Reply to Including Parents in IEP Meetings

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Reply to "Including Parents in IEP Meetings"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Maybe her child is in a self contained class or school and the general Ed teacher has no contact with the child?

We had a series of summer IEP meetings when we were arguing over placement and FCPS just sent random general Ed teachers as placeholders to the meetings.[/quote]

Was there anyone at the meeting who had experience working with your child on a day to day basis?[/quote]

No. Even the special ed (preschool) teacher did not show up-they had someone there who was "token". No one at any of the several summer meetings had even met my child. Not surprisingly, they were unproductive.[/quote]

The problem with not having gen ed or sped teachers at the IEP meeting, particularly ones that know your child, is that you may have no one who can attest to "adverse educational impact" of the disorder or "need for special instruction," which are prongs 2 and 3 of qualifying for an IEP.  In such a situation, you may show up with paperwork from your psych/dr./neuropsych that proves "disorder" (prong 1), but your report testifies to educational impact in a tangential way, usually supposing impact from test results, or retelling examples of impact that a parent has provided.  Sometimes reports have narrative from a teacher form, but since these are usually checklists, it's hard to get concrete data on this.  Since neuropsychs are not educational experts, although they often suggest specific instructional approaches, their recommendations in this area can be rejected by IEP teams, who are required only to "consider" the outside report, not to "accept".

The school is obliged, under the law (IDEA), to have a general education teacher (if child is or may be in gen ed at all) and a special education teacher attend the IEP team as members.  There is nothing in IDEA (to my knowledge) that says that the gen ed or sped teacher has to be one that knows your child.

HOWEVER, you can leverage two other aspects of IDEA law to force the school to make teachers who know your child show up to the meeting.  1)  YOU, as the parent, have the right to invite whomever you want to the IEP meeting as "team" members.  I always invite teachers that know my DC and are sympathetic to our interests.  I issue the "invitation" in writing via email to the IEP team coordinator and CC to the teacher, saying that we would like the teacher to attend because he/she can describe performance levels and adverse impact of disorder on education and need for special instruction (or lack of progress with gen ed interventions).  It puts the school system in a VERY difficult position if the teacher you request doesn't participate in the meeting -- if an adverse decision is made against you without the presence of the teacher you requested, you have a very good case against the school system, particularly if the adverse decision had anything to do with failure to show adverse educational impact of the disorder or need for special instruction.

2)  You have a great deal of leverage to consent to the timing of a meeting.  NEVER consent to a meeting date without confirming who from the school system has agreed to attend that meeting date.  If the school system staffer you need to have present isn't on the tentative list, say that you can't consent to a meeting without key staff that you have invited, that parents have a right to invite people to the IEP team members, and that you can't participate as a full team member if the personnel you view as having key information aren't permitted to attend.

These tactics work better during the school year, since the bottom line is that teachers simply won't be around in the summer because they are on leave.  If the school system is forcing you to have a meeting during the summer and you view a teacher as key, you have some other options --

1)  get the teacher to document their observations/concerns in writing for input into the summer meeting. 
2)  ask for the summer meeting to be held during the teacher prep weeks prior to the start of school (usually about mid-August to first day of school) 
3)  agree to waive the IEP timeline to have the meeting held when you want it -- schools are under a lot of pressure, usually, to meet legal timelines.  However, you have the right to waive the timeline.  If you do so, I would be very narrow about it.... "I agree to waive the timeline for holding a determination meeting until XXX date (i.e. the date of your promised meeting.)" [/quote]

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