Reply to Who at MCPS will help if a high school is not implementing a 504

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]MCPS high school counselor here. I would start by reaching out to your child's school counselor and/or assistant principal or grade level administrator. (The school counselor is likely your child's 504 case manager.) When you reach out, it's helpful to email some specific examples of how your child's teacher isn't implementing their 504 accommodations. This will make it much easier for the counselor to follow up with the teacher and, if necessary, the resource teacher for that department. As a counselor, I always prefer receiving these communications in writing, so that if I need to elevate a concern, I have written documentation to share with our building leadership.

I'm not sure how many folks in the building you've talked to. If you ever feel like you've reached the end the road in terms of reaching out to people at school, you should contact MCPS's 504 Compliance team: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/special-education/compliance/section-504.aspx

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OP here. Thank you all. I’m really so upset. The counselor said it’s up to the Assistant Principal and there were so many complaints about the teacher they’ve decided not to let anyone switch. The 504 is meaningless it appears.

The counselor said her hands are tied and she can’t help. She seems nice but she’s also new. She asked if I still wanted to pursue this after being rejected. I said I’ll pursue it until it’s fixed. She said they’d tell the teacher but I don’t see how he can improve his English that fast! She means well but she’s not going to be able to help it seems.

I have documented it all in correspondence with the teacher, head of the department, the counselor, the assistant principal and the 504 contact in compliance. I just feel so awful - my kid said he feels stupid and like crying and throwing up all day. How can he ever take a test when he isn’t picking up any content? He is entitled to class notes in his 504 but my son didn’t ask because he said the teacher is really disorganized and writes over the slides so they aren’t legible. I said let’s get the actual notes and see what they look like. I bought the textbook and hired a tutor but why bother going to class at this point? MCPS gave up on my child and the other kids in the class. It’s so sad.

I also requested access to another teacher in the department at lunch and before school so he has some resource for that class other than me!

It’s unbelievable the school is not doing more yo help my son and the other kids affected. 
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OP, you seem confused about what a 504 does and doesn’t do. What it does is provide accommodations to help you student access the curriculum. In your case, you only indicated “copy of class notes” as an accommodation, which you then basically said your son refused. You son probably also has extended time, preferential seating, and maybe breaks. [b]What a 504 does NOT do is give your child special treatment to pick and choose teachers. There is no accommodation of “teacher doesn’t have an accent” or “teacher has neat handwriting”. [/b] While you aren’t getting what you want, that doesn’t mean the school is not meeting the 504. All you’ve done is identify yourself as an annoying parent.

So, let’s go back to the class notes problem. The purpose of that accommodation is to make sure that students have access to the content information provided in class, not a transcript of what happened in class. This could be the class slides, or the course textbook, or answer keys to worksheets. Such things are usually provided to everyone via Canvas nowadays. If that isn’t happening yet, that would be a place to ask the resource teacher to get the new teacher help with setting up. [b]But let’s be realistic, if all of that was available, is your student really going to review materials covered in class? [/b]

It sounds like your son has a lot of anxiety and you are only compounding it. I think you would be better working with your son to determine what resources he has available (textbook, slides, videos, etc.) for the content, and to then just focus on the instruction during class without feeling like he has to scramble to keep up with notes. You son can also take advantage of homework help or peer tutoring that the school offers, if he gets stuck on homework.[/quote]

Just want to say that the bold is not true.  My DC has a 504 plan with a “hand scheduling” accommodation. What that means is that the counselor sits down with my DC in August usually and they look at all possible scheduling combinations in terms of teacher and what time of day the class is offered. Then my DC is allowed to choose which class periods and which teachers she wants for her courses.  My DC had some medical issues, which I don’t really want to disclose here, but which are very common, and meant that she would do better in certain courses at certain times of day with certain kinds of teachers.

That DC did not have an auditory processing disorder, but I have another DC with auditory comprehension and processing issues, and I can easily imagine that that DC would have difficulty understanding a teacher with a strong accent to the point that asking for a hand-scheduling accommodation would be justified.

We have had problems before with teachers who have refused to provide copy of class notes before.  Of course, that is illegal.  A factually written letter to the Principal copied to the equity office pointing out the failure to provide the accommodation and saying that you would like the situation to be resolved swiftly so that you “on’t have to resort to your due process options”, which signals to the school that you may be willing to sue over the failure to accommodate.

I also want to say that it’s illegal to refuse to provide an accommodation stated in the 504 plan because the teacher thinks or the school thinks that the student wouldn’t use the provided accommodation. So where the PP says above “let’s be honest is your student really going to Review the class notes,” that is really a kind of disability discrimination. The better approach is to give the accommodation to the students, let the student use the accommodation overtime and see whether the accommodation is making an impact or not. Also while copy of class notes is an accommodation there are situations in which a student wants to turn down the accommodation because they don’t need it for that particular activity. That is not the same as never needing the accommodation.  It is also a form of disability discrimination to refuse or failed to provide access to classroom notes by justifying that the students can use some other support instead for example by saying that they can have a tutor or go to extra help. Disabled students have a right to access all of the same materials that non-disabled students can access.

And finally PPs post triggered me because we have experienced so much gaslighting abuse from the school — when the school tells us that our child doesn’t actually have a problem and that the problem is parental anxiety, or that our child doesn’t have a problem and is just anxious or overly emotional.  That kind of denigration is also a form of disability discrimination.

If you want a hand scheduling accommodation added to a 504 plan, OP, you would have to write an email to your case manager Asking for a meeting to update the 504 plan to include a suggested new accommodation. As usual at the 504 meeting you will have to provide evidence of disorder and impact on activities of daily living in order to justify the accommodation.

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If this is true, it's a made-up accommodation a counselor wrote on your paperwork because you were so intense it was easier to just give up and pass the crazy on. Spreading the rumor that this is a thing is awful. [/quote]

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