IEP: The Saga Continues

I get into work and check my email.  I find that the parent finally called my supervisor back and gave the dates that I needed to complete the home instruction board approval.  I quickly type it up and submit it.  After I drop that off to the proper channels, I zip on over to my school to see what the IEP says the incoming student needs as far as services are concerned.

I drop my stuff in the office, pop on over to the main office and grab the paperwork.  I look it over and see resource classes for language arts and math.  Even with this news, I'm still stuck because I can't find out the number of students in each section of those classes because of the primitive method of scheduling that exists.  I attempt to contact one of my supervisors who deals with the scheduling and creation of these sections based on need and they aren't in yet.  I shoot an email off to her and then spend the rest of my time at the school checking the email history to see if it has been read yet.

My OCD like clicking is interrupted when I'm informed that the parent for said student is in the main office.  I meet with the parent and discuss the hold up and promise to have information for her by the end of the work day, with the hope that I can get their child in to classes tomorrow.  Then I return to my office and press the mouse button like a lab monkey attempting to get another hit of cocaine.  After a few minutes of this, I remind myself "a watched pot yadda yadda yadda."  If this saying has fallen out of common use, I'll put it here in full: "A watched pot never boils."

So I proceed to finish scheduling teachers for IEP meetings next week and craft my apologetic email informing them of the meeting.  While I'm doing this, I get a visit from the guidance counselor.  She asks me about a student that is on my coworker's caseload.  From her description, the child has been experiencing a lot of anxiety/school avoidance behaviors, including an incredible fear of male teachers.  We talk about it for a bit with little resolution since, from the description, the student may need more services than in-school counseling and I would want to talk to my coworker who is the case manager of record.  There are no indicators that the student is a danger to himself or others, so it is something that can sit until tomorrow.

A short time later, a teacher comes knocking at my door and introduces herself.  We talk for a bit and she brings up that she is the school's testing coordinator for the state and district assessments.  She brings up the need for the testing accommodations and I tell her that we've already received the paperwork that needs to be completed and submitted to the district testing coordinator.  The teacher appears happy with this answer and goes about her day.

My time is almost up at the school.  I check to see if my supervisor has checked her email, see that she hasn't, and I decide that I can do more damage from my office back at home base.  I tell the school secretary that I will call her as soon as I have instructions and head back to mission control by way of Wendy's.

After I assault my temple (okay, more like a condemned building) with that food, I attempt to locate my supervisor and find out that they had a half day and hadn't come in yet.  I am then struck by brilliance...or the cheap facsimile my mind passes off as brilliance...and realize that my coworker has the schedules that I need and find the appropriate binder.  I look over the class rosters and check with the law to make sure about legal limits for class sizes and then speak with my boss of bosses since I don't want to wait any longer and want to put this thing to bed.  My boss thinks it is a good plan and I should go ahead with it.  I walk out of her office and run right into the person I had been hoping to see all morning.  So I decide to go over it with her and I learn a few things about the 5th grade.

First, the 5th grade has teams.  They try to pair up teachers so that they all work with the same group of kids across all their academics.  Not just special ed teachers but regular teachers too.  I don't blame my boss of bosses (I really should just start referring to this person as my director to help avoid confusion.  Dear readers, please remind me if I forget) for not knowing this since it is a little bit of a detail that isn't under her direct purview.  And now the big lesson: there are two teams that have resource math and language arts.  These resource classes are double periods.  One team has their resource classes filled to capacity.  The other team isn't filled but someone went and scheduled the one period of the resource math with one period of the resource language arts making it impossible for a student that needs resource for both to be scheduled for both on that team.

My supervisor stares at the schedule in amazement that this could happen, especially when she had gone to great lengths to make sure that this didn't happen.  It appears something changed at the school level.  As she asks the rhetorical "how could this happen", I provide the psychological answer: expediency.  That someone at the school level needed something else from the schedule and changed the schedule without notification.

After looking at our options, we decide on a game plan and I attempt to call the secretary to get the schedule made.  I only get a voice mail.  It is very close to quitting time.  I craft an email detailing the plan and send it to the secretary, the principal, and my supervisor.  I also call the family to meet me at the school tomorrow morning so that we can finish this travesty.  With that I leave for the day.

I get home and greet my family.  As my child is attempting to get my attention, the house phone rings.  At first we think it is the district's automated system calling to remind us of the board meeting (I don't live in the town I work in...that is a subject I have an opinion on that I'll leave for another day) but since I'm in the snow chain, I get these messages as well.  I then notice that the call is actually from my office building.  I answer the phone and it is my supervisor.  She tells me that the building principal had concerns about the plan we had developed and had proposed an alternative because another student had moved out of district and we can now put the student in the first team.  This is all done to the background noise of my child wanting me to help build a road.  My supervisor seems to quickly end the phone call and I think it is because she hears the chaos that is going on around me.