klmno
Active Member
Ladies, I need your opinions and advice. This new sd and I are just not on the same page at all. I want to smooth things out but can't sit by and ignore the way they are appearing to me right now. I really don't want to go back to attny threats, advocates, etc, due to time off work required, money, and this being E's senior year. OK- these are my 3 concerns:
1) E was going for the advanced diploma which required foreign language and 4 credits each in the 4 academic core areas. He's in a sd where they take 4 classes per semester so they can take sequential courses over the school year. E is finishing up what the state requires for graduation this semester and was planning on taking those extra courses required for the advanced diploma in the spring semester. (This is all in his IEP) However, he had trouble memorizing all the spanish for Spanish 2 this semester and wants to forget the advanced diploma at this point and just get the standard. That means he's eligible for graduation with a standard diploma at the end of this semester. This sd, however, requires an extra class above the state requirements for graduation. If E stayed on path for the advanced diploma he would have been taking that class in the spring anyway.
The state DOE person emailed me with passages from state regs saying the sd cannot make a transfer student stay in school longer just to meet the local sd's extra requirements. The sd is holding fast that E's normal date of graduation would be the spring so they aren't holding him past graduation. The sd and state reps are supposed to discuss this and come to a resolution on Monday. What is frustrating me is WTH they would even care if E graduated after Fall semester. Can anyone explain this to me? They asked a million questions about his previous stint in Department of Juvenile Justice acting like they have to make sure they'll allow him to come to their mainstream school when in reallity, they had no legal right not to since he actually transferredf here from a mainstream schohol and has never been expelled or done any of the big no-no's at any school. So now they are acting like he'd be privileged to get to graduate from there when he's met the state requirements AND the sd's requirements that were in effect when he first started 9th grade, which according to regs are what is to determine that particular students' grad requirements????
2) E enrolled in the summer with a supposed guidadance counselor who is there only for kids on an IEP. When school started I had to call for 2 weeks just to get the Special Education coordinator of the school to assign E a CM and get the IEP ball rolling. Therefore tthe IEP mtg wasdn't held until 3 1/2 weeks after sd started (this past week)- their fault, not mine. They are claiming they had no idea he was on n IEP but admit that the IEP was provided to the guidance office at enrollment during the summer. Now, they are claiming they had to get special permission for E to drop spanish 2 class and switch to something else because it's past the withdrawing deadline. They are saying I HAVE to give approval for the 'new' class by Mon. for this to worrk due to the special permission they got but refuse to answer my questions about how grading will work. My gut reaction is that it is their problem because they are the ones who dropped the ball by not having the iep process in order and having a mtg before any of these deadlines for dropping a class. But what's the point of not just answering my questions so we can make an informed decision?
Specifically- they are saying they will transfer E's grade from spanish and that will count as his 1st of 4 grades for this new class. OK, but then the new class is going to make him do 40 pages of make-up work from what he missed by just now going into the class. My questions- how is that make-up work going to be graded and if it's required and graded, why is the spanish grade being transferred? They are dodging a direct answer but making it appear that the make-up work grades will be averaged in with the future course grades. That means E will come in with a lower grade he's stuck with, have to go back and do the work from the 1st few weeks anyway, and will have twice as much work as anyone else in the class for the future grades in the semester. Does that sound fair? This doesn't sound like an accommodation to help him to me but they are presenting it as a favor to E. His other choices are to go back and take Span 1 over (which is pointless because if he can't get thru Span 3 while in HS it does him no good) or continue in Span 2 and fail or take a 4th PE class, which he despises.
Again, they are saying they got special permission from the teachers and admin but this leads to my 3rd issue: isn't it supposed to be the IEP guiding the teachers' accommodations, not the other way around? Further, they had a draft IEP written when I showed up at the mtg and it was all behavior oriented because, he told me, "typically students on an iep for ED are on it due to behavior problems so he started with what he typically does, however, he didn't include a behavior plan for E right now because E isn't presenting a behavior problem". Well, any time they start with doing the typical I look at it like it's not a true IEP at all. E's previous 2 IEP's have not been focused on behavior because he hasn't been a behavior problem at sd in years. Secondly, what about his memory (auditory and visual recall) issues and tendency to want to over-achieve then crash when he can't meet his own perfectionist tendencies? Nothing at all in the draft IEP about that- although I think that is exactly what contributed to the current issue in Span class and these issues were in his previous 2 IEPs and his previous IEP re-evaluation, which is less than 3 years old.
On top of that, they are telling me to just hurry and make a decision about the class and "we'll deal with the IEP later". HUH?? So all decisions are to be made and committed to then we'll discuss IEP issues?
My take on them is this: they stereotype the students beyond belief and have very old-fashioned views/opinions about kids on an iep or who've been in Department of Juvenile Justice. (They are all poor, un-educated parents, grew up on welfare and food stamps, etc) They think the sd can do what they want and iep's are there to make kids conform to that. Kids are lucky to go to school and lucky if they get to graduate, even if the kid has met the requirements. I thought I was old-school in some ways but these people are wayyyy old-school thinking. The principal is old enough to have been one of my principals over 30 years ago. And I don't think they get the point of IEPs to begin with. They are emailing in a CYA mode and refusing to just stay on the questions I have asked but keep trying to put it all on my shoulders.
Sorry so long and thanks so much if you made it thru. I'll let the sd and state deal with the first concern but am wondering about your opinions on how to bridge this gap in our communications and just get something workable until E graduates, whether that's after this semester or in May.
1) E was going for the advanced diploma which required foreign language and 4 credits each in the 4 academic core areas. He's in a sd where they take 4 classes per semester so they can take sequential courses over the school year. E is finishing up what the state requires for graduation this semester and was planning on taking those extra courses required for the advanced diploma in the spring semester. (This is all in his IEP) However, he had trouble memorizing all the spanish for Spanish 2 this semester and wants to forget the advanced diploma at this point and just get the standard. That means he's eligible for graduation with a standard diploma at the end of this semester. This sd, however, requires an extra class above the state requirements for graduation. If E stayed on path for the advanced diploma he would have been taking that class in the spring anyway.
The state DOE person emailed me with passages from state regs saying the sd cannot make a transfer student stay in school longer just to meet the local sd's extra requirements. The sd is holding fast that E's normal date of graduation would be the spring so they aren't holding him past graduation. The sd and state reps are supposed to discuss this and come to a resolution on Monday. What is frustrating me is WTH they would even care if E graduated after Fall semester. Can anyone explain this to me? They asked a million questions about his previous stint in Department of Juvenile Justice acting like they have to make sure they'll allow him to come to their mainstream school when in reallity, they had no legal right not to since he actually transferredf here from a mainstream schohol and has never been expelled or done any of the big no-no's at any school. So now they are acting like he'd be privileged to get to graduate from there when he's met the state requirements AND the sd's requirements that were in effect when he first started 9th grade, which according to regs are what is to determine that particular students' grad requirements????
2) E enrolled in the summer with a supposed guidadance counselor who is there only for kids on an IEP. When school started I had to call for 2 weeks just to get the Special Education coordinator of the school to assign E a CM and get the IEP ball rolling. Therefore tthe IEP mtg wasdn't held until 3 1/2 weeks after sd started (this past week)- their fault, not mine. They are claiming they had no idea he was on n IEP but admit that the IEP was provided to the guidance office at enrollment during the summer. Now, they are claiming they had to get special permission for E to drop spanish 2 class and switch to something else because it's past the withdrawing deadline. They are saying I HAVE to give approval for the 'new' class by Mon. for this to worrk due to the special permission they got but refuse to answer my questions about how grading will work. My gut reaction is that it is their problem because they are the ones who dropped the ball by not having the iep process in order and having a mtg before any of these deadlines for dropping a class. But what's the point of not just answering my questions so we can make an informed decision?
Specifically- they are saying they will transfer E's grade from spanish and that will count as his 1st of 4 grades for this new class. OK, but then the new class is going to make him do 40 pages of make-up work from what he missed by just now going into the class. My questions- how is that make-up work going to be graded and if it's required and graded, why is the spanish grade being transferred? They are dodging a direct answer but making it appear that the make-up work grades will be averaged in with the future course grades. That means E will come in with a lower grade he's stuck with, have to go back and do the work from the 1st few weeks anyway, and will have twice as much work as anyone else in the class for the future grades in the semester. Does that sound fair? This doesn't sound like an accommodation to help him to me but they are presenting it as a favor to E. His other choices are to go back and take Span 1 over (which is pointless because if he can't get thru Span 3 while in HS it does him no good) or continue in Span 2 and fail or take a 4th PE class, which he despises.
Again, they are saying they got special permission from the teachers and admin but this leads to my 3rd issue: isn't it supposed to be the IEP guiding the teachers' accommodations, not the other way around? Further, they had a draft IEP written when I showed up at the mtg and it was all behavior oriented because, he told me, "typically students on an iep for ED are on it due to behavior problems so he started with what he typically does, however, he didn't include a behavior plan for E right now because E isn't presenting a behavior problem". Well, any time they start with doing the typical I look at it like it's not a true IEP at all. E's previous 2 IEP's have not been focused on behavior because he hasn't been a behavior problem at sd in years. Secondly, what about his memory (auditory and visual recall) issues and tendency to want to over-achieve then crash when he can't meet his own perfectionist tendencies? Nothing at all in the draft IEP about that- although I think that is exactly what contributed to the current issue in Span class and these issues were in his previous 2 IEPs and his previous IEP re-evaluation, which is less than 3 years old.
On top of that, they are telling me to just hurry and make a decision about the class and "we'll deal with the IEP later". HUH?? So all decisions are to be made and committed to then we'll discuss IEP issues?
My take on them is this: they stereotype the students beyond belief and have very old-fashioned views/opinions about kids on an iep or who've been in Department of Juvenile Justice. (They are all poor, un-educated parents, grew up on welfare and food stamps, etc) They think the sd can do what they want and iep's are there to make kids conform to that. Kids are lucky to go to school and lucky if they get to graduate, even if the kid has met the requirements. I thought I was old-school in some ways but these people are wayyyy old-school thinking. The principal is old enough to have been one of my principals over 30 years ago. And I don't think they get the point of IEPs to begin with. They are emailing in a CYA mode and refusing to just stay on the questions I have asked but keep trying to put it all on my shoulders.
Sorry so long and thanks so much if you made it thru. I'll let the sd and state deal with the first concern but am wondering about your opinions on how to bridge this gap in our communications and just get something workable until E graduates, whether that's after this semester or in May.
