX' and a goal of 80% compliance, this could be a more concrete goal but you'd still need a person in the classroom keeping track if what happens when the class is instructed to do this. If this only happened in math, you might want to look at a math disability but if this happens with many things, you might want to see if there is a glitch in how he understands verbal commands or if he's not focusing on what the adults in the room are saying. I've seen goals where 'student will follow directions with no more than 3 prompts in 80% of opportunities observed' is what the IEP says. This would still be staff observation that gathers the data on how the student is doing with the goal. If "staff observation" is rubbing you the wrong way, how would you propose the school measure progress toward this goal?

"He didn't use the accommodations last year." This actually is data that can be used to remove accommodations. On the other hand, if they were not available last year, there would have been no way to use the accommodation. Might be good to know the accommodation he didn't get so we better understand what's going on. Was it extra time, breaks, small/quiet room for testing, large font, instructions read to the student...? Is it the type of accommodation the school provides or the student requests?

If they are advertising an opening & have no applicants, they are doing all they can to provide FAPE so they are in compliance with special ed. Audits & reviews are one way schools are found to be out of compliance with special ed. They are supposed to police themself but this doesn't tend to work. Not enough staff with the DOE for audits to find all of this. Not sure why they would change the hours. (I've also seen where audits missed things and this resulted in corrections to what was initially determined.) There could have been sessions that happened that were not noted at the time of the 1st letter.

Hit enter too soon... My other thought is this is retaliation or they don't have the staff to accommodate students during state testing so they just take the accommodations off of the IEP so they don't have to do it. (Providing accommodations are a huge PITA for school to do.) I agree with you that a student's accommodations should be consistent. If they have it for a class test, it should be the same for state testing, PSATs, SATs, ACTs... If you have data to remove an accommodation from state testing, it should be removed from other testing too.

I'm not sure if this is an option given you are in mediation. My thought is that changes to an IEP need to be based on data. I'd request what data the school had in order to remove the accommodations your child relied on. This should be an IEP team decision that was discussed at an IEP meeting that you attended where you could voice your concerns over the removal of the accommodations. From my perspective, this is a procedural violation that a state complaint should be dealing with. (You want the state DOE involved so they can make sure this isn't happening to other students in his district.) If you had posted this while you were dealing with the situation, my suggestion would have been to ask to see what data they have to remove the accommodation and to put the accommodation back on the IEP with a no meet revision given the was not a discussion point at his IEP meeting.