IEP Basics: Everything You Need to Get Started

Lisa Carey, Undivided's Education Advocate, gives you the tools you'll need to prepare for your IEP meeting, covering topics like progress reports, S.M.A.R.T. goals, functional behavior assessments, and more during this Undivided event. You can check out a recap of the highlights here in our resource library.

For further reading on the basics of IEPs, check out our IEP decoder.

Hey, welcome to Undivided Live. Today we are talking about some fundamental basics around IEPs. We all know there's a vast amount of important information to learn, and sometimes it feels endless. We're going to talk about assessments, services, accommodations, placement, the IEP document, the meeting itself, what happens after, and more. And yes, somehow we're going to do all of this within an hour. We're going to touch on the most important things to remember before you walk into that IEP meeting. So, whether you're just getting started or you need a refresher before the big meeting, we wanted to help you focus on some essential elements. This is your IEP starter pit. I'm Lindsay Crain, and I head the content and community teams at Undivided. With me today, we welcome back Undivided education advocate Lisa Carey. Lisa has advocated for hundreds of families during IEPs, including her own. She's also the mother of three boys with disabilities. Hey, Lisa, welcome back.

Hi, excited to be here.

Everything we're talking about today, imagine that in a step-by-step guide that's personalized for you and your IEP priorities. That's what our navigators can do with you. You don't ever have to IEP alone again. So, with that, let's crack open the IEP starter kit. So, okay, Lisa, let's lay the foundation. What is an IEP?

Okay, so an IEP, the acronym IEP stands for Individualized Education Plan. I have heard some districts refer to it as program, same thing. It is a legal document that details how your child, or how a child with a disability will access their education, so it's going to outline their goals, services, supports, accommodations, modifications, and this document is agreed on. This plan is agreed on by the whole IEP team, which we'll talk about a little bit later, I think, and it can provide some legal protections to it, should you need it.

What's better than just an IEP is a strength-based IEP, and a strength-based IEP is an IEP that looks at what a student is good at, what they enjoy doing, what they're interested in, what their preferred topics are, and it uses those to write goals that can, you know, use their strengths to work on their weaknesses. Basically, one of our favorite things to mention, too, with a strengths-based IEP. I didn't know if you wanted to say anything about a vision statement, right?

So I'm a huge fan of a vision statement, and a vision statement is where a parent or the caregivers for the child write what their vision is for their child, what their hope their child's going to do, and it can include things like have meaningful relationships, be employed in meaningful employment, or it can include things that are like join a club at school this year, or make new friends. So it can be short term, it can be long term, it can be a combination of both. But it's.. it's.. I like to think of it as almost like the parents' assessment, right? Like all the providers are going to provide their assessment of your child, right.

So this is your opportunity to share what your vision for your child is, and I like to share it with the IEP team, and even have the IEP team included in the IEP. You can ask them to either copy and paste it into the notes or put a note that it is attached to the IEP, but it can be included as part of the IEP. I think it's so important, because then we know we know what we're going for, right? We know what we're shooting for, we know what all of this is about, right? It's more than just about, you know, that individual class and what's happening, but where we want our kids to go in their lifetimes, which obviously is fluid, and you know, there are certain things that we definitely want to happen that can evolve, and it definitely, you know, you can set the tone, the strength-based IEPs.

We can set the tone from the get-go, even if you're, even if you're the only one at the party. So, we know that's not always easy, but it's definitely something that we want our teams to start getting used to. Everything that you just said, Lisa, you know, really presenting the strengths of our children while figuring out, you know, how we're going to support them, and so another challenge for parents new to the special ed world, we kind of have our own language, so it's like a secret handshake, dip, dip, dipped in acronyms, I guess some of the acronyms are our foundational roots for our kids' IEPs, so Lisa, what are the three most important acronyms that parents need to know? And then we'll dive deeper into each in a bit.

You know, I remember when my oldest son was first diagnosed, and I was finding my community, and I was asking questions, and all of the answers were acronyms, and I had no idea what anyone was talking about.

So, so the first one that comes to mind is IDEA, you might occasionally see that more in writing, and IDEA is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, before 2004 and in 2004 it was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act. And this is what outlines the requirements that public schools have for our kids. This is where it says what an IEP is, who's going to get one, and basically all the rules on the federal level.

FAPE stands for free appropriate public education.

FAPE is basically the point of the whole IEP, that is, that is what the end goal is. And when you have an IEP meeting, they'll often say the school will often say our offer of FAPE is, and the free, the public, and the education part are pretty easy. It's that appropriate part that is what takes all the work, that is what people need to agree on. What is appropriate.

And the last one I would say is LRE, and that stands for least restrictive environment. All children with disabilities have a right to be educated in the classroom that they would otherwise attend if they were not disabled as much as possible. So your child has a civil right to be educated in a typical classroom if that is appropriate for them, and if that's your wish, they don't have to earn their placement there, they don't have to prove they can be there, they don't have to be verbal or walking or potty trained or have no behaviors.

Simply being a student, they have a civil right to be there, and if it is, it's not the appropriate setting for all children, but if it is an appropriate setting for your child, they, you know, that's where you should begin. You should start there. Absolutely, and we can't say it enough.

So, to repeat, your child does not have to earn their way into a gen ed class. So, IEP is about getting your child the supports they need to access their education. It's not about proving they're worthy of one, I know it's hard to distinguish that sometimes, but I also have to say, when you were talking about FAPE, I got this visual of the A, when you were talking about the A and FAPE, and it just feels like sometimes it's the scarlet letter, right, where it shouldn't be, but it is, it is, as you said, the very, the very tricky, the very, very tricky part of that figuring out what is appropriate is difficult, and not only is it often difficult, not everyone's going to agree, right? You know what is appropriate for that child, and so that's really what most of the meetings about. We don't talk in the meeting about how to make it free, because that's, you know, a given, you know. So, yeah, right. Well, and I know with LRE, you know, with placement, we are definitely going to get to that in just a bit. But first, we have to come, you know, cover some things that come before those talks about placement, or should, right? Nothing can happen without assessments. So, first, what are assessments, and when should our children receive them?

Okay, so assessments are done initially when our child becomes eligible for an IEP.

For some kids, that might have been when they're, you know, shortly before they turn three, and they're transitioning from regional center to the school district for some services. For other kids, it might, you know, be later on when, when you get an indication that there, there might be a need, whether a parent identifies it or not, or the school, that's what I meant by that.

And then assessments after that should be done at a minimum every three years.

There is a full assessment done every three years, called a tri-annual, and they should look at all areas, and then you can also have assessments at any time that you think that there's a need, or a teacher thinks there's a need, or a therapist thinks they're a need. You can request that assessment at any time, and just in case there are some parents starting out who you know don't know what's out there, right, like many of us, and even if you're not a new parent, you might know what's out there, but can you give us some examples of common assessments? Sure, the most common assessments I would say are psychological, academic, speech and language, occupational therapy, and for children with behavior needs, there's a functional behavior assessment, or FBI, FBI, oh my goodness, FBA, FBI, you need the FBI to get you the FBA. I can't believe we just said that. I think, because I was also thinking about assistive technology, could be in there, and I was thinking at, so I was kind of thinking ahead.

It, and then also some districts, especially in Northern California, have something called an SCIA SCIA, which is an assessment to see if a child can benefit from a one to one, which we'll probably touch on later, but it's similar to an FBI, or functional behavior assessment, and I know we're showing some of the assessments here at the bottom of the screen, you should learn them, you know, if you want to know the secret handshake, which is really all about, like, right, and looking at the screen, I can see they also have VI, which is vision impairment, and DHH, which stands for Deaf and Hard of Hearing, so I cover, oh, and PT is physical therapy.

Lisa, what, what if you disagree with the district assessment?

So you have a right to disagree with an assessment, and something that I started trying to add when people ask me this question is, if you disagree with an assessment, you can request an IEE, that is as simple as writing out two or three sentences that you disagree with the assessment and you want an IEE. In my role as an advocate, I don't like to explain why I disagree in a lot of detail, and the reason for that is because you're not an OT, you're not a speech language pathologist, and if you say, like, the reason you disagree, it might give the school room to argue with you about, oh, well, it wasn't supposed to look at that, or, oh, whatever they're going to say, and so, well, if you request an IE, they either have to provide it, or they have to file due process and prove their assessment was was valid. You still don't want to have to go into that conversation with them, so I usually just write I disagree with the OT assessment and request an independent education evaluation, that's my entire request. Right. Great. And we had a follow-up question about from Ashley about an assessment. She said, Is there a behavioral assessment that can be done that doesn't involve ABA principles or suggestions, i.e. like avoiding rewards or punishments, as these can be harmful, but especially triggering for kids with demand avoidance. I agree that ABA is definitely not for everybody.

An FBA is not going to provide rewards, or an FBA is going to look at why a behavior is happening, that is what an FBA does. The behavior plan that you make in the IEP from using the data collected in the FBA is where you're going to want to think about rewards and that kind of thing, but in the FBA itself.

They're going to look at the antecedent, the behavior, and the consequence, and I know that sounds like ABA to a lot of people, but this is simply data collection. It's not anything that they're doing with the child or to the child, they're just looking at when Jennifer runs out of the classroom, what happens right before, right? Because if we can identify why she's running, was it a loud noise? So every time there's a loud noise, she runs out of the room. So now we know why she has behavior, right? And then you look at the behavior running out, and then you look at the consequence.

If we don't know why she's running out of the room, and the consequence could be why, maybe she gets a lot of attention every time she does it, and that could help key in that it's attention seeking.

How to address the behavior is going to be in a behavior intervention plan that is a part of the IEP, and that is where you can make sure that your, your feelings about rewards and and punishments and using ABA can be addressed. What if they ignore your request for the IEE? If they ignore your request for the IEE.

I would.

My guess is that they're going to say they didn't get it, so I would make sure that you walk that request either in physically to the school and have the lady behind the desk, whoever that may be, it may be an aide or a teacher or a receptionist or whoever's there, have them sign one copy or stamp it that they've received it, and so they keep one copy, you keep one copy with their stamped receive.

Another like little trick that I like to use, and this is not official advocate stuff, because it's kind of a trick, but I will send an email saying I would like whatever it is, an assessment, an independent education evaluation, IEP. And then, at the end of the email, I'll throw something in that the school, the teacher, whoever I sent it to, is going to feel the need to respond to it. It forces.. I'll say something like, can you let me know you received this email? And, oh, by the way, Patrick's really excited to wear his new sandals to school tomorrow.

How are you gonna ignore that? Right and say, "Oh, we don't allow sandals," and that kind of have proof they received it. Answer is, "Walk it in and get them to stamp it," but you just need to make sure they received it, and my guess is they're refusing to do it because they're going to say it wasn't received because they, they, if they're not going to do it, they have to file and prove that their assessments accurate, so they have to do one or the other. And Erin did ask for clarification on that point. She said, Is it true that you must let the school present their findings of assessment prior to requesting an IEE.

Yes, because we always need to be reasonable, and we need to appear reasonable, and it's, you know, hopefully you don't end up in a legal situation. And I'm not an attorney, but I do know that judges like to see that everybody was reasonable, and it's not reasonable to disagree with something if it hasn't been presented to you yet, so wait for it to be presented, and obviously all the assessments, they're vital, they're going to help inform the rest of the IEP. So let's talk about what that means. I mean, we're going to broadly cover five of the main components of an IEP document: present levels, related services, accommodations, and modifications, and percentage of time spent outside of the general education classroom. And then, Lisa, I would love for you to share one critical thing about each that we should remember. So, let's start with present levels of performance, otherwise known as PLOP. We're just going to keep throwing the acronyms out.

So, what do we need to know, so I'm not going to remember all of those parts of the question. So, starting with present levels of performance, PLOP, and just so you know, some school districts will call it pleat, present levels of educational performance, present levels of performance, same thing, just in case you hear them both, and it, it is a, it is a summary of how your child is doing in that area, meaning you'll have a present level of performance from the OT, the speech language pathologist, all of the service providers that are in your child's IEP, of course, the teacher, the special education teacher, the general education teacher, they'll give you a summary of how they're doing this can be looked at also as a baseline, where they are. Usually this will include things it's supposed to include strengths and weaknesses, so it should include things that the child is doing well and things that the child's not doing well, and it really is important because it's almost, it is like the foundation of the IEP, right? You have to know where you are in order to plan where you're going to go, and it's also, it's important to look at present levels and compare them with previous years' present levels, right? And can you explain why?

Right, so if this is your first, if this is not your first IEP, you should, they should also be including progress on the goals, the goals from the last IEP, and the progress on the goals can be looked at side by side with those present levels, and you can also compare them to previous years' present levels to help you get an idea of the progress your child is making, and also, if there's any sort of inconsistencies or things that you need clarification on, or that don't make sense, and I was listening about progress. Oh, the progress on the goals, you should be receiving progress from the school on the current goals periodically. What does that mean?

It's not clearly defined, I don't think, but most schools will provide progress at the same time that they are doing report cards or progress report cards. You're the progress reports or the report cards. You should get updates on the goals, and what is.. what is the one thing that we should remember about present levels, I think that it's a starting point, right? It's the baseline, it's.. it's should help us know where our child is now. We all know our kids act differently when they were not around, and so it's really good to find out what they're doing at school, so you.. you have that baseline or that starting point. I know I say this frequently, but about progress reports, comparing those progress reports, like you said, Lisa, it tells a bigger story that you might miss if you're only looking at the current year, which is obviously very important, but if you have any questions about how that story came together as you're really looking at, you know, even the last three years, ask for data, right? Progress reports should not be based on subjective opinions, so make sure that you ask for data.

Well, so progress reports on, you know, which is on the goals, telling us the progress on the goal. So, if a goal.. I'm just gonna use something super simple, right? If a goal is to identify 10 letters, right, the progresses report might tell you the child's identifying four letters, right, or identifying five letters. If you hear that and you say what he can identify all 10, or he can't identify two yet, then you can ask for the data, and that is different, though, than the present levels, which the present levels can include subjective data.

And what do I mean by that, or is the teacher could write something like Johnny really enjoys recess with his friends in the present levels, and that is subjective, right? Because did she go and ask Johnny if he enjoys, and did she track that, and did she collect data? So that is kind of subjective, right?

So it's kind of two things there. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and I was mixing.. well, I was thinking about both present levels and progress reports, just looking at everything. So, sorry, right, right, right. So, the progress reports are very specific to the goals, and the present levels are kind of a more general.. how is this kid doing exactly? And once we establish where our kids are, we.. we then have to talk about what they're going to accomplish in the next year, right? What we're hoping they're going to accomplish, which brings us to possibly one of the most, most frustrating parts of the process for parents, and that's goals. So, what do we need to know about IEP goals?

Goals are, you know, goals are put in place to identify to identify, no, they're not. They're put in place to address areas that are identified in the assessment or the present levels. If there was, you know, no assessment done for this IEP, and the way it sort of all ties together in a way to think about it is the goals or the services, excuse me, service minutes from providers like speech, OT, PT, whatnot, are in place to support the goals, right? So, if your top of mind priority is inclusion as a parent, then you want to have goals that need an inclusive environment to be accomplished. Okay? Or another example is speech. If speech is a really top priority, you want to make sure you have several goals for speech in the IEP, and even when possible, embed speech goals with academic goals. For example, student will verbally respond to these questions, or whatnot, in the goal to touch on briefly, because this is like a starter kit, but I just want to touch on it for those of you who might want to do a deeper dive. Goals should align with the Common Core standards. You can find those on the California Department of Ed website, and there's something called Common Core Connectors, and Common Core Connectors break down those standards into smaller, bite-sized chunks.

So, for example, if you know a child is, you know, I think a third-grade standard - it could be second, don't quote me on it - is to write a paragraph with proper pronunciation and capitalization, that's the standard. Well, the common core connector to that, right, is the pronunciation is one part, the capitalization is another part, the multiple beginning, middle, and end of the paragraph is another part. So maybe your child's goal would be to learn proper capitalization, which is aligned with the common chord, so it's a connector. So I just, I just to add that in there, how can parents gage if a proposed goal for their child is good or bad? Like, sometimes it feels like you're reading another language, you don't.. it's like, how do I even.. where do I even start? Yeah, so a goal.. I guess I kind of missed saying it, but to lead in to answer this right. So, and this is not unique to me, but goals.. we talk about smart goals, right? They should be specific, measurable, obtainable, results-oriented, and time-bound. So, if a goal is not specific or measurable, or any of those things I just said, it's obviously not going to be a good goal.

The other answer I have is, if you, the parent, don't understand what the goal is measuring, and how it will be measured. Then it's not a good goal, and needs to be rewritten.

If the child switches schools, or a new team member comes on board, they should be able to understand what your child is working on without explanation. So, if you read it, and you're like, I have no idea what this means, then it needs to be rewritten.

And if it can't be explained in an easy way from someone else, right, then yeah, or we shouldn't wait for other people to decode them, right, tell someone else what it means, right, right, and then what you know, another common theme that we unfortunately hear sometimes are goals that repeat, so should a goal repeat the following year if it wasn't met, no, the short answer is no, right? So the longer answer is, if a goal wasn't met, clearly something was not working right. It could have been the supports were not there in place, it could have been that it was too lofty of a goal, so I think what you should do is obviously you want to figure out what went wrong. Why was the goal not met this last year? What, what was not, was it a bad goal? What happened that even if you figure out what was going on, and it's still a better idea to rewrite the goal.

It's still a good idea to rewrite the goal, because the child's going to be in a different place than they were in the last year ago, right? So, it still can be the same subject. If it was a comprehension goal, right, maybe rewrite it and change how you're measuring it, or maybe change it from a novel, a novel story that you're reading to a preferred topic, right, or something, but shift, shift it up a little bit, at least, to try to, to be more successful. Absolutely, and Ashley actually had another question about the progress report on goals. She said, if you ask for the data behind the progress reported on goals, and the teacher doesn't provide it. What next?

I would request an IEP meeting, or well, maybe you know you can request an IEP meeting. Yes, but I always try to think about, try to approach it collaboratively, even if it feels like it's not, because we always want to start with with a positive approach, so maybe start by asking for a parent teacher conference, and then if that doesn't work, or you've already tried that, then you can request an IEP meeting and express your concerns, because if you have asked for the data, then clearly there's a reason, right? You're concerned about something, I would assume, and then you, and then you go from there, right? If there's no, if there's not been any teaching, if there's no data to prove that anything's done, and there's nothing showing on a product, but there's no way for them to show this progress is actually happening, then, right? And then you might be able to, depending, depending on other circumstances, you, you might be in a position to ask for what we call compensatory services, or compensatory ed, that is basically to make up missed services.

So, if your child has 30 minutes of speech a week and it's determined they've missed four sessions, then they might do 30 minutes twice a week for four weeks to make up those sessions, which doesn't exactly answer your question, but it's kind of the same concept. If they weren't providing the service or they weren't providing it appropriately, what is the one thing that we should remember about goals, Lisa? If nothing else, the one thing to remember is that they're for an entire year, right? It's important to be super realistic, but it's also important that we're going to presume confidence, so if your kindergartner knows five of our letters, and there's an annual goal of knowing 10 of her letter to 10 of her letters, that might not be ambitious enough, right?

You might, she might get to those 10 letters in two, three months, and the goals met, so you have to try to find that balance between being realistic and being ambitious, and making sure that we're always presuming confidence with our kids. The third component of the document is related services, so if you can explain what that is and what falls under that umbrella. Related services are the part of the IEP that tell you what services your child's needs to work on those goals, so it's things like speech and PT.

It's also things like transportation. It can be a related service to get the child to and from school, so really it's any service that's required to help the child benefit from their education, right. And in the, in that section of related services, the frequency and duration of services will be noted, correct? Right, it should state how often the service is going to happen, how long each time it will be, is it going to be 20 minute sessions and hour sessions? It should also indicate the location that the service is going to take place, like the general education classroom or a separate education classroom, and if it's individual or group. Yes. All right, yeah, yeah. Many times parents think their child's going to be getting an individual service, but it's really group or opposite.

So, a service can be individual, group, or a combination of both. Sometimes, especially with speech therapy, it might be listed, for example, is 180 minutes a month, 90 minutes group, 90 minutes individual, or something like that. Yeah, so double check. I mean, I know I, and many people I know, have had surprises, right? And not malicious lying, not speaking the same language, so it is important to double check all of those details, definitely, definitely, yeah. And what is the one thing that we should remember about related services?

Oh, boy, related services are in place to meet goals, and so a lot of times parents will say something to me like, my child's only getting 20 minutes a week of speech, and they're, you know, nonverbal, and they have apraxia, and whatever the case is, and if the goals aren't there to justify the service, you can't get the service, so you've got to go back, and you've got.

To look at the goals, and, and when you're in the meeting, make sure that you're suggesting goals or edits to goals that would include the need for more speech, and when I said that, suggesting goals, I could almost feel like the people watching go, "Oh my gosh, that's so hard. So you don't have to, when you suggest a goal, you do not have to, as the parents worry about four out of five times with 70% accuracy. You can just simply say, like, hey, how about if we have a goal that Jennifer will line up using line up at recess using pure models, right? And it's up to the IEP team to help figure out how to formulate that goal in a way that is specific and measurable and has all of those details, so if you're at home prepping for the meeting and you're writing down goal ideas, don't stress about the data collection part of it, just kind of get on paper your idea and the team will help you form formulate it right, and then once you get that, you know you're not going to be signing it in the room, so then once you can go back and review, then that's when you can really think about all those, you know, looking at the goals of making sure that that's coming through absolutely. And Melissa asked, How is it determined that a child needs these related services?

Who determines frequency and duration, so the assessment that is done determines what the areas are of need, and from there the goals will be written, and then the services will be put in place to meet the goals. So the official answer is it's an IEP team meeting, but the more detailed answer is it really comes from the assessments and the goals, and Melissa wanted a suggestion. She said, "My son can't generalize some skills, I think they're prompting him. What can I ask the school to do to help him generalize in school and home?

Why, that is a great question, and it's a hard question, a lot of it depends on there are a lot of factors in play of how to get a child to generalize, and I'm not a behaviorist, and I'm not, you know, that kind of specialist, but I know that a lot of it has to do with their skills, right, like there's some kids that are have really great receptive language and can't generalize, and then there's kids who don't have any receptive language and can't generalize, and the answer would be very different for those two children, just to pick one kind of skill set. So I wish I could give you a better answer, but my answer would be to talk to a private professional that you might have, hopefully, or maybe regional center and ask them or an advocate, so that can actually look at that assessment for whatever we're talking about, like social skills, probably you say that, and I don't know you, but I think about autism, and I think about social skills, and I think about generalizing in that way, and the answer, I, if you said that to me, if you said my child has autism and is not generalizing social skills. What can I do at school?

My answer would be rec therapy, request a recreational therapy assessment, that would, because that would be my answer, but I don't know all your details, so it depends on the assessment, the situation, obviously, but really helps to have somebody be able to work with you, like you said, sometimes it really takes an advocate to say, okay, great, like this is what's on the table for what we're seeing here to work through that, and one of the most requested related services is a one to one aid for students. So, Lisa, can you explain when that's necessary and how parents can prepare for that request.

Okay, so first off, not every kid needs a dedicated aide, and as a parent, I definitely wanted my kids to have aides, because at a certain point I want, I knew they would be safe, and that's what I wanted. I wanted to know my kids are going to be safe, but the bigger picture is, and a one to one aide may not always be the best for a child, because whether you choose an inclusive classroom or not, inclusion in the community, which is a different thing, should be an ultimate goal, right, and a child needs to learn how to do some things on their own, so my point is, is if you think your child, or feel your child needs a one to one aid, really sit with yourself, and maybe your spouse, and maybe your child's providers, and make sure that you know, does it have to be a one to one, or would a one to two be okay? Like, really evaluate what's behind that. That being said, some kids absolutely should have a one to one aid. It's important, it can be needed for safety and behavior. It could also be needed for medical and personal care reasons, like a child who might have a trach or breathing issues, or something like that.

Some kids might need a need only for academics, meaning they don't have behaviors, but they need someone to help them focus and redirect.

To them, so that would be for academics, and help provide LRE, least restrictive environment, and an aide can even be useful if you are working on inclusion to help with inclusive environment. Generally speaking, schools are going to push back on it. The easiest one of those things I brought up is medical, right? It's kind of indisputable if a doctor is saying this child has to have an LVN with them or an aid, and then the second one that's easiest to get a safety safety concerns.

So, if you feel your child needs an aid, you're going to start by letting the school know of your concerns, and the reason I say it that way, everything else I said, request an assessment in writing, and I'm going to say that, but start by making sure you tell the school if it's a safety issue, don't you know, make sure they know that you have these concerns, so that somebody is on guard and watching your kid while you're working on getting them an aid, right after you let the school know about your concerns, you want to request an FBA, and at from that FBA you'll have a an IEP meeting, and that will be a good time to start talking about the aid, and then for the parts of the state that do the SCI, the special circumstances instructional assistance assessment, that is also where you would be, would ask for that, and the assessment will help them figure out, you know, where the aid might be needed the most, if it's not all the time. And then Jacqueline had a question, do we need, you know, are specific duties listed in the IEP for a full-time or one to one aid?

So most IEPs that I have seen, because every district has a different format, right? They do list what the aid is going to do, but it's often not very specific.

I've seen it specific, but a lot of times it's not. It's just says something like, you know, one to one aid for safety or supervision, so it should be in the IEP, but how specific is going to depend on where they put it in the IEP and the district you're in. You said one of the most obviously one of the biggest reasons that people want AIDS is for safety, and an aid is one way to address those concerns, but there are other ways that we can dictate safety protocols within the IEP. So, can you touch on those? Just, I want to say, just really quickly, if you have safety concerns with your kids, make sure you're documenting it with the school, you know, it's not just, oh, get an FBI, and how I document it. Write a letter to the school that you ask that it become a part, an official part of their, their folder, their file at school that you're concerned, because at home your child elops, your child eats non-food items, whatever the safety concern is, and you want the school to be aware that these behaviors could happen at school. Like, I don't want to sound like I was dismissive of that, because it can be very serious with some of our kids.

I believe me, as a mom, I know, so there are other things. A behavior intervention plan, a VIP plan, can be included if the safety is related to behavior and not medical, and the BIP should have its own goals about behavior that you're looking for, and it should explain what the staff is going to do to try to prevent the behavior, like eloping, as example, and what the staff will do if the behavior happens, and hopefully they've identified what happens before, so that the staff can prevent it, right? So, if it's loud noises that cause the eloping, and there's going to be a fire drill, then the staff can front load by putting those noise buffing headphones on the child and warn the child it's about to happen, that would be spelled out in a behavior plan.

There's also a health plan, which is lesser known, but a health plan is for kids who have medical issues.

A health plan should be included in the IEP that explains what needs to be done when something happens, so often this is things like epilepsy and seizure protocols, or if the child has a J tube or a G tube. What does the staff need to do if it's pulled out? Oftentimes these health plans are informed by forms or information from your doctor too, or your child's doctor. Absolutely, and Adam had a question about the behavior plan. What if the school insisted not to create behavior plan, even though the FBA IEE recommended it for my son? They insisted their own FBA assessment before the IEE shows our son was fine.

Oh dear, so IEEs is the school's not required to incorporate the IEE. they're only required to consider it. The good news is, when you get an IEE, it does help you build a case. So, I guess I would say, if your child is having these concerning behaviors at school.

I would guess that there's some sort of documentation that the teacher is telling you, oh, my, the child's running out of the room, or the child is climbing, or the child is, whatever, running away, or whatever the child is doing, and I would hope that the teacher is communicating that to you, and so I would request an another meeting, which I know seems fruitless at this point, but you have another meeting, and you show them the doc, you know, the concerns. I was called on this date and told my child did this. I received this email.

I want to request another FBA, because in the last FBA, you didn't see this.

It's interesting, because I can see schools when they push back on the aid, it's not as often that they push back on having a behavior plan, especially if the kid's doing the behaviors at school, because it tells the staff what to do when the behavior happens. And then Erin had a follow-up question when we were talking about the health plan. I'm guessing she said, like, a feeding tube, where the needs of the feeding tube go into the health plan. Yes, yes, it should be in the health plan, because if the feeding tube becomes dislodged during the school day, the staff needs to know what to do, right? And probably the frequency, I mean, I have friends whose kids have G tubes, and they all have different frequencies of which they can tolerate, or they need to eat, and so that's also in their health plan, right? Yeah, and beyond, beyond.

So we have the assessments, so now you know we know what our children are needing, and so we need to talk about accommodations, modifications, and supports for the student, and in some cases for school personnel. So, Lisa, what do we need to know here? Lots, so accommodations, modifications, and supports, right?

These are explain what changes are going to be done to the environment and the curriculum to help your child progress and benefit from their education.

Typically, accommodations or changes in how things are presented or experienced by the child, more time on a test, a bouncy seat, great frequent breaks. These are accommodations. Modifications are when there is a change in the expectation of what a student will learn, and this is when they're actually changing the curriculum, and so modifications are a little bit different when you have a lot, when you have modifications for a high schooler, that often means they're not going to get a diploma, so it's, it's, you know, not necessarily, but often supports are are more difficult to talk about, because some districts will list supports as a completely separate section on the IEP, and some don't, but typically supports are things like parent education or teacher training, which is what Lindsay just asked about. It can be a classroom aide, it can be a paraprofessional, it can be like not a one to one aid, but it could also be like an additional classroom aid.

I just want to say that could, could be on there. Parent education is at your IEP. They're supposed to ask you if you need parent education, by the way, and that's usually something district offered. The support on the IEP would be parent education specific to your child. You most often see this when your child is an AAC user.

They should be offering, and I know most of you who have kids with AACS aren't getting this, so you should push for it. But they should be offering time for the parent to meet with the speech language pathologist that works with your child at school, and it can be on Zoom, where they go over best practices for using the AAC at home, because the child can't benefit from using it at school, if you can't use it at home, it has to be used everywhere. That's parent education. Teacher training might be if your child, for example, had a something that they weren't familiar with going on. An example is maybe a child with autism and behaviors, and the teacher is struggling. You can request that the teacher get some training, and the teacher might go do a workshop on how to manage behaviors in kids with autism, or she might attend a workshop on auditory processing disorders if she's unfamiliar how to teach with that. So, teacher training would be a support, right? Same thing with hearing loss. My daughter gets the HH services, same thing, like even, and if there's a change in her team, the entire, you know, the new member, they also need to learn how to use their equipment in the FM, so whatever it goes for, right?

Because we know people come in and out, unfortunately, you know, or fortunately for our kids' team, so we can't ask for that, right? Lisa, that is brilliant that you said that, because that is something that I advocate for in my own child's IEP, and that is, if you have training in there, like a paraprofessional will be trained on, I don't know if you have a kid, where if you get close to their face to talk to them, they're going to hit you. That's an example you're going to include in the, whether it's something like that or it's formal training, I should say, like how to use the AAC, like the paraprofessional needs training. My IEP says that training will be done at the beginning of the school.

Year and anytime there is a change in staff working with the child, and that's really important, because if you train them on August, by December you have all new paraprofessionals, and the speech pathologist went on maternity leave, and there's a new OT, so it's really important, right? So they having that knowledge at home with their new baby, unfortunately, does not help your child, so yeah, and Evie had a clarification on that. Lisa, she said, 'Can we add the teacher trainings in the IEP when the child was in a gen ed class?

Yes, yeah, you can request it, and you know you're going to have varying degrees of success with that. You might have to fight in other skill districts will be happy to do it, so it just depends. I honestly think a lot of times the success has to do with the, you know, they do have teacher training outside of this discussion. Teachers do get continuing education, and I often think that sometimes when I asked this, there's some list somewhere of upcoming district trainings, and somebody pulls out and goes, you know, what we have a training coming up in November on that. Sure, no problem.

I don't know that for sure, but it feels like that because it feels hit and miss with how the easiness of getting it. Christy asked, we're new to the diagnosis, our child's diagnosis just had her IEP on Monday. Can teacher training be done with a child who's not autistic but has a processing delay?

Yeah, if the teacher training can be for any diagnosis, right? So any sort of thing that's going on with your child, I think that you would need to show or argue that the training is needed, and so oftentimes that sort of can be documented by the emails and the phone calls, right? And you also want to tread lightly, because you don't want to unnecessarily make a teacher an enemy. You don't want to walk in and be like, this teacher doesn't know what she's drawing, but instead you can phrase, you can, you can put it like, you know, hey, as parents we have this training, we took this class, it was so helpful in dealing with Jennifer's meltdowns, and I'd really love it if the teacher could, you know, you know, so really approach it that way, and then, on you know, in a collaborative, non-argumentative kind of way, right? Hopefully, hopefully, they'll be up for learning new things they don't already know.

And what is, what's the one thing that we need to remember about accommodations and modifications, Lisa, that your child's going to grow and change, and their needs are going to change. Some kids will change more often than others, and within a school year they're going to learn more and gain new skills. So it can't hurt to revisit these as needed.

You can often change accommodations on an IEP without a full meeting, if you know, depending on the district and the rules. You can also just do it in, you know, a quick little note with the teacher, like, 'Hey, it might be beneficial to add this if you have a good relationship with the teacher, but just keep an eye on it if you start, if everything's going well, and then you start getting more indications that things might not be going as well at school. Then either the accommodations might need to be changed or they're not being used, and it could be something else entirely too. By the way, I'm just, I'm just saying it's one thing, it's something to explore. We do have one more component within the IEP to highlight, the IEP document to highlight, and that's the percentage of time a student will spend outside of the gen ed classroom, which leads to placement.

So, first, Lisa, if you can explain what are those IEP minutes mean that are on in your IEP, and then talk about placement and how we should consider the pros and cons for our kiddos. Placement is a harder one of the harder parts of the IEP for some families, and for some it's easiest, but there's a hierarchy of placements that the high the IEP team should consider. They are supposed to start with the least restrictive environment, which would be the general education classroom with no supports, no services, right, which, of course, is not going to be appropriate for basically everyone in this life, and from there you, you move towards more restrictive environments.

So the next, and every district calls things a little different, so I recognize if I skip a room that you have, or a placement, you know, you know, just know they're all different, but the next thing might be that same general education classroom with accommodations and modifications, and then maybe that same classroom with accommodations, modifications, and an aide.

Then maybe you might look at part day in gen ed and part day in a special education classroom, and so on, and you go through kind of that that process until you know the most restrictive environment would be like a hospital-based hospital program or residential program or home, and then the percentages is every IEP has to list a percentage that a child will not be in the general education classroom and the percentage of time they will be, if a child is completely in a special day class the entire day, you might see something like 5% of their days in gen ed, and you can ask what that means, and they'll tell you, like, oh, at recess we go and we get snacks, and that's the same place the general education people are, right, students are, if it's half and half, you might see 50/50 and so on. So, just if you don't know what those numbers mean, as far as what they translate to in your child's day, ask. Say, what does this 15% mean? Like, what is that actually in the day? Where are they? What is the most important thing we need to remember about placement, average?

A child has a civil right to attend their same school and classroom they would attend if they're not disabled. That's the most important thing to remember. A child does not have to earn their way into a classroom in any academically, behaviorally. If you feel your child would benefit from another placement, that's totally okay. Each child is different, but the starting point should always be a general education classroom.

As far as the thought process, special education is a service, it's not a placement, and many districts still deal with, still look at it as a location, it's not. And I know you hear that over and over, and then you walk into an IEP meeting and you hear, well, the autistic kids go there, or whatever, or this child's doing this curriculum, so therefore they need to be in that room. And again, it's a service, and it's important we remember that where a child will be best educated should be the driving factor in deciding placement, not the type of services or curriculum they need.

And that being said, Gen Ed is not right for every child, but this is the reason why there's a continuum of placements, because it's not right for every child. What are the three things that every parent needs to do during IEP prep requests from the school of draft IEP and draft goals? That being said, not all districts do that, and they're not required to. They are required, though, to give you the assessments, which would be like my number two: request the assessments prior to the meeting, so you have time to prepare.

Compare the assessments, like we talked about, to prior IEPs and assessments, and maybe private ones if you have those, and of course, your knowledge for the child. And the third thing is decide if you're taking someone with you, it can be an advocate, it can be a friend for support. A lot of times, especially for parents who are new to this process, you walk into a room and there's seven people staring at you, and you can feel very overwhelming and very intimidating. So, if you don't need an advocate, great. See if you have a friend that can come with you and be a note taker, or maybe that you can give your friend your list of concerns, and they can check them off as they're addressed, and remind you at the end of the meeting that you forgot, you know, to, you know, did you still want to talk about something, or someone that can just, you know, remind you to drink water and breathe.

Can you just give us the general rundown of an IEP meeting? What can we expect when we walk in that door?

Yeah, generally an IEP meeting is going to follow the same, the same, you know, format. They're going to be generally they should do introductions if they have legal statements that they have to read. Some districts do, I think they all do, but they may vary from district to district. Um, if you've decided to audio record the meeting, the school will confirm your recording and say a lot of districts will say, okay, everyone start recording now, it's, you know, so then the introductions, I said that, okay, so then they'll go over present levels and assessments, the assessments in the present levels.

Then you guys will formulate goals. Then the service providers, like speech and OT, will share the amount of service minutes they're recommending. Then you'll talk about accommodations, modifications, and supports. And then placement is usually the last thing mentioned or talked about. Got it?

And Evie wanted to know, can we add an inclusion specialist in the IEP?

Accommodations and modifications, good inclusion specialists and modification specialists. I, my personal opinion, I wanna say, my personal, my advocate and personal opinion is every district needs them, and every district should have them, and especially someone who can, you know, modify the work appropriately. It drives me crazy when a general education teacher is doing the modifications herself. Anyways, I'm getting off topic. Yes, you can request it, and you're going to have varying degrees of success. If your district does not have an inclusion specialist or modification specialist that they have on staff, you've got a much bigger uphill battle because you're trying to get them to hire somebody. If the district has that person, then I encourage you to ask that they be added to your child's IEP as a support. Are there any specific things to do for to prep for a triennial IEP that differs from that regular yearly IEP.

You know, honestly, not really everything that I said would still apply, but it's more time, it's a lot more, right? So when you get a, you, when you have a typical annual IEP, typically, if there were no assessments, you're just going to have those present levels to review, but this time you're also going to have those assessments to review, you're going to want to allow yourself more time anytime there's assessments. I also like to save assessment or save - I'm so sorry - share assessments with private providers. So, if you have a private speech therapist and you get a speech therapy assessment from school, share it, because your private speech therapist may have a, you know, a different take. Is it unheard of for teachers and parents to write the IEP draft in collaboration, or to have parents submit a draft to be considered.

So, the collaboration IEP draft, it is not unheard of, and I've actually done it with a school, but it's rare, of course. The school, some schools will use a different form for the draft than your school's computer system like LAUSD uses something called Well, a gen right, so I know of a school that uses Google Docs, and they have a format that they use where it breaks the IEP down, and they will share it, and parents can comment on it with, you know, common history, and I actually wish all schools would do it, because in a way you can work out some of your issues - I don't, issues is a bad word, but some of your concerns prior to the meeting, because if you write like, oh, I'm really worried in this area that my son's not getting these supports, they could reply and be like, "Oh yeah, no problem, I'll put that on accommodations, and that's already done, right? They'll put it in accommodations and it's off. And so I love it. I love it, and I wish more schools would do it. It's rare. To summarize, Lisa, what are the.. what are the four most important things that we need to know about IEP meetings?

Make sure you request the assessments prior to the meeting. Most districts won't provide them until about three days prior.

I know I'm supposed to hurry, so I'm gonna hurry, but the most important part of IDA is making sure parents have meaningful participation. How can you meaningfully participate when you are just learning that new information that is probably impacting you emotionally on the spot. There are things in the assessment that can be hard to hear. I want to read it at home and cry at home as a mom if I need to, and I don't want to be blindsided. I can't formulate intelligent responses if they're throwing it at me.

I know some districts push back on this, and I will share, and I want to be super careful that I'm never telling people to be controversial, because I really believe in collaboration, but if the school won't give them to you in advance, there's nothing wrong with showing up the day of the IMED meeting, collecting the assessments, and then asking for a recess and rescheduling.

Yeah, you have a right to be as prepared as they are.

Oh, four, that was one in the meeting. The only thing you should sign the day of the meeting, even if you think you're in 100% agreeance, is the attendance sheet that you were present asks for a draft if they'll give it to you to take home and review. If they won't give you a draft, then take the locked final copy home and review, and then sign if you agree, or get help if you don't. If you become overwhelmed in the meeting and need a break, you have every right to that. Ask for a break to use the restroom, take a walk to the car to get something, or turn off your Zoom camera and mute and mute yourself, and make sure it's off, and scream. I have done that as a mom.

Take a break, and that's as a mom, I take my own advocate, and she's amazing at letting me know when I'm missing the big picture, because I, as a mom, tend to only see this little part, and so you know, an advocate was a great help. And then finally, remember, this is my important one. You are the true expert in the room on your child. Other people in the room may know more about certain areas of education or their prospective fields, but you are the only person in that meeting who is going to be on your child's team every year for the rest of your child's life. The rest of those professionals move on, they go to their new case loads, your child moves to a new grade, but you're there every single year.

Absolutely, one of the most important things to remember, because everyone sometimes it feels like everyone's there talking at you, talking about your child. Sometimes you don't recognize that child they're talking about, or there's, you know, big pieces that are being left out. So, 100% you are an equal member of that team.

And what are two things that parents need to do after that IEP meeting? Number one, take a break. Don't think, try if you can, try not to think about the IEP meeting the rest of the day. Take a break, do something else.

Don't think of it, and then approach it the next day with a fresh perspective, and look at it, and then the second thing would be review it thoroughly, cover to cover. Make sure everything that was said in the IEP that you understood is reflected in the IEP.

If you used an advocate, have them review it before you sign, and you know, and if there are inaccuracies, just reach out and ask who you work with at the school. Hey, this doesn't look right to me. And sometimes, if it is just a typo or a mistake, they'll just fix it right.

But definitely look at it carefully. Why do they lock the IEP before agreeing?

They really, they drive me crazy, you guys, when they do that, because what happens when you get home and they copied and pasted from somewhere, and it's not even your child's name, once they lock that IEP, the only way to make changes is an amendment, so they have to open a new IEP. It's very, very, very frustrating. I always ask schools, please don't lock in until we've had a chance to review, because if there's something silly, like they have the date of birth off, instead of putting, you know, 2008 they put 1908 or something. Like, it's silly that they can't just fix it, so I don't really have an answer to why they do it, but it drives me crazy. But if they, if they say no, if you say you wait to lock till we review it, and they say no, can you say can I see the policy for that?

You can, or you can just let them lock it, and then you can refuse to sign it, and then they'll have to hold an IEP amendment, and hopefully they can do it, like, if it's something easy, then you can hold an IEP amendment. You can excuse everybody from the meeting, except the case carrier, and get on the phone, and then be like opened the meeting to correct the birth date. Close the meeting, that's a pet peeve of mine. Good question. If there's one thing that you want parents to walk away with today, what would that be? That you are the best advocate for your child, that you know the most about your child, that you are the expert of your child, and you're the most important member of the team.

So learn, try really hard to speak up and advocate, and if the school is making you feel overwhelmed or intimidated, just try to remind yourself as much as you can that you are important and valued, and if you need it, get an advocate, get a friend, get someone to help you, and come with you. Hopefully, you now have a starting point for your prep, because we want you to be able to walk into your child's IEP with purpose, data, and direction.

So, thank you, Lisa, for planting these roots, and like we've said throughout this whole hour, both Lisa and I know how difficult the IEP process can be. So, if you want or need deeper support and a one-on-one guide to talk through your child's goals, progress, services, or assessments. Our undivided navigators would love to help you through it. And lastly, if you're not already a Facebook group member, join us.

Transcribed by otter.ai