Michelle: My 11 YO son (6th grade) should have received speech services 1Xweek, 30 min since the start of school in Aug 2015. I attended ARD meeting and learned he started receiving speech services in Feb 2016. Speech therapist was really defensive and rude, stated he had done well without services and he is due to reevaluation and he would probably not qualify. I stated he is doing good due to him being in a resource room with a small teacher:child ratio. What do I do to move forward and make sure this is not happening not only to my son but other kids in the district? What are my options?
I have a concern also. If my child has not been seen due to therapist being in other meetings, training or SLP absences, is the school district obligated to make up those sessions? I know they do not have substitutes for the speech therapist. We love our speech therapist and do not want her to be burdened with trying to cram kids together in a bigger group just to “meet” minutes. I don’t feel that would be beneficial for any of the students. Do we have any choices?
Yes, these missed sessions should be made up. How & when would be an administrative decision.
I have a similar question. My 11 yo 5th grader’s IEP that states 45 session @ 30 for 1350 min served yearly for SLP. Ind and Grp are checked and location is “Separate classroom in public integrated facility”. The IEP period is 4/20/2018-4/20/2019. As of 2/27/2019 the SLP has “completed” 19 sessions.(3 of which were school holidays, 5 that were logged as “Triennial Testing”). In the last 10 days she has been “seen” 8 times push-in (3 on the same day) and 1 group pull-out. First question, is testing considering a therapy session? Second question, can she see my child three times in one day? Also, I am not opposed to push-in, but based on the IEP, there shouldn’t be push-in, right? There is a lot wrong with the scenario, so any advice or input is greatly appreciated!!
Did some investigation. In California, a therapy session can be used for IEP assessments only after the parent/guardian has been clearly notified. Per the California Department of Education
THe school owes you the time that was lost & are out of compliance on the IEP. They need to come up with plan to do this and not in minutes attached to the 30 minutes but separate 30 minutes segments. Don’t sign the new IEP unless you are satisfied with it. The old IEP stays in place unless you sign the new IEP & since the existing IEP states speech is needed that would remain until you can come to an agreement. Remember if the school states they are not going to do something they must give you a “prior written notice” document explaining why they are doing this. They cannot just not do something without the legal documentation & they cannot unilaterally change something without your approval.
Regardless of what the therapist said, the school is responsible to provide the amount of service stated in the ARD/IEP. You can contact the special ed office about this & request compensatory service to make up for the missed time. This will alert this office that this may have happened to other students. You can let other parents know about this, but they will have to request compensatory services. You by yourself or with other parents could make a complaint to TEA about this & they can look into what happened. I work for the TX parent training & information center. You can check our website to determine the staff person that works with your area to assist you &/or others. http://www.PartnersTx.org