School District Special Education Games

One way that schools try to confuse parents when trying to develop an IEP for a student, is by throwing a LOT of information at them all at once. There is so much to know regarding the legalities of special education. Most parents don’t have a clue when a district is being honest or not. Or whether the district is actually acting in the student’s best interest. If the district has some nasty staff it can be easier to believe that there might be some thing to worry about when discussing a student’s needs. But if the district is full of lovely, smiling happy people it can be harder to figure out. Regardless of whether the school personnel are nice or nasty, an advocate can help go through all the information with the parents and help determine what is important and appropriate and what is just either fluff or inaccurate.

One way in which a district often helps delay providing services and supports is by having ineffective meetings. This can mean not having all necessary staff present or allowing staff to come or go early from a meeting. Another way is to only “allow” short meetings. “Our IEP meeting are only 45 minutes long”. This leads to parents not being allowed to meaningfully participate in the IEP process. Often times districts will provide new written material (assessments, data, etc) at a meeting and then immediately start discussing the information without allowing the parent time to read and digest the new information. This can be a huge waste of time for everyone but it is a strategy used by districts to push their own agenda along. Again, this tremendously impacts a parent’s ability to meaningfully participate in the entire IEP process. An advocate can help slow the process down, make sure all necessary staff come to (and remain) at IEP meetings and that any/all new information that is to be presented at a meeting will be distributed before the meeting so that the parent can read it all and be able to then discuss it intelligently.

School district sometimes complain that advocates add an adversarial element to a meeting. Obviously if the advocate is unkind or impolite, that can be true. But simply bringing an advocate to help support a parent through a very complex set of processes, is not inherently adversarial. And if the school sees it as such, that is unfortunate. As I have said to many parents “this is their job, but this is our life”. Make no excuses for holding a district to their federally mandated responsibility to educate your child. School staff come and go but we parents are in this to the end.

Talk to an advocate. Learn your rights.

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As parents, we understand, As advocates, we can help.

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