Anyone care to play IEP Meeting or related email or phone call BINGO?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reading this thread makes me roll my eyes out of my head. The school is not your enemy. Believe it or not, they want to help your kid.

Agree

Have been on both sides for many years on each. The majority of people have decent intentions, but they also have to keep a job and are torn. There are also true gems. Also though, there are absolutely people in the system who hide behind the "I help people with disabilities so I must be a saint" mask and are downright corrupt/unethical. It is sometimes that the person is just emotionally immature, but also there are definitely egomaniacs in the system who abuse what little power they have until they mess with the wrong parent. Among the higher positions there are too many who will lie or gaslight and the story changes when you challenge them enough. You must be an informed consumer and not trust that everyone has the best intentions. You treat them as innocent until proven guilty, but don't be naive, especially when it comes to admin and above.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
"We are still waiting for <key personnel here> to join us" 20 minutes late when the meeting will end after 45 minutes because their free zoom sub cuts out..

Anyone brave enough to hold the meeting until an entire IEP team is present?

I could not believe how meetings occur with people going in and out.

You guys know..the team members are coming from teaching your kid right !? Like… they have to be in the classroom at times, not just in hours and hours of meetings. They’re doing their best to be on time.

I am the person who posted the comment re on time.
I am not kidding on this experience - we had moved from a Charter to DCPS and this was the meeting to adjust the IEP.
The meeting was scheduled for before school started (the school picked this time)
Parents and special education coordinator were the only ones in the conference room at the time when the IEP meeting began.
OT came in - apologizes for being late and discussed section (goal and services)
In the middle of the OT, gen ed teacher arrived - apologizes for being late.
OT left - shortly there after the Special Education teacher arrived.
Started going through academic goals.
Gen Ed teacher left as she did not have coverage
Continue going through academic goals
Counselor arrives - go through goals
Counselor leaves - needs to help a student

We get to the part of the meeting to discuss services. Only to realize that the draft document the school sent was not the document that was being reviewed.
As the services that they were proposing were materially different than in the draft that they sent.

So we needed to have another meeting to go over everything.

The experience I just described was not uncommon at our school for families that did not have an advocate with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reading this thread makes me roll my eyes out of my head. The school is not your enemy. Believe it or not, they want to help your kid.

Agree

Have been on both sides for many years on each. The majority of people have decent intentions, but they also have to keep a job and are torn. There are also true gems. Also though, there are absolutely people in the system who hide behind the "I help people with disabilities so I must be a saint" mask and are downright corrupt/unethical. It is sometimes that the person is just emotionally immature, but also there are definitely egomaniacs in the system who abuse what little power they have until they mess with the wrong parent. Among the higher positions there are too many who will lie or gaslight and the story changes when you challenge them enough. You must be an informed consumer and not trust that everyone has the best intentions. You treat them as innocent until proven guilty, but don't be naïve, especially when it comes to admin and above.

You are describing the special education coordinator at our elementary school!
The damage this person did to many children is beyond words.
Denied service to kids who were clearly in need.
The downstream mental health support the parents needed to provide in order to "fix" this should be a class action.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
"We are still waiting for <key personnel here> to join us" 20 minutes late when the meeting will end after 45 minutes because their free zoom sub cuts out..

Anyone brave enough to hold the meeting until an entire IEP team is present?

I could not believe how meetings occur with people going in and out.

You guys know..the team members are coming from teaching your kid right !? Like… they have to be in the classroom at times, not just in hours and hours of meetings. They’re doing their best to be on time.

I am the person who posted the comment re on time.
I am not kidding on this experience - we had moved from a Charter to DCPS and this was the meeting to adjust the IEP.
The meeting was scheduled for before school started (the school picked this time)
Parents and special education coordinator were the only ones in the conference room at the time when the IEP meeting began.
OT came in - apologizes for being late and discussed section (goal and services)
In the middle of the OT, gen ed teacher arrived - apologizes for being late.
OT left - shortly there after the Special Education teacher arrived.
Started going through academic goals.
Gen Ed teacher left as she did not have coverage
Continue going through academic goals
Counselor arrives - go through goals
Counselor leaves - needs to help a student

We get to the part of the meeting to discuss services. Only to realize that the draft document the school sent was not the document that was being reviewed.
As the services that they were proposing were materially different than in the draft that they sent.

So we needed to have another meeting to go over everything.

The experience I just described was not uncommon at our school for families that did not have an advocate with them.

This was my experience until the 2nd meeting where an advocate was with me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
"We are still waiting for <key personnel here> to join us" 20 minutes late when the meeting will end after 45 minutes because their free zoom sub cuts out..

Anyone brave enough to hold the meeting until an entire IEP team is present?

I could not believe how meetings occur with people going in and out.

You guys know..the team members are coming from teaching your kid right !? Like… they have to be in the classroom at times, not just in hours and hours of meetings. They’re doing their best to be on time.

I am the person who posted the comment re on time.
I am not kidding on this experience - we had moved from a Charter to DCPS and this was the meeting to adjust the IEP.
The meeting was scheduled for before school started (the school picked this time)
Parents and special education coordinator were the only ones in the conference room at the time when the IEP meeting began.
OT came in - apologizes for being late and discussed section (goal and services)
In the middle of the OT, gen ed teacher arrived - apologizes for being late.
OT left - shortly there after the Special Education teacher arrived.
Started going through academic goals.
Gen Ed teacher left as she did not have coverage
Continue going through academic goals
Counselor arrives - go through goals
Counselor leaves - needs to help a student

We get to the part of the meeting to discuss services. Only to realize that the draft document the school sent was not the document that was being reviewed.
As the services that they were proposing were materially different than in the draft that they sent.

So we needed to have another meeting to go over everything.

The experience I just described was not uncommon at our school for families that did not have an advocate with them.

Similar to our DCPS experience as well. DCPS is extremely disorganized and doesn’t really try to coordinate meetings. My strategy now is to do the work before & after meetings with calls, emails and editing drafts. I did manage to get a draft on time for our last IEP meeting but that’s only because I did a TON of emailing and basically designed a timeline they could follow.