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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“We don’t agree with the diagnosis” says iep team member with zero medical education of three different MD/PhD evaluations of DCs complex medical diagnosis…

OMG! I experienced that, too! WTF! I asked that statement be documented in the notes. I then stopped the meeting and asked that we reconvene when a Central Office Administrator/PSL could attend.

Again, rockstar response! I completely lose my presence of mind when confronted by this kind of stupidity, and don't know what to say. I ended up just opening and closing my mouth like a gasping fish while I think what to say. It would never have occurred to me in a million years to demand that such a statement be documented in the record (even though I was always recording) and ask to suspend the meeting at that instance, pending continuation with central. Because, I mean HTF could anyone continue an IEP meeting with a team member who is so obviously ignorant?

Again, thanks for sharing your award winning response.

I am not this amazing parent - but wanted to share a strategy.
I have post-its written and stuck on the inside of my IEP binder with Key Phrases to help me have words in the moment.
Examples:
if he is not meeting his goals, shouldn't we be thinking about changing the services?
Can you tell me - what researched based intervention is being used?
This is overwhelming and I need to take a 5 minute break
I did not catch that, can you please repeat it so I can write it down.
So are you saying ......?

11:30 here. This an EXCELLENT strategy! Wish I'd known it back in the day!

[Anonymous]

This wasn’t on my bingo card but… finding out during the IEP meeting that the school did an OT eval without our knowledge and despite us saying we were *not* concerned about fine motor skills. In a shocking turn of events, the OT therapist agreed with us that his fine motor skills are exactly where they should be, if not accelerated. She seemed confused to even be in the meeting (as were we).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Autistic child was denied speech therapy because he can make most sounds. (cannot make a sh or th to this day, or have a normal conversation)

That is reprehensible. I would go up the ladder for that one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Autistic child was denied speech therapy because he can make most sounds. (cannot make a sh or th to this day, or have a normal conversation)

That is reprehensible. I would go up the ladder for that one.

Helped us make the decision to go private. The stress of fighting was so much more than figuring out other solutions. I know parents who spent thousands on lawyers. That money is better spent on therapy.

[Anonymous]

I get emails from the Principal of the School every Sunday as a part of her weekly newsletter - and there is always the phrase "You Belong Here" imbedded in a graphic in the newsletter. When you go onto the school website, the phrase and graphic pops up.
However, when I request to observe my child's program, every excuse is made for why it cannot occur.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To the person who said this is just horrible and the person who said to spend our energy changing the funding for sped:

I have been on both sides of the table and posted before. I can see parents treated horribly and members of the team lying. I have also seen parents misbehave, but that is for you to vent about on a different thread.

Also, I do think more money would help solve the problem because we could get rid of the bottomdwellers if there was competition. The problem is some people have remained in the system too long and get away with A LOT so they waste money. If sped got more money there would need to be more accountability and not just someone making up paperwork. There would need to be ways to assess competence and quality of service. A LOT of money is wasted on useless services and programs.

For now, though my $$$ goes toward outside interventions and my time goes toward balancing work, my kids, my marriage and my impossible elderly issues with inlaws/parents.

Agree. We did a back of the napkin calculation on one accommodation we asked for. It would cost MCPS approximately $3k a year assuming taxes. It likely would only be needed for 3 years. Let’s say $10k total. Instead of the minor accommodation which they said “they can’t fulfill”, MCPS opted to send us to a non-public which costs $50k + per year. Multiply by let’s say 10 years plus conservative inflation with modest price increase each year is roughly: $600,000.

So they said “no” to a $10k solution but yes to a $600k one….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the person who said this is just horrible and the person who said to spend our energy changing the funding for sped:

I have been on both sides of the table and posted before. I can see parents treated horribly and members of the team lying. I have also seen parents misbehave, but that is for you to vent about on a different thread.

Also, I do think more money would help solve the problem because we could get rid of the bottomdwellers if there was competition. The problem is some people have remained in the system too long and get away with A LOT so they waste money. If sped got more money there would need to be more accountability and not just someone making up paperwork. There would need to be ways to assess competence and quality of service. A LOT of money is wasted on useless services and programs.

For now, though my $$$ goes toward outside interventions and my time goes toward balancing work, my kids, my marriage and my impossible elderly issues with inlaws/parents.

Agree. We did a back of the napkin calculation on one accommodation we asked for. It would cost MCPS approximately $3k a year assuming taxes. It likely would only be needed for 3 years. Let’s say $10k total. Instead of the minor accommodation which they said “they can’t fulfill”, MCPS opted to send us to a non-public which costs $50k + per year. Multiply by let’s say 10 years plus conservative inflation with modest price increase each year is roughly: $600,000.

So they said “no” to a $10k solution but yes to a $600k one….

It's just not well run. On any level. There's no accountability for anything, except what they are legally forced to do.


Many people have good intentions, but the system itself is unsustainable.

[Anonymous]

Your DS is so smart that when the teachers can’t understand what he’s saying (significant speech impediment caused by partially paralyzed tongue), he just writes it down now. I’m not convinced an IEP is necessary any longer. I’m sorry… what? He’s 5 and, while making substantial progress, is still only 1/3rd intelligible to strangers.

[Anonymous]

Regarding a teacher or admin wasting time bragging, our older son once had a SN teacher/case manager who bragged multiple times to her and once to me and my husband in an IEP meeting that her father won an award from the UN. I wrote a paper in college about the years of corruption in the UN from terrorist ties to embracing dictators and my brother in law worked for UN Watch at one point. This was long before the world finally accepted that UNRWA had thousand of terrorist members and supporters and was teaching hate. This teacher was born and raised in a country known for human rights violations and she was not good with our child. My husband and both had to bite our tongues, but if anything her brag made us just side-eye her and distrust her more and hope that our kid got a different case manager the next year.

[Anonymous]

“We just don’t see it”

[Anonymous]

“We need to do more testing and we will meet again in (an unacceptable amount of time)”

After testing had been done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“We need to do more testing and we will meet again in (an unacceptable amount of time)”

After testing had been done.

Yep and don't trust the testing if they are determined to not give your kid the service. I had one specialist teach my kid to the test-exact questions so suddenly his scores had skyrocketed at re-eval. She said the questions were the exact same ones they worked on in session the past 2 months.Hoe do you ever prove that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Autistic child was denied speech therapy because he can make most sounds. (cannot make a sh or th to this day, or have a normal conversation)

That is reprehensible. I would go up the ladder for that one.

+1. Langley denied speech therapy for my autistic/ADHD/anxiety DD. "She's not bad enough".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a parent of a SN kid with an IEP and I’m a speech therapist with the schools. We just do t have the resources or enough staff to meet your demands. Even if you bring an advocate and get them the accommodations/service times you want-guess what, there won’t be compliance. It’s just not humanly possible.

We spend most our time on legal documentation and paperwork and very little on the kids. People falsify the minutes they give. The quality of the therapy and teaching is horrific. It’s a mess.

Let me be frank:
If you have a concern you want addressed for your child, do it though private therapy outside schools. No one will ever say that to you, but that is just the reality. Forget the advocates. Save your money and time and take your kids to therapy or tutors afterschool.

+1 I’m a special Ed teacher with one child with a 504 and another with an IEP. You can spend your time, effort and money fighting the school team, but don’t think if it gets written in the IEP that the service is being delivered with any kind of quality. The sped teachers and service providers have way too many kids on their caseloads, and often have to form groups that aren’t a great match to get to all their students. Your energy is much better spent finding quality private providers, and your child will receive more benefits from a more personalized approach. I know many will say that the schools are required to provide services no matter what, but when there are no staff and not enough time in the day/week, you can complain all you want to as many supervisors you want, nothing will change because it’s not possible.

This is all well and good but by the end of the day my child is so burnt out by holding it together for ineffective instruction and challenging classroom dynamics that she is no longer cognitively available for outside support. She can barely manage to fix herself a snack let alone sit for phonics remediation. She’s had it at that point. We have the money for the intervention but our kid can’t participate because masking all day in a nonsupportive environment has taken all her bandwidth and confidence.

That’s why we are looking at private. We can’t get there with just outside tutoring. My kid doesn’t have the capacity to do a swing shift relearning what she should have learned at school.

[Anonymous]

Swing = second. Second shift.