Lawyers, Students, and Money

Without the Money.  But this was the closest I could come to a Warren Zevon reference.  At least two out of the three apply.

Work begins with a visit to my assigned school to meet with my newest student and his mother.  They are much more prompt than the parent from earlier this week.  We talk about his previous program and changes to the program now that the student is in this school.  The parent is in agreement to have their child in a smaller setting for language arts.  We get through the meeting and I hand them off to the guidance counselor for their orientation.

I return to the office for Department Meeting Friday.  We are having a special guest today: our district special education lawyer.  She has come at our director's request for a Q&A session.  Among the subjects discussed are the next re-authorization of IDEA; the proper use of the amendment letter and when amend instead of revise (the former not requiring an actual meeting or new IEP); using a draft during an IEP meeting and being able to use the "sloppy" IEP as a final copy.

The most interesting is the rumor regarding the re-authorization: that the social worker and LDTC specialties will be eliminated since the school psychologists can do the educational evaluations (and in other states they do) as well as the social history evaluation.  The lawyer advises everyone not to get nervous about this because so much changes so quickly during the actual re-authorization that such an idea is unlikely to happen.  Even if it did: there would be such a lack of school psychologists that you wouldn't be able to find enough people to fill the gap.

We also talk about risk assessments and whether our risk assessment reports should be a part of the student's special education record/school record.  Some think that it should but I'm on the side that it shouldn't.  Those that think it should feel that it should go with the other CST evaluations.  My contention is that those evaluations are used to determine eligibility and a risk assessment isn't.  In addition, a risk assessment may involve the revelation of drug abuse which then add a whole other level of confidentiality the likes of which don't apply to the special education record.

The main concern by the staff that are for putting this information in the permanent school record feel that it would be helpful for those specialties that conduct risk assessment to be able to find out if a student has been the subject of previous risk assessment.  I am all for this.  When I worked as a mental health screener in psychiatric emergency services, our first step when receiving a call was to look up the client in our system to see if there was a previous history.  But there are other, more discreet ways to do this in a system where risk assessments are not our primary focus.

I bring up that I had recently taken all the risk assessments that were in my possession and had been done in the last two years into a binder for just such a purpose.  I did this because I had been called twice so far to see if someone had been seen previously.  So now this information is accessible to the staff that is responsible for risk assessments.  In addition to this, we all agree to put a note in the computer system when a student has been evaluated.

After our department meeting, which takes most of the day, I return to my office and my office mate reports that she had received a voice mail message from the student liaison (read dean of discipline) from the school we are assigned.  Apparently, one of my students got into a fight today.  The student's parent is coming in on Monday morning.  So it looks like I have my Monday morning planned out for me.  Enjoy the weekend.