IEP Day

My day starts off with three IEP meetings.  Two of them are actual meetings while the last one is an attempt but two thirds is actually a good turn out.  One is done over the phone since the parent reported that they never received the invitation but the letter was sent to the correct address.  The other one was with the parents that showed up on Monday.  In the case of the latter, the funny thing is that they showed up three days early but, today, they showed up 10 minutes late.  Even the parents joked about it.  Still, it was good times.

I have an interesting discussion with the parents of the second meeting.  One parent works for the state child protective services (okay, okay, I'm blatant about this being a New Jersey blog.  I'll just call it DYFS, it sounds like Dreyfuss without the "r").   This parent asks me the process of referring a student for an evaluation, particularly in the case where DYFS is the custodian/guardian.  I explain that we have had the DYFS caseworkers make the written request in lieu of the the parent (wow, "lieu" didn't get a red underline, I thought that was an iffy guess on my part).

I think I'm starting to grok the idea of having the office in the school.  I've been amazed at how productive I've been since spending time there.  It has really reduced a lot of distractions for me.  Not only was I able to have the IEPs for these meetings 90% prepared but after the two meetings, I was able to finish those IEPs and have them ready to print out.

I think my original distaste for having an office in a school came from my previous district where students constantly showed up out of the blue and the administration was constantly calling for my presence for the most minor things.  "Can you come down here?  X got kicked out of class for not doing what Mister/Misses Y told them to do."  Really?  How about working with the teacher on better classroom management strategies?  Or give the student a detention.  The situation doesn't warrant a debate.  Sometimes students just need to be told the rules.

So since I'm in a school/district where the administration has a clearer vision of discipline and boundaries, these sorts of situations don't come up nearly as often.  Sometimes, just the reverse occurs: "You suspended them for 15 days and didn't call me?  I have to do a manifestation determination to see if this is related to their disability."  But this doesn't happen nearly as often as the former did in my previous district.

So, as I said, I'm actually able to get more work done at the school.  And thinking about my eventual move to my new office, perhaps the isolation from the rest of the department will also benefit me.

After my meetings, and doing the related paperwork, I return to home base (although having multiple offices makes it difficult to keep them straight when I'm writing about them).  I speak to my supervisor about the application for services from a parent.  The one that I mentioned yesterday that had the wording "physical basis."  I show the application to her and she has the same reaction: that looks like something that a medical doctor needs to sign.  She advises me to talk to the director.  So since the director is out until Monday, I call the agency that gave the parent the application.  I make sure that this hold up won't cause the application to expire.  Once I get that reassurance, I call the parent and explain the situation.  The parent is very understanding and I tell her that I will call with an update as soon as I speak with the director.  Now that I think about it, I'll have to call the agency again just to get clarification about their application form.

I should note that I looked over the student's evaluations and previous IEPs and don't see anything in there that makes me think that they would technically be eligible for the services from this agency.

After lunch, it is time for another IEP meeting.  This one isn't mine, I'm just along for the ride.  My coworker likes to bring someone along because she is still getting used to working in a school environment and likes to have a sounding board when uncertain about the law.

My presence came in handy because there was a question about how to discontinue occupational therapy: did the student need a formal evaluation or was the report from the OT stating that the student had met their goals and was recommended to discontinue enough.  I used the precedence that speech therapists had done the latter (wow, I'm getting some mileage with "former" and "latter" today) in the case of students receiving speech.  The only times that this really triggers a formal evaluation is in a case where a student that is eligible under communication impaired is determined to no longer need speech.  Then we need to evaluated to see if the student continues to be eligible for any special education services under another category.

The meeting is a long one.  Mostly due to the fact that the parents need a translator.  For the newbies out there that don't speak a second language: if you are going to have a meeting that requires a translator, count on that meeting taking up to twice as long as an average meeting.

Following this, we return to home base and I finish out the day printing IEPs and putting the out for copying and mailing.  Overall, a good day.

With my boss away for a long weekend, we do not have a department meeting tomorrow, so the inmates are running the asylum.  Toga!  Toga!

Just kidding.