Groundbreaking Missouri Special Education Conversations: What You Need To Know Before ‘26-’27

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's Learn a Latte. I'm Jenny Edelstein, and I'm an account executive with Parallel Learning. I'm also a fellow Midwesterner and educator as well. I'm a former teacher, and I have been working with districts and schools beyond the classroom for about 15 years. I have in this slide DJ Arney. He is my district partner. You may be familiar with him, and also you may recognize Linda Porter. She is our customer success manager and a former school administrator. This is the Parallel Missouri team. And we're excited to spend the next hour with such an incredible group of special education leaders from across Missouri. All right, so today is really learning about practitioners who are doing this work every day. I'm excited to introduce our incredible all-star team that we have today, our panelists that will be leading today's discussion. The first one that you're probably familiar with is Liz A. Smith. She's the president of MO CASE, a veteran special education leader, and district administrator. She advocates for student-centered compliant special education practices, and through her expertise, she supports Missouri districts through leadership, collaboration, and policy guidance. And here, of course, is Dr. David Bateman, who likes to be called David. He works with Parallel a lot. He has dealt with more than 1,000 special education legal cases and due process hearings. He has over 30 years in real-world special education leadership. He's an author of 34 special education textbooks and also a national leader in learning disabilities and compliance, and he works with us as an advisor and learning consultant. Next up, we have Dr. Ben O'Connor. He works with us at Neosho. They roughly serve 5,000 students across 12 buildings at Neosho. Around 600 of those students are supported with IEPs. And about 175 students are supported with 504 plans. They have faced challenges at Neosho in recruiting for in-person SLPs and specialized instructional staff. And this is Dr. Jill Brown. Her district is— she's assistant superintendent of Blue Springs School District. She serves roughly about 14,500 students across 20-plus school buildings in a large suburban Kansas City district. She oversees extensive special education and 504 programming for the district, and also her district supports diverse academic, behavioral, and related service needs. There's an ongoing need at Blue Springs for specialized providers and scalable student support. One thing, if you listened while I was talking about everybody on our panel, is that I really can appreciate that our Missouri speakers represent a variety of district sizes and experiences, And they're all navigating many of the same challenges. So really, we're consistently seeing some of the same things across Missouri. So a little bit about parallel learning before we really get started. You all were just wrapping up this school year and still probably are, and many of you are dealing with ESY as the summer kicks off. So a little walk down memory lane, if you don't mind. Really thinking back to the recent past, I encourage you to just take a moment to think about you, your team, how this year went. Who was operating at max capacity this year? Who had no time in the day to actually complete what was on their to-do list? I probably should ask who did everything that they planned to do before the day actually started or the week started. Personally, I am— I was, as a former teacher, thinking about the teachers. What could we do to give them more time back with kids face-to-face in the classroom? So were your special education teachers not only supporting students, but also managing paperwork for long-term subs or alternatively licensed staff? Did your school psychologists complete a record number of evaluations? Have your referrals increased? Are your SLPs carrying full caseloads while also managing Medicaid billing, evaluations, and documentation? So these are conversations that I'm having all the time with administrators. And I just want to ask you, is any of this resonating with you? If you are taking any time off this summer, I'm sure many of you are taking well-deserved time off or counting down the days till vacation. Let's strategize and plan together for the '26-'27 school year. My favorite part about doing the work I do, honestly, with Parallel is being able to meet you guys, the districts, and find out what you're dealing with. And learn more. Also, I'm a quirky dog person. So, if I want to, if you want to send pictures of your dog and talk about Fluffy all day, love to hear about it. So, that's kind of what we're going to do today. We're going to talk not about the dogs. We're going to talk about how to learn from one another and collaboratively problem solve, share strategies, and things you could put into practice right away. So, please click on this code and there's also a link in the chat that Robin just dropped in. I'd love to meet with you guys. I'm I'm, like I said, also in the Midwest, a few states over in Illinois from Wisconsin. I have a ton of experience working with districts and would just love to continue the conversation. So I'll be in the area quite a bit, and I'm actually local today in the Kansas City area. So I'd love to meet you. Just go ahead and you'll get a click on that link and you'll go ahead and be able to book a meeting. Just conversation, would love that. And right now what we're going to do in terms of really involving everybody and to bring some interaction in, We're going to launch a quick poll. You'll see several topics here, grounds for discussion, that where we'd like to discuss some things that I'm sure are top of mind for you guys. And then we're going to look at, if you don't mind clicking on the QR code to launch. These are kind of, these are the questions that we're going to go ahead and address, or the kind of grounds for discussion. We're going to talk about 504 plans. What are Missouri districts dealing with? And blurring the lines between 504s and IEPs, compliant, legally defensible 504 processes, what do they look like? Manifestation determinations, what are the biggest mistakes districts make during MDRs, and how can we reduce legal risk? Number 3, virtual special education services, what does research say about it, and what does a compliant model require? Number 4, IEP compliance for '26-'27. What IEP compliance gaps are districts facing, and where should leaders focus for the summer? And the 5th one, staffing shortage and legal risk. When districts can't fill special education roles, what are their special— what are their legal obligations? Pick the one that most resonates with you and that you would really like to see us discuss and see our panel of experts really dive into deeply. That's top of mind. And based on those, that's how we'll guide things from here. And after we go through these questions, we will go through Q&A later on. Okay, and now I'd like to pass off to Liz.

Hey, everybody. So I get the honor of kind of emceeing and asking some of the questions of some of our panelists. So I hope our panelists are gonna start hopping on here in a minute. So I, I definitely do not want to answer all of these questions. I'm way more interested in hearing our panelists answer some of these questions. So those in our room, look like we have question 4, 2, and 5 to cover. Let's see, which one shall I pick first? Let's start with some staffing shortages. And 4. So let's do number 4 first. I feel like that one's calling to me. So to our panelists, and anybody can hop in and start, but what IEP compliance gaps are you seeing districts facing, and where should leaders really be focused this summer on, you know, as they start to plan for next year? Where's that focus at for you? Let's see.

I'll start.

Okay, Dr. Bateman.

Yeah, what I'm seeing is the compliance is shifting from was it written to did it work. For years, compliance reviews focused heavily on timelines. They focused on signatures, getting the right people in the room. I've advocated that for myself, but what I'm seeing is increasingly hearing officers and courts are asking a different question. Can the district demonstrate that the IEP was reasonably designed to and implemented to help the student make meaningful progress? And the emphasis on this is, is after the Endrew Supreme Court case, which was 9 years ago. It seems like time has flown since that. The emphasis on that was it's not on perfection, but on evidence that the district is monitoring progress and responding when students are not benefiting. That's what I'm, I'm pushing as a part of what I'm talking about. Others chime in and, and, and tell me if I'm wrong.

So to kind of piggyback off that, our focus going into next year is making sure our IEP goals aligned with the progress? Because in the same instance, is the IEP working to make progress for the student? And I think the data collection, when we start looking at the compliance piece, is are we making meaningful gains for these kids, and how can we make sure we are monitoring that so that we can show it if we get to a compliance issue?

I, I think with that part of the role in being in district administration, what I try to provide to our buildings is, um, when you're looking at that data, what processes do you have to work through and run that data? So I'm running data district-wide, but we're putting it in a format that is easily readable to our building administrators who get lots of email and don't have a lot of time to sit there And delve through it. We do trainings on how to look at that data, how they can look at it for trends in their building with process coordinators. Sometimes we might find, like, you know, a couple years ago we found we weren't making the progress we need to on social skills goals. That made us go evaluate as a district, what do we need to provide to our staff to be able to do that? But you really need some processes in place so that you have a way, or is this monthly? How often are you looking at this? How often should people be putting in their data? What is data? There's a lot of training that goes into that. It's the only way to prove that you've implemented your IEP with fidelity as well. So that is your, your way of, of showing what you're doing, yeah, is working, and that we're doing it every day when we're supposed to be doing it.

I love that, Jill, because you talk not just about training your teachers but also the focus on your administrators and your PCs. Like, if they don't have the information, they're not able to then help lead teachers in that understanding and build those David, it is also—

the other thing about this is because we often have parents or people who are not in the room, or a complaint investigator or hearing officer, can a neutral reader determine whether progress occurred? And that's what we have to think about as a part of this one. We have to keep in mind that IEP as a communication document, we have to write it for someone who is not in the room. Who is not in the room, because many of these kids are very transient. I think you said that earlier where we are pre-meeting is about this, about some of the movements you're getting. But if we can't determine this, then we can't make any— we can't determine yes or no what we're actually doing is actually benefiting the child.

And don't forget your BIP implementation as part of that, and to show that those behavior plans are working too. I find that sometimes can be a gap in forgetting that we're thinking so much about those IEP goals. And sometimes you have a behavior plan that might even be a little bit different depending on what it is for, that you want to make sure that you're collecting what you need to on that so that you can show that we're making progress there and trying to make sure some things don't reoccur when we can.

The other thing, David, that you mentioned that I think I really love that that's our first answer when I said like what IEP compliance gaps, and it's That shift from compliance to instruction, and did it work? And I think that's so important that I think we're there. How do you feel at, like, will that flow in for those who are new? Because I know we have a lot of new people that we support who are new to the SPED admin field that, you know, will that come from, will that also be the case at a state level? I know we're seeing that at hearing levels, but as far as like supervision from a state level and compliance monitoring, like how can we continue to get that message at a state level so that we are monitored on that as well, not just whether we had a certain amount of IEPs in compliance or not?

Well, I appreciate, you appreciate the question. I appreciate how you framed that is because a lot of what we're addressing and historically have addressed is do we have all the correct inputs? Do we have the right people in the room? Have we implemented the IEP as it's written? We don't pay enough attention to the outputs about whether the child's made progress. I think it's a shift. I can make the same analogy to the medical field. The medical field gets reimbursed by providing care, providing these things, but we don't then look at the long-term effect of whether it actually works for individuals. That's what we have to think about shifting as a part of this one, because, yes, there's— we can define FAPE in very specific ways, but the appropriateness of whether the child has actually made progress is what I'm seeing in a lot of the court cases that I'm involved in.

And I will say, I think we're seeing that in some child complaint, you know, results, too, is you're seeing that, yeah, you might— it might be that you didn't quite follow process. Did it Really affect the kid and what they were getting if you didn't dot an I. I feel like there's a little bit more responsiveness to that. As far as our tiered monitoring, no, I think there's not an easy way for them to measure other progress measures. But I will say, kind of in our district, I've taken a little bit of different tack the past couple of years, even with my process coordinators. We're not reviewing every IEP in the district anymore. We're reviewing parts of them. What we're really doing is spending more time in the classroom making sure services are happening, helping people with how to address these services. It's not that we have a bunch of less compliant IEPs. We're, we're trying to put that into our training of our staff, but it really is how can we shift to be looking at people's grades, looking at what the discipline looks like, looking at what our progress reports look like, and making sure that we're doing right and we're talking to families. That, that isn't our last thing that we're doing. That's the first thing we're doing. And so it was very scary at first, but our compliance hasn't taken a huge dip. It's the training. You got to keep that up with people, but we really are trying to focus more on how is the child doing so that frankly your present levels get written better because people have more time to do that work and to really think about that kid. And so we've seen some success off of doing that.

And, and that's the shift we're making in Neosho next year, is we are going away from a lot of PD on compliance to PD on the teaching and learning side. So we've been working a lot with our curriculum department on making sure we were doing the specialized instruction, making sure we're doing the progress monitoring, and not have it so heavy on the compliance side so that hopefully the PCs, assistant directors, can get into the classrooms more and work on that classroom instruction side.

That sounds great, and I hope I hope you're able to move the needle on that one.

We bought a book by you, so hopefully it's scary at first, but it's worth it.

Okay. Well, and I've less child complaints when a parent knows their child. You have they have the information. It's clear that they're growing. Your communication with parents are, you know, they know what's going on at a level, they have really good communication and collaboration with their teachers. It just makes that level of trust and understanding of, and you have the data that to document what's going on, and your teachers can be confident and that their data is accurate and they really know what is happening with the student's progress.

And we're not gatekeeping our data too. I think that's an important part. We, it doesn't have to wait till progress report time.

Hey, I'm gonna hop up 'cause I think this flows really well.

Mm-hmm.

Because we have all these great, and we're doing all the, these, you know, we have these great ideas around building instructional, you know, giving teachers the instructional tools and that data. But sometimes we, we, there are staffing gaps that might persist or positions that are harder to fill or caseloads that are going up because, you know, teachers are, we've gotta go up by caseloads 'cause we're not hired. Like maybe you have a spot that you can't get a teacher for. So what's, What strategies are you using to maintain that student progress and meet those service requirements even in that type of environment?

I will say that we're trying to think of supports for teachers very differently in that when we can find a quality person, you absolutely want that. We have had some missteps when you, when you compromise that a little bit, it's going to cause some other problems on the long term. So, we have looked at some things about, you know, do I bring in some people that are willing to do very part-time to a little bit more part-time work to assess students so that that takes that off of a teacher from needing to do that, assist with some of the observations in our classrooms. I brought back retired teachers to really provide some mentorship to some of our teachers so that we can also help keep them engaged and help keep them going, and somebody who's not looking at their compliance every day, but can help have that, you know, those discussions, because the work is hard, the environment's hard, kind of the, some of the fights against public education make that job really hard right now. We look to see how we can be unique, and then we really try to treat our people super well, as well as we can, and they're our best recruitment efforts. In all honesty, because I live in a— since I'm around Kansas City, there's a lot of suburbs around here, so you're fighting for the same staff. So you're really trying to make sure you're thinking as uniquely as you can about supports. What supports can I provide in the classroom with them to help do some on-the-job training?

What—

anything that we can do. I mean, we've really just been sitting around and talking to staff about what's What are their, um, what are their things that are most difficult and how can we start chipping away at some of those? And when, if it is that I can't find a person to do this, we've also obviously, since I'm here with Parallel, we've jumped into the virtual world a little bit too, which was scary to think about at first. And, um, there's a lot of ways to find other quality staff that don't live by you necessarily that you can Really lean on, and our teachers have appreciated that as well.

So, so go ahead. Go, go, go. No, no, Ben, go.

We kind of restructured for the upcoming year, and I hired an assistant director that's going to focus on the teaching and learning aspect for the teachers, just to be in there working with the teachers, giving them as much support as possible. We went and hired some behavior people to be more in the classrooms to help with that aspect so that the teachers are not just sitting there worried about the paperwork. We're going to change that focus and, and have some other people try to work with the paperwork, you know, part-time, retired employees, anyone that can help with the compliance piece so that the teachers can actually just teach what they need. And likewise, we did, we did go virtual for some of the needs that we, we had just to keep up with, especially speech and language, making sure those kids get the interventions they need all the way through the IEP goals.

Thank you. And I'm— nice follow-up on this one. Just a heads up for any one of you who may be going to the National Case Conference in Providence, Rhode Island. I've been asked to do a presentation there on guidance and questions to pay attention to if you're thinking about using teletherapy or an online provider. So if people after that would like to— I have not written it, so don't reach out to me now. But if people in the future want to get summaries of that or notes from that who can't go to Providence, let me know and I will gladly share with you. But what the reason— the reason I think this question is really important, and I'm going to take the overall perspective on this one. You guys' questions were— answers were wonderful. But one of the hardest realities for administrators is there is no provision in IDEA that says services may be reduced because positions are vacant.

Yep.

Parents, hearing officers, state complaints investigators generally focus on one question: did the student receive the services and supports necessary to receive FAPE? Not how difficult was it for the district to hire staff. Staffing shortages may explain why services are missed, but they generally don't eliminate the obligation to do this. So the greatest risk, and I mean this with all seriousness, The greatest risk is inaction because districts get into trouble, but not because vacancies occur, because no one develops a plan when the vacancies occur. And that's what we have to think about this one. So you have to pay attention to which students are affected, which services are affected, how much service is being missed, who is tracking missed services. I'm telling districts left and right, fall on your sword, document exactly what's going on. You miss services. And just make sure that you're upfront about this one. Don't try to disguise it. Don't try to hide it, but make sure that you're providing these kinds of things. But make sure that you document these kinds of things. But the obligation— and there's no changes coming to IDEA at the federal level. So there's, yes, there's changes about where IDEA may be, how the money, where the money's going to flow through in the Department of Education or Health and Human Services, but there's no changes to IDEA regulations coming anytime soon. So don't count on that to extend what's going on as part of this.

All right.

Yeah, and I love, I mean, it kind of even echoes some of the strategies you guys mentioned, the things that Jenny mentioned even in the intro, you know, finding those things that your teachers are doing that aren't necessarily instruction. Keep your teachers that you have that are really good teachers focused on the instruction and find the other stuff, that compliance stuff that we just talked about that we really like. that you can maybe supplement in with those part-time retirees, some other level of support to take those components off of a teacher's task list, take it off their plate so they can really focus on the, on the important instruction student progress side of things. So those are some great strategies. Let's hop up to question 2, I think was a big one. So we're gonna hop over to the behavior side of things. A little bit, but what are the biggest mistakes that you see possibly? And I know I've made some mistakes 100% on MDRs, but biggest mistakes that districts make during manifest determination processes and how can administrators reduce that legal risk?

Yeah, I do a lot of training on some of this. There's lots of mistakes. This is one where I think compliance missteps will absolutely get you. Because it might mean that you didn't determine a pattern the way that you need to determine a pattern, so you didn't do an MDR when you needed to do one. That happens. People sometimes— people go by the title of what something was coded as, like this was coded as physical assault, this one was coded as harassment, but if you read that harassment one, there was some physical in it, and so they didn't tie those things together, and so you might have needed to do an MDR and did not. Do one. You might focus too much on that rule violation and not that particular child's disability and how that their unique disability affected them. It's not just that if it's a real severe infraction that it's not ever related. We need to go back and look to see what, what happened. You don't want to get into like, well, it's ADHD and that doesn't cause you to punch people. You really want to get into what is this unique child's other health impairment, get into that, look at some other things. And so it's really that it's much more of a process, and you also have to focus on did you implement that IEP, and I can't say that enough. Like, I would like us to look at that before you even got to the MDR, before we're even disciplining. Did you follow a behavior plan? Did you follow the things in this IEP before you're even going down that road? Because I think sometimes we— Just check that box. Yes, obviously we follow the IEP. We probably need to talk through that a little bit, like on that day when these things are happening, you know, what, what were we doing? What weren't we following? There, there's a lot of different areas to kind of look like, but it really is an analysis meeting, and you want to remember to write down the reason why you made these decisions, because you won't remember later on when somebody files against you. And really get those details in there. It also helps everybody know when you're writing your present level, this is why it was related or why it wasn't related. What is that analysis with their, their disability? And the most important thing is, how are we providing training to everybody to do this? I'm not trying to turn principals into mini special ed directors. So how do you train them and the entire staff that is sitting in the meeting? Training is going to be really important because it's a scary thing to sit through. I'll let somebody else speak a little bit.

I think our biggest thing that we worked on this year was taking the emotion out of the decision. Because especially if you are looking at, like, physical violence against someone, there is a lot of emotion from the staff side that brings into it. And trying to just look at where is the data, where do we need to go through with this? We started looking at different agendas, making different outlines to help Guide the discussion to eliminate the emotion and really try to make an informed decision on what can we do for the kiddo and what can we do for the staff as well. And then also just working with the principals on understanding that their decision they made might have to be reversed based off the IEP if it was implemented or not. And having those discussions with them that can hopefully shift the conversation one way or the other, but also make it more of a meaningful collaboration.

Yeah, both of you nicely said. And I haven't been in an MDR since Friday last week, and some of you have not had one. If you need, if you need an MDR to come to your district, let us know, we can get you one. But it's interesting about this is What I'm seeing is I'm seeing teams ask the wrong questions and pay attention, because as you very both nicely articulated, it becomes an emotional experience. And sometimes— but I mean, I realize that principals are often dealing with what's punching them in the face at that moment. Pun completely intended, by the way. Because of what we're experiencing as a part of this one. But the question, the common questions is that I'm seeing districts ask wrongly is, did the student know right from wrong, or did the student understand the rule? Neither is the legal standard. Students with disabilities often understand rules but still engage in disability-related behavior. The legal question is, did the disability significantly contribute to the conduct? That is a much different question and discussion we have as a part of this one. But the problem is, as you guys very nicely stated, and I appreciate how you've tee this up for me here, is that we're having building-level administrators who don't often have a lot of training in special education, but they're trying to keep the whole school calm, and they're dealing with— and they're often also dealing with the social media comments that are relating to this. I mean, it doesn't just end when the kid leaves school. It continues in ways that we— 20 years ago, we could not fathom how some of these things continue. And so we have to make sure to remind ourselves is take— be objective about this. Be objective. And that's hard. That is really hard because we're in fact questioning and questioning what's going on. So make the decisions based on data, review of very objective data. And okay, but the weakest MDRs rely primarily on statements like, I don't think that was related. We expect evidence, not impressions.

I was thinking, I was thinking too, when you were talking, um, David, that part of sometimes what I'll hear, um, people say, well, it's emotional disturbance, so it's obviously related. There is no things where they just like SLD is never related to something. There's not, there's no rule that says any of that. You actually need to go investigate and look into that child. Um, and though, and all of those pieces, um, as well, so that we're not following, falling into that trap of, oh, it's related to SLD.

Well, I'm going to step on your toes, Ben, real fast with one sentence. ADHD is not a get-out-of-jail card for MDRs. Okay? And there's a lot of people who will say that because the kid has ADHD, that it's got to be a manifestation because they did something impulsive. Well, that's not the case. That is absolutely not the case.

So what's that— any advice for parents who are thinking, I'm well, I'm not sure if this is ADHD, thinking these directors who are out there, what's that first thing they should be thinking? Like, you know, what do I need to plan for in the, in the fall as we come back with my building principals? Like, what's a good way to like, you know, start that conversation or that process with giving them just enough training but not creating— they don't need to be fully experts, but you need to have enough information that they know, you know, so you don't end up with, you know, David needing to come in with an MDR situation, you know. They know enough that they can navigate it and get to you and make sure the communication happens seamlessly in a timely manner.

I do think it's planning your training the best if you can do that in coordination with somebody in the district who works with the administration on discipline in general and team do those things. If it's not you, like I, I don't, I don't do all the discipline in the district, but if we can team together so that we can help tie those things together for principals and not have them have so much extra time. They got to sit in different trainings because some of it actually feeds into what we do. I need you to do a great investigation on the side that you need to do just in the district to do discipline because you're actually going to want that information when we go analyze what has occurred in the manifestation anyway, and you can help link those in their mind together easier. Then you got to, you know, train coordinators, and it means training them with examples and non-examples. We also made a flowchart of here's what you do. You have a kid who has discipline. Do they have an IEP? Do they have a 504? So we actually made some steps because some administrators in some schools and some levels are not going to do as much discipline that's going to lead to MDRs, and so you want to give them some pieces. So we have some checklists for that to help them so that they know, call us early so we can help walk you through with that what that is and get that stuff done. Hey, see, a lot of it, what we do is it would be about training and the processes that go with it.

Yeah, we do an NDR training, uh, just actually booked it this morning. Our school attorney comes down and goes through what do we want building principals to recognize, kind of like Jill was saying. Here's your flowchart for a building principal to go through, with one of the first steps is calling the special ed department So we can look into if this is going to be part— if the kid has disability of 504. A lot of times they forget about the 504 kiddos, so we double-check PowerSchool records, double-check to make sure everyone's on the same page, and then we just bring it up on a regular basis. I oversee the discipline in the, in the district, so we are constantly looking at the data each week to make sure we are counting the days correctly. But ensuring everyone's doing everything correctly within the behavior plans.

Yeah, even—

thank you. I, I know we haven't historically raised hands, but I'll do it anyway. Um, from what my perspective on this is, that for me, the best MDR chairperson in the room is often the person who slows the meeting down. And, and I mean, this is— it's not the person who reaches a decision quickly. The administrator's role is to ensure the team carefully reviews the data, asks the legally correct questions, documents its reasoning, and uses the MDR as an opportunity to improve the student's program, not simply to determine whether suspensions will occur. So that's— if you can, if you can do that, slow the process down and make sure you're fully reviewing all the data, I think. And then one final thing is make sure for building-level administrators that they're monitoring and ensuring that the IEPs are being implemented. We spend a lot of time writing these. Implement the little suckers, because it's a vital, important question is what we have to pay attention to.

Yeah, good stuff. Somebody did, and I know manifests also kind of lie in that behavioral component. Somebody mentioned earlier, and it was in the line of things that we can use to support our teachers, But just a reminder that our RPDCs throughout the state do have the behavior side of consultants that can support districts. So that could also be a support as you look for different in-services or professional development for your teachers. The other thing in thinking, I'll do a shameless plug. I know MO CASE this year was our first year we did a webinar series with elementary school principals, the Missouri Educational or Elementary School Principal Association. This year we're adding in secondary school principals. to that group. And I know we do a session with legal on discipline and manifest. So that will definitely be something at some point this year you'll see MO CASE share out. So that'll be a good support tool.

I do know that National CASE is going to start a series for principals starting in end of August.

Awesome. So yeah, just a quick, nice, some webinar, just some resources you might be able to use to help support your principals as well. Let's talk about 504 plans. So I think we have, we have about 5 minutes so we can talk some 504. Where are Missouri districts possibly blurring the line between 504 and IEPs, and what does that compliant, legally defensible 504 process look like?

Okay, I would say in some Blurring of the lines is probably just in how we go about our processes. I think when I think about it, sometimes it's just about how we think of 504s in general, like whether they're an IEP lite, which they're not. It could be about whether that's a prerequisite before you ever get an IEP, that you need to be on a 504, which isn't true either. And if you use coordinators that do IEP and 504, I did in the past. We quit doing that about 10 years ago because they were blurring the 2 laws. So sometimes you have to look at that a little bit because it can get confusing for special ed trained people when they do 504. Sometimes they turn into make IEPs look more— I mean, 504s look more like an IEP, and you might be way overdoing and over-supporting a kid. That provides more advantage than it does access, which doesn't give you, you know, kind of an accurate view or what this kid is going to do post-secondary. So when I think about it a little bit, it's making sure you know what your processes are for 504. And it's so hard because there isn't— you're not going to get clear guidance. You know, Office of Civil Rights in the past has said, you know, basically follow what you're doing on the IEP side. Well, that can only be true to a degree. There's— we're doing specialized instruction and special education. That's going to be a little bit different. Even though they use the word special education and 504, there's some different meanings and usages. Just really making sure that we, we know that that is a separate system for access, that when we're looking at accommodations or if there's other special ed services that you're providing, to make sure you're looking at that access piece. If you've got kids who are in this area and they need specially designed instruction, you need to take it through the other side. Which even means after you have a kid who's been on 504 a long time, we see this especially mental health, the older that they get. You might need some special ed referrals on some of your kids sitting in 504, or you start to have 504s that are— have accommodations more complex than we see in IEPs that become about impossible to keep meeting that need since there's not somebody who is implementing that every day. It's just your teachers out there doing that. So as we think about that, I just see the number of 504s is— it keeps blossoming. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and it's making sure we're really giving kids what they need and not overdoing or just shoving people through a system there so they're not mad when they don't qualify for special ed. So it's making sure we take both those systems seriously.

I think a lot of people look at it, if you come in with a doctor's note or medical diagnosis that Automatically get the 504. And then what happens is the accommodations outweigh anything we could possibly do in a district. And so they, they start to look at, well, they have the diagnosis, so then we have to implement it because the doctor said we had to, and not really diving into what is the impact during the school day. Is there something that we are not providing for this kid? But then actually going through the evaluation process to ensure that they qualify for a 504. And I think they blur the lines on the diagnosis is not the indicator for the evaluation.

Right.

Well said. Well said. 2 things real fast. And I don't know if the individuals from Parallel can help with this, is that I wrote a 504 guide on how to write a legally defensible 504 plan that Parallel is linked to, if they can add it either to the chat or add it away for members to get as a part of this one. Is why I say this is I wrote a guide about ten years ago, and it was put online without my permission, and I get emails about it from parents every single day of the week asking about 504s and what's going on about this one. And then shameless plug is some of your word that I don't have enough going on in my life is Mitchell, and I have a book coming out on 504s, and it's coming out in February. Because we don't see guidance from the Department of Education on 504s coming out anytime soon. So the publisher reached out to us to put this together. We're finishing it up and it should be going to press in August. But there's just not much guidance out there on 504s. But between the free document and the document and the 504 book, you should buy copies of the 504 book for everyone in your neighborhood and pass them out at Halloween. You'll be the talk of your town. So if you do that, so I highly recommend that.

Yeah, right.

I think too, one thing I just want to add, you want to make sure you have a process for determining your substantial limitation. I think that is something to always train on. You know, it's not easy, but what is minimal? What is, you know, and you're trying to do your best to make those decisions as you get to that substantial because it can be really tough.

Okay. Well, we are at 12, a little after 12:45. We do have some time for some Q&A, and it is open if anybody wants to add in some questions. Let's see, we've got one. Is there a legal regulation that requires BIPS to be part of an IEP or 504 plan?

I'm sorry, could you say that again?

Are there— is there a legal regulation that requires a BIP to be a part of an IEP or 504 plan?

No, no, there's not a legal regulation that explicitly requires a BIP to be a part of that. However, the practical answer is much more nuanced than that. Under IDEA, IEP teams consider behavior when the behavior impedes learning. And regulation does not say a BIP must be developed or must attach to the IEP. However, if a district determines a BIP is necessary to provide FAPE, then the services, supports, accommodations, staff responsibilities become part of the student's educational programming. At that point, as a former hearing officer, I'm sorry, I'm still hearing officer. I do that now. As a hearing officer, Often examine whether the BIP was implemented with the same fidelity expected for other portions of the IEP. I think Jill had talked about that earlier, about implementing this thing. So yeah, yes, I would strongly consider this. It's not a requirement, but it's best as a communication document that you keep things consistent.

If we have a BIP on a 504 or an IEP student, it's attached, you know, if we have reason to have one. Whether that's an IEP team decision. The only other time I could think of is when you, you know, have found in an MDR that you have a related, then it is likely it's going to throw you into an FBA and BIP if you don't have one already, so that you can kind of work to make sure that things don't recur. But otherwise, we attach them. Otherwise, we got different things floating around and kind of what's happening, but they're attached. It's just you got to make that decision. Sometimes we decide a behavior impedes, but we don't need a BIP on it. It might be we just needed accommodations or modifications or other strategies.

Yep.

Yeah. Okay, we got another one, and I love some of these. These are some things a lot of people don't think about.

So brain picking, brain pickings is what we call them.

So yes, somebody has a teacher who's going to be on maternity leave until the end of September. My daughter was in this bucket last year on maternity leave. Bad time of year. We have a long-term sub for her. Is there anything I need to do legally to inform parents I don't know that I can answer the legally.

You're probably better off asking your legal counsel. I would say we inform when we do that. I think informing goes a long way. They're obviously going to know somebody's there and somebody knew it was eventually going to be there. So we let people know. We involve all of our long-term subs, and I believe that DESE had put this out before too. We have them go to our special ed trainings that we have in the district when they're subbing for a special ed teacher. We meet with them, so there are different things that we do to make sure that they know what they need to do, and then we check in on them. We help them with some data pieces. It depends on the training of your long-term sub, what their background is, but we do inform our families that that's what we have.

Yeah, we, we let our parents know. That way they understand that someone else might be working on the compliance piece during that time frame. If there's an IEP or something done, then one of our PCs will take care of that while the person's on maternity leave. And then we regularly check in with those long-term subs on is there anything they need within that classroom.

Let me flip the question, and I want both our answers. It's not— I'm not— things like this. The legal risk is not Did we tell parents the teacher was on maternity leave? The legal risk is, can we demonstrate that the student's IEP was implemented appropriately during the teacher's absence? And that's the obligation of the district, is to ensure that there's an appropriate implementation of the child's IEP and the child is still considering— continuing to make progress and receiving a free appropriate public education. That's the legal risk. But as a communication thing, I'm all in favor of no surprises whatsoever to parents. We can all handle things as long as it's not a surprise. I think that's what we need to focus on.

Absolutely. You're going to lack trust long-term. I think again, it goes back to processes. What processes are you going to have long-term sub? I'm going to have at least one, if not more, during those time periods as well. Do you have processes that you're putting in place for it? Once you do it the first time, you've got them to rely on in the future.

I think it also makes your teachers just comfortable. They can take off from an HR perspective, they have every right to take off and enjoy that time bonding. They don't have to think about it or worry about it or come back to complete disaster. They have to spend, you know, the next half of the year cleaning up to, you know, get all their para schedules back in place and get everything set back up. So any other questions come in? Because I love The Q&A part, like we can just toss, like, like David said, just brainstorm time. Mm-hmm. So I'll, we've got some wait time to give. I think we had one more question to cover, but I really feel like some of the stuff is like, it had to do with filling special education roles and making sure we were meeting service requirements. So I feel like we probably kind of already talked around that one. David.

Meeting service requirements. That's one of the common— that's a common question I'm being asked. Like, when we're writing this, how do we actually articulate it so that we understand how much time the child is expected to get? And this is for a child who's brand spanking new into special education, never worked with them before. My advice, and I'm stealing this topic here since I'm on a roll, is that what we have to think about here is the IEP is a document that can be revised during the course of the year based on data. And don't think about it as something that is written in stone. Too often what I see is districts write this for a year and then they say, we can't make changes. What I'm recommending, brand spanking new kid, that's the formal term, by the way, brand spanking new kid is what we do is we take data during the first marking period and then we reconvene at the end of the first marking period with clear data that helps us make informed decisions About yes or no, does the kid need these services, different services, or better different whatever? And then have another team meeting at that point to address that, because that takes some of the weight off the teacher's shoulders of like, I don't know how much time this kid needs, how much to implement as a part of this one. That gives that, and that also gives the district a leg to stand on. And get this, it's better for the kid. It's better for the kid to make an informed decision as a part of this one. So it's a win-win-win-win for everyone as a part of this.

So with that, I'll say, you know, there are— because, you know, I'm all about processes because that's the majority of what, what I, what I'm doing sometimes. I, I think if you have a process for that or how you're running your progress reporting to take a look at it too, you know, I've got this new kid and are they even making the progress that they need to be Making while we're looking at that. I know nobody wants tons of new meetings. It's, it's better to do those along the way than wait till there is a big problem as we go forward, and it goes a long way in making those relationships with parents.

Yeah, I think like I love that we kind of began with like instruction as a component, and now we're like kind of ending with, you know, meeting requirements, but it's also the requirements of like progress and like assessing that data piece. Like, do we have documented data that shows improvement? So I love we kind of began with that and we've wrapped up with that. So I think we're about 12:55. I don't see any other questions in the chat. So, Jenny, if you want to wrap us up and close things out.

Thank you, Liz. I just want to say thank you again to our panelists for sharing their experiences and insights today and for everybody who also came and joined and asked relatable questions. This was excellent, and I hope that we are able to do many more of these in the future and have this open forum discussion with relevant topics. So if everybody doesn't mind, or those who felt like something really jumped out or stood out to them, I would love to meet with you. My QR code is there and the link. I absolutely love the part of my job where I get to meet with directors and folks throughout districts that have concerns or look— want to talk to somebody about planning. We are going to give these resources. that David has offered. We're going to have a lot of those available or anything other kind of continued conversation. So I would love to meet with everybody. And, you know, I'm doing a lot of in-person meetings in the next couple of weeks. And if you do book a meeting, we do send you a $20 Starbucks card. So there's that in terms of closing out our Learn a Latte for those of you who love a summer refresher from Starbucks. Okay. So at this point, hope to see you guys soon. Give a couple more minutes to kind of close out and see if anybody wants to click on the link and book a meeting with me. I would love to meet you.

Okay.

Thanks to everybody. Have a great day. This was a lot of fun. We hope to do it soon.

Thank you.

Take care.

Thanks.