Mandi: I requested an IEP meeting for my son in January. The school has been fighting me, extended time to collect more data. My son has ADD and Aspergers and has been having serious meltdowns, 2 a day. He refuses to do work, gets stuck on topics, etc. At the meeting they combined all kinds of data like work quality, raising his hand, together with behavior & meltdowns so it raised his score to 79% a day. He could not score lower than a 33% because there were no 0’s possible. All the team did was talk about plans for collecting more data, set a meeting for the last week in April, 2 weeks before school lets out. They asked teacher if his behavior was getting better, she said “no, worse.” They rephrased it and said “you have a lot of good adaptions in place that are working” and the teacher was like “yes.” So I feel like they are trying to drag this out and avoid an IEP while skewing data. How can I fight this? I had no idea they could even just avoid the word “IEP” all of the sudden and move forward.
Did you request the IEP meeting in writing? We normally send a letter to the special ed director certified mail and then sent copies to the principal and teacher. They need to respond within 5 business days. ( you need to put that request at the bottom of your letter). You can request meetings in the summer because the administrators do not leave for summer. They will tell you that the teacher does not have to comply in the summer due to the union rules. They are correct however there is a form that you can sign to “exempt the regular ed teacher” from the meeting. As long as the school has that signature from you they can have a meeting without the regular ed teacher and not stall all summer as well. We have done this successfully.
My suggestion:
– From this point forward do everything in writing, and keep copies.
– Ask for an evaluation for special education services in writing. In my state this starts a timeline for the IEP meeting to discuss eligibility. Research your state and remind your school of the timeline (whatever it is).
– If the evaluations are inadequate, research asking for an independent educational evaluation (IEE). If you can afford it, pay for one yourself.
– When you have the results from the outside evaluations schedule (another) IEP meeting.
– Research placing unilaterally with 10 days’ notice
What I see locally is that if you do not use the right phrases in writing the schools use this to drag things out by saying that you asked for the “wrong” things.