I have an 8 year old in second grade who can now walk around after 80 different corrective surgeries. He has popliteal pterygium syndrome with his knees in a contracted position. His left leg is much shorter than the right. He is extremely tired when he walks for a long period of time. He also has a cleft plate and cleft lip so his speech can be difficult to understand.
The school removed him from an IEP because they said his physical disability no longer affects his educational performance.
Change of Placement
Removing your child from the IEP is a change of placement.
The school cannot unilaterally change placement without the entire team agreeing to it. Parents must be involved in placement decisions.
Your child’s disability category or label or severity of the disability – See more at: https://www.wrightslaw.com/blog/?p=5769#sthash.kVZJ6U9r.dpuf
Did you sign the IEP? You don’t have to.
You can disagree with the IEP. The school needs to provide you with a prior written notice letter explaining why they want to do this. 34 C.F.R. § 300.503.
IDEA 2004 requires the IEP team to formally and logically accept or reject any suggestions that a member of an IEP team makes.
Written Documentation
Did you request an evaluation in writing (including your consent to evaluate) or sign the school’s consent form? Once you have given consent, the school has to perform the evaluation in 60 days. Read more about Starting the Clock on School Evaluations.
Fatigue and speech do impact educational performance. Collect your data. Get documentation from your physicians that will help your cause.
Be sure you provide this information to the school. Document when this was done.
Write a letter to Special Ed Director and/or school board.
Time for a Complaint?
If you get no response from the school district, you may want to consider filing a State Complaint or, as a last resort, requesting Due Process.
This just happened to my son before the end of the school and we just found this out. Son has Autism and had an IEP but he made such great progress on his goals. This was due to him proper services in place. School decided in writing that he was being removed from the IEP and getting no services. We were flabbergasted by this decision. We don’t want our son to struggle. We replied to the school that we wanted a meeting to discuss the matter. School responded there is nothing to discuss and we do not need to meet. Our minds are made up and that is it. What should be my next step in getting my son the help he needs?
IDEA gives parents the right to use dispute resolution processes to challenge decisions. Your state parent training and information can help you understand these processes and how to access them. http://www.parentcenterhub.org/find-your-center
There’s a very good article on this issue here on Wrightslaw: https://www.wrightslaw.com/heath/elig.eval.read.htm
The bottom line is that the school did a comprehensive evaluation to determine your child’s eligibility, and they need to do a comprehensive evaluation to determine his in-eligibility. Comprehensive means much more than a report card. Schools sometimes ignore the functional areas where kids with autism struggle – social skills, expressive language, daily living skills, that aren’t assessed in academic report cards.
Try to find an advocate (in my state we have many highly skilled free advocates)…the link Chuck posted should have links to these services. And do everything in writing when communicating with the school!