If your child's IEP says they should get a certain number of minutes in a general education class, you may wonder if those minutes can be made up if they get missed. However, unlike SAI minutes, time spent in a mainstream classroom is not really a service, so it's not usual to get makeup minutes.
You can file a state complaint if the school is refusing to provide the gen ed minutes, but first you may want to call an IEP meeting to discuss why the minutes are being missed. If the school claims the child refuses to go, that's an opportunity to talk about whether the gen ed minutes provided in the IEP are enough. For example, if your child has 40 minutes of mainstreaming in the IEP, they would likely take 10 minutes traveling and 10 minutes to become settled in the new environment and then pulled back out after 20 minutes; they would have no time to get to know the other kids or figure out how things work in that classroom. Such a short time could be doing more damage than benefit, leading the child to avoid going.
If the school tries inclusion, they give the child a real chance to settle in and feel a sense of belonging in the general education classroom. The school needs to foster activities that create interactions between the child and their peers. The staff should make sure the child has work that fits in with what they are doing and can be successful at in that space.
The IEP team needs to have a discussion about what would be the best time of day. Some advocates say that at minimum you need two hours of classroom time for inclusion to work, plus recess, library, and assemblies with this group of kids. If the school can get the child in the general education classroom a bit more, they can get a participation report to identify ways to increase participation in the curriculum.
If school does not agree to increasing inclusion, it may be time to involve a special education lawyer.
For more information, see Inclusion 101.
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