All that remains is for dh to make copies and for us to mail the formal written complaint to the superintendent of the district and to the state DOE.
I worked with the Parent Training Institute (I think that's what PTI stands for) to write this letter. As of the final writing, I counted 21 sections/subsections of the state special education laws that we believe were violated by the school district - all but 1 or 2 pertain to documents associated with the April IEP meeting, the April IEP meeting, and the April IEP itself.
We are requesting the state do a thorough investigation into the school district to find out how one student can experience as many violations of special education laws and other issues before even starting kindergarten as Pip has.
Bravo, and good luck! Let us know how it proceeds.
Hopefully this is not off-track, but I noticed you said they pointed to X number of state laws that were violated. You may find more teeth in additionally citing to federal laws violated. Anecdotally, I know someone who works as an attorney for our state department of human services. They regularly get sued for not providing X services when state law so requires. Ultimately, they just lobby to remove X service from state statute, if it isn't already mandated by the feds.
Bravo, and good luck! Let us know how it proceeds.
Hopefully this is not off-track, but I noticed you said they pointed to X number of state laws that were violated. You may find more teeth in additionally citing to federal laws violated. Anecdotally, I know someone who works as an attorney for our state department of human services. They regularly get sued for not providing X services when state law so requires. Ultimately, they just lobby to remove X service from state statute, if it isn't already mandated by the feds.
In this case, the state special education law is the state's organization/interpretation of federal law. For example, section 009.05 and its subsections all pertain to the Prior Written Notice. 5 of the 21 alleged violations fall under this section.
Post by pipsqueak on Sept 17, 2018 19:19:00 GMT -5
Received the written response from the state.
They will be investigating 20 of the 21 alleged violations. 1 is not specified but resolution of the others will result in resolution of that 1 as well.
Overall, I am happy with the contents of the state's response.
Now, we await a response from the school district and/or further response from the state.
Tomorrow morning I meet with the director of special education for the school district to discuss the complaint and how to resolve it.
I want the school district to review all of their policies and procedures to make sure they're in line with state and federal laws and then to review their practices to verify that those policies and procedures are actually being followed for all special education students and to determine where the processes are failing and how to correct them.
Then I want a written report answering a few questions posted in the letter of complaint. The question of "How could 1 student experience so many issues before even starting kindergarten?" is my biggest question. "Where's the data that was used to determine placement?" is the other big question I want answered.
Post by pipsqueak on Sept 24, 2018 11:15:53 GMT -5
The director agreed with me that they appear to be "process failures". I said I had no preference if her office, the state, or a mix of both do the investigation into where those process failures occurred and the cause/resolution. She offered to attend the next IEP meeting, and we accepted the offer.
She was the same person that helped resolve the cloth diapers on the bus issue 2 years ago. I said that issue came across as being a "rule" made by lower level supervision without authority from upper levels. She laughed at the memory of how surprised the lower level supervision was when they were informed that they had no authority to dictate a child's diapers. We both suspect that something along those lines is at play in the issues noted in the complaint as well.
The state combined the sections into 4 issues - and found the school district non-compliant on 3 of the 4. The 4th one is a little harder to understand but it's almost like they found the district in compliance with the LRE requirements because Pip attends his neighborhood school.
Overall we are satisfied with the state's findings.
When I filed the complaint I filed for the progress reports not being provided to us. The state investigation caught that the issue went beyond that.
Per the response letter: "Data used to develop the progress reports was submitted as requested. However, in reviewing the progress reports, data was not provided to the parents to indicate the level to which the student was making progress and not all components of all the objects were discussed in the comments."
For example: "the progress report stated the student "imitates pre-writing strokes of vertical and horizontal lines as well as a circle. The student needs help to make a cross, square, and X." The report of progress should have indicated the number of opportunities the student was able to make a cross, square, and X as well as what cue were provided, if any, in the instances the student was able to perform the tasks. No data or progress was reported on the proficiency to which the student could trace the letters of student's name in mixed case with tactile and verbal cues."
This explains why I kept feeling like they were hiding information from us.