ࡱ> ^`]b L;jbjb (L5vvvvvvv     ; D> > > > > > > >  , R  v> > > > > vv> >  > v> v> D,vvvv> vv 2 M H j 0;   v D Follow Up Letters by Paula Flower, Advocate If you record your IEP meetings, dont let those recordings sit in a file collecting dust. Put them to good use! As Pete Wright says, Prepare AS IF you are going to go to Due Process that will help keep you OUT of Due Process. If you do end up in Due Process you will have increased your chances of winning. Pete also talks about the rule of adverse assumptions, which means assume and prepare for the worst. Assume youre going to go to Due Process and you wont be able to testify. How will you be able to tell the judge or Hearing Officer what happened in your IEP meeting if you cant testify? Your follow-up letter can testify for you. No matter how well you thought your IEP meeting went, write a follow-up letter re-stating what was discussed. You also want to write an accurate follow-up letter. This is where your recording of the IEP comes in handy. Take the time to sit down and listen to the recording of the meeting again and begin taking notes. They dont have to be fancy just bullet-pointed is fine pretend youre in an important lecture and you want to get the significant points the speaker is making. It will be easier taking the notes just listening to the recording than it would be when youre actually in the IEP meeting having to actively participate as well. If you used a digital recorder, indicate the time in your notes whenever you stop to take a break (this is very helpful if you are not able to finish your notes in one day or if you have many interruptions when taking notes. You will be able to go to the exact spot in the recording where you left off the next day or after an interruption.) Once you have your notes typed out, you can refer back to them and use them as the basis for your follow-up letter. I have three levels of follow-up letter that I write depending upon the situation: the first is the Follow-up letter expressing appreciation and asking for clarification. You write this type of letter if you and your school district were in agreement about most issues at your IEP, but you need to clarify a few details. For example, lets say you had an entire discussion about a 1:1 instructional assistant for your child. You discussed that this person would already have some previous experience working with children on the autism spectrum, and that additional training would be provided by the school district. When you take the time at home (you do not have to sign an IEP document *at* the meeting, and some states require no signature at all), to reread the IEP carefully, you see that it vaguely states, Mary will be provided with an aide. You want to clarify that. So you may write: Dear Special Education Director, For the educational record of Mary Jones, DOB: 4/1/1998 Thank you very much for meeting with me today to design an IEP for my daughter Mary. We discussed Marys evaluations, her present levels of functioning and performance, proposed goals and objectives, and services to help her meet those goals and objectives. The IEP team had a lengthy discussion regarding the 1:1 instructional assistant Mary is to have. Although the IEP document indicates that Mary will have an aide, the team also discussed and agreed that this person would have some previous experience working with children on the autism spectrum, and that the school district would provide 10 hours of additional training for this person with a contracted behavioral specialist. The IEP team agreed that this person would work 1:1 with Mary, and that she would be with Mary for the full length of the school day. Should this issue come up in the future, the details will have been documented. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My second level of follow-up letter is the Follow-up letter documenting disagreement with the IEP. This type of letter should be used when there were many issues with which you and the school district did not agree. The notes you made from your recording of the meeting will come in very handy here. Although this letter is also very cordial (all letters to the school district should be cordial), do not hesitate to document all the areas in which you disagreed with the rest of the IEP team. Dear Special Education Director, For the educational record of Mary Jones, DOB: 4/1/1998 Thank you very much for meeting with me today to design an IEP for my daughter Mary. We began by discussing the districts evaluations of Mary. Unfortunately, I disagreed with several of them. Several of the districts assessments, such as the psychological testing, the speech/language testing and the occupational therapy testing did not seem to accurately describe Mary. They seemed to indicate that Mary was functioning and performing at a significantly higher level than she truly is..(you can be a specific as you want to be, however federal law does not require parents to explain exactly why they disagree with a school districts evaluations). The district proposed four goals which I did not believe addressed all of Marys areas of need. I also proposed some additional goals in the areas of reading, writing, spelling and speech, however the district refused to consider adopting any of them saying that there would be too many The district proposed the following services: Mary would go to the Resource Room for one-half hour per day at which time she would work on 3 of her goals with the Resource Specialist, and it proposed speech therapy one time per week for 15 minutes to work on her one speech goal. I told the IEP team that despite what their evaluations say, when I read with Mary at home, Mary struggles to read material which is 2 years behind her grade level, is not able to spell age-appropriate words and struggles to write, and that I did not believe that one-half hour per day in the resource room would be sufficient to address this serious deficiency in Marys reading and writing skills. Mary also has significant communication difficulties as well as oral-motor problems and I do not believe that speech therapy one time per week for 15 minutes is adequate to address Marys need. I asked the IEP team to provide Mary with specialized reading instruction for a minimum of 90 minutes per day using an intervention which is research-based and scientifically proven to be effective for individuals with dyslexia, which is directly and explicitly taught, is sequenced, systematic and multi-sensory. I was told by Mrs. Smith, the resource specialist, that the school doesnt have a reading program like that. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Use the notes you made of the meeting from the recording to ensure that you have not left any important issues out. If there were many points of disagreement, it can be very difficult to rely solely on your memory when you write the follow-up letter. Using the notes from your recording also helps to keep the letter very factual. Follow-up letters should always be polite and factual, noting what was actually said. Keep written emotional outbursts out, such as, I couldnt believe it when Mrs. Smith said that the school had no research-based, scientifically proven reading intervention for individuals with dyslexia! What is wrong with this school? You are a Title I school and get extra money from Reading First, what are you doing with it? Ive noticed that the main office has been redecorated with ergonomic chairs and desks for everybody, is that where the money is going? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My third level of follow-up letter is the Partial Transcription Letter. The partial transcription letter can be used when you and your school district have major and significant disagreements, when youve had two or more IEP meetings which have already been less than productive, when you think the chances are high that you truly will file for Due Process, or when youve got a school district that flagrantly and blatantly flouts the law, doesnt seem to care, and tends to give you all sorts of inaccurate statements with regard to their responsibilities for educating your child. These are oftentimes school districts that make broad, blanket statements as to their procedures and policies in an IEP meeting. Statements such as, We dont do that here, We dont have that here, Our policy is that we __________, We do not have to consider Independent Educational Evaluations if we disagree with any of the recommendations, We have a no observation policy, etc. You will be transcribing some of these kinds of statements word-for-word in the partial transcription letter. I always begin my partial transcription letters in the same way: Dear Special Education Director, For the educational record of Mary Jones, DOB: 4/1/1998 Thank you for meeting with me to design an IEP for my daughter Mary. Present at the 3/15/07 IEP meeting were: yourself, Ms. Gray, Mrs. White, Mr. Green, Dr. Black and myself. Ms. Gray, the general education teacher, was only present for the first five minutes of the meeting, signed the IEP and left. My notes are based on the recording of the IEP. You began the meeting by asking Mr. Green, the Adaptive PE teacher for his report on Mary. Mr. Green explained that at the beginning of the year Mary was somewhat challenging to work with, and had some behavioral problems, always wanting to debate the instructions he was giving to the class. Mrs. White, the speech/language pathologist interrupted Mr. Green at this point and at approximately 12 minutes into the meeting said, We all know how belligerent Mary can be, you just have to tell her to shut up and move on. Mr. Green replied that he tried to go about it in a nicer way than that, and Mrs. White said, You dont have to be nice about it, just tell her to shut up and thatll be the end of it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You will not transcribe absolutely every word from the recording, but you will transcribe exactly, any particularly outrageous statements such as above, or those blanket statements, as noted previously, and attribute them to who said them. If you used a digital recorder which indicates the length of meeting time, you may even want to indicate how many minutes into the meeting the person said what they said. That will help if you want to go back at a later time and actually listen to what the person said again. Partial transcription letters can be fairly lengthy, 10 to 12 pages for a 2 hour IEP, however that is usually shorter than transcribing the entire IEP meeting, which can reach 20 to 30 pages for a 2 hour IEP. If you think it is highly likely that you are going to file for Due Process, think of this letter as testifying for you. You must also adversely assume that your school district will try to disallow the recording of the IEP meeting to be admitted into evidence. Even if they are successful in that endeavor, your partial transcription letter, which you have sent to the school district stating that it is for your childs educational record and therefore must be included as part of your childs educational record, will still have hit the highlights (or perhaps we should say lowlights) of the IEP meeting. The follow-up letter can be very time-consuming to write; my general rule of thumb is to figure on triple the amount of time of the length of the actual IEP meeting (so the letter documenting a 2 hour IEP meeting will likely take you about 6 hours to write). Rest assured however, the IEP meeting follow-up letter is vitally important and should never be thought of as a waste of time. Lastly, familiarize yourself with your states laws on recording conversations. I hear from many parents that their school district refuses to allow the IEP meeting to be recorded. Check to see if your state is an all parties consent state or not. (see chart). Check your states statute and regulations to see if they allow the recording of IEP meetings. For example, California is an all parties consent state, however, California law also expressly allows the audio recording of IEPs with 24 hour notice. Washington is also an all parties consent state, and all parties generally must consent to the interception or recording of any private communication, whether conducted by telephone, telegraph, radio or face-to-face, to comply with state law. However, Wash. Rev. Code 9.73.030 states: Where consent by all parties is needed pursuant to this chapter, consent shall be considered obtained whenever one party has announced to all other parties engaged in the communication or conversation, in any reasonably effective manner, that such communication or conversation is about to be recorded or transmitted: PROVIDED, that if the conversation is to be recorded that said announcement shall also be recorded. The federal regulations are silent on this issue, so they dont expressly allow or forbid recording IEPs, which means that it is up to each individual state or even individual school districts if not addressed in state statute. If you are told by your school district that youre not allowed to record an IEP meeting, ask to see a copy of your school boards policy they should have a policy which has been properly enacted by a duly-authorized governing board. If such a policy exists, it should also contain exceptions for special circumstances, such as if someone were physically incapable of taking notes. Bottom line: if youre recording your IEP meetings, put those recordings to good use by using them to help you write an effective IEP meeting follow-up letter. 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