Special Education Legal Q&A: Responding to the Issues Emerging This School Year

Hello everyone.

Welcome to today's webinar with ACE.

We're going to get started, and first I would like to say a huge thank you to the Administrators of Special Education in Massachusetts, ACE, and to Carla Gents, who is the executive director there. MASE is the leading statewide nonprofit association in Massachusetts, and we are really grateful for their partnership today. I know we're all here to see David and Paige, but before we get started, I'm gonna give a quick word to Carla to kind of welcome us to the webinar.

Thank you, Blakely. Welcome everyone, it's great to see you. ACE is so pleased to partner with Parallel Learning today and to provide a terrific hour of discussion with attorney Paige Tobin, our Massachusetts special education legal expert, and Dr. David Bateman, our national special education expert, 2 of the best experts in the field of Thank you, Paige and David. As Blakeley stated, ACE is the lead state nonprofit association in Massachusetts rigorously advocating for special education administrators, leaders, and students with disabilities across the Commonwealth. The partnership with Parallel Learning today is just one example of ACE's advocacy for special education administrators, leaders, and special education school teams. If you are a member of ACE, thank you so very much. If you are not a member, on behalf of ACE, we hope you will become a member and And join the ACE statewide community, special education community. The voice of special education administrators and leaders and school teams is important to ACE in advocating for professional development, stakeholder work, state and national legislation. Please visit the ACE website when you have a chance at www.acepage.org or contact us at contactace@acepage.org. Together with you, we can have a great impact. I want to do a shout out for Parallel Learning and Debbie Pappas and Blakely Nielsen. Parallel Learning supports provided to school districts is a valuable resource, and Blakely and Demi understand school-based needs to support students with disabilities across the continuum of special education services and programs. They are a joy to work with, and they listen carefully to find cost-effective solutions to school district needs. Blakely Nielsen is the quintessential designer of professional development at Parallel Learning, And a special gratitude to her for today's work. Demi is a quintessential partner. Thank you. And now back to Blakely.

Perfect.

Well, we're going to get started with—

I'm going to pass it over to Demi now. Okay, awesome. Thank you, everyone, for joining. I'm sorry, my computer decided to randomly restart in the beginning of this, but I know everyone's here to listen to Page and David, so I won't take too much of your time. But before we get started, I wanted to quickly share a little bit about Parallel. Parallel provides special education services and assessments to schools and districts across the Northeast. Our goal is to be a resource to districts to help fill gaps in services, supporting teams with evaluations and timelines, and helping districts stay compliant with special education requirements. On the next slide, I'm also fortunate to have a wonderful team supporting our Massachusetts districts. And all of us are former special education teachers, so we understand firsthand how important this work is. I work closely with Laura Zimmerman, who some of you may already be familiar with from phone calls, and Brittany Robinson, who supports our partnership districts as a customer success manager. As a quick snapshot, the services we do offer, we have speech-language pathologists, school psychologists, special education teachers, and social workers who all provide direct services and assessments virtually. And on the next slide, I know when we say virtual, a lot of people immediately think back to COVID and the challenges of remote learning, but that was a very reactive time. Parallel does have its own platform that we've built specifically around virtual service delivery with the systems needed to make it work well for schools, and more importantly, for students. So just here, I'll pause for a couple of seconds. I would love for you to scan the QR code to get to know me. I know some of you may be familiar. I was at the ACE conference back in June and quite a few other Massachusetts conferences, but I would love to meet on Zoom. I'm always happy to connect, even if you don't have an immediate need. My goal is just to be a resource for you to have in your back pocket. So if something comes up, you already know who to reach out to. Okay, so now I'd like to introduce our presenters for today. So Paige, like Carla mentioned, Paige is a principal shareholder and attorney at MLM with more than 30 years of experience advising and representing school districts. Particularly in special education policy, and she's also a consultant to ACE. And David is a nationally recognized special education consultant, former professor, due process hearing officer, administrator, and teacher, and has spent his career helping schools navigate complex legal and IEP issues, and we're very fortunate to have David also as a parallel advisor. So between the two of them, we're incredibly thankful for the amount of legal and practical expertise joining us today. So Paige and David, I will turn it over to you.

Thank you. Thank you. And I'm going to— we're going to hit the ground running and we're going to go at this really fast. But I appreciate the introduction, Carl. I appreciate the introduction, Demi, Lakely, about this one. But this— let's start with this honest question. We're going to start with the— are you Reality, special education disputes are not going away, and administrators should be able to distinguish as part of this the unavoidable disagreements from avoidable exposure, and that's what we're going to be focusing on today. For instance, a family may legitimately disagree with the district even when the district has done good work. But then there's preventable cases where services nobody realized were missed. Or progress data nobody reviewed, or emails nobody answered, or a student whose program informally changed without a team meeting. Those are things we think— the goal is not zero complaints. If your goal is zero complaints, you will make bad educational decisions. Our goal is to eliminate the complaints that arise because the district failed to do what it already knew it should do. So let's talk about our session goals today. Okay, we're going to stress the difference between legal exposure and ordinary implementation and talk about where that friction lies. Not every mistake equals a denial of FAPE. Not every parent complaint means the district is wrong. Conversely, not every technically compliant IEP means the district is safe. A beautifully completed form does not compensate for a student who's not receiving the instruction the team has decided was necessary. So we're going to emphasize prevention. Not catching teachers or administrators, but prevention on this one. And while we're talking, just let you know, we're going to do our level best to have an opportunity to answer questions at the end. So if you have a question that you think of while we're talking, we will take questions at the end. We're not going to pause because I can't multitask. I'm not like, I'm not like my kids. I can't do that. So we're going to take them at the end as a part of this one. But we're going to be addressing this one. But most of the, most of the problems we're discussing are system problems. So, so the key verb is analyze today, and that's what we ought to strive for. We don't want you to become special ed attorneys, though Paige may bequest more people to work with her, but we need to recognize when something requires intervention. I want you to leave knowing which questions to ask before you send the matter to counsel. I want— we're going to highlight technical versus substantive concerns, and communication breakdowns is a part of this one. So what we're going to do is we're going to break this down into 7 buckets. Okay? And talk about this one. And these are our objectives. The messy state cases become easier once administrators identify the actual categories of problems and then try to emphasize what's going on. But I really want to emphasize, and this is a precursor to conversations that we're going to be going back and forth frequently during the course of this one. But I don't want to let the loudest part of the dispute determine how you classify the problem. We're going to talk more about where the system actually broke and what we can do to prevent this from going on. And so this is a staff— because a staffing issue may become an implementation issue, and an implementation issue may become a progress issue, a progress issue may become a placement issue. So these are all things we need to pay attention to, and that's what we're going to strive as a part of this one. But at the end of the hour, you're going to have a lot of information that we're going to go at with this and talk about this from very Real things. Paige is not in a hearing till Friday. I'm not in a hearing till Tuesday. So we're both technically on break right now. What's interesting about this is that it's a process that just continues and continues and continues. So let's just talk about administrator triage, Paige, and where we can go with this one and talk about that, okay?

Yep, sure. Thank you. I think when you're looking at— I think if you go back, David, to the 7.

Okay.

Yep.

Yep, the 7 buckets. I think at the outset, in order to figure out when you have a problem how to fix it, you have to sort of determine what is the problem and where is the problem most likely to land. I think as we've all seen in the past few years, there have been a huge increase in complaints at PRS. And so often now, if, you know, parents' attorneys and advocates are, you know, trying to figure out where will they get the best result, will it be by filing a claim with PRS, which doesn't really require them to have an attorney or go through a big process, or will, you know, filing a claim at the BSEA be more successful? And so once you get the problem, and you know whether it's before the BSEA or before PRS, then you will, you know, have to figure out how do I solve it. There is an opportunity when you get a PRS complaint to short-circuit that by choosing yourself to file with the BSEA to say that your IEP was, you know, technically appropriate and substantively appropriate So that is always an option. And in order to do that, you have to look at the problem and see, you know, again, where does it fall in these 7 buckets? And it's gonna be the IEP implementation and service delivery. And again, that can be either a process issue or a substance issue. It can be evaluations, eligibility, and Child Find. After COVID and kind of the mental health crisis that our children in Massachusetts and throughout the nation have been seeing, there's been a huge increase in Child Find claims. Mm-hmm. Are the goals that we're writing defensible? How are we monitoring them, and what data do we have to support it? The always challenging discipline MDRs and behavior supports, looking at placement, program design, and you know parent participation and communication and staff shortages. So those are the problems, and once you identify both the problem. And where the complaint lies, that will help you determine how to fix it. All right, and so moving on to kind of the triage piece. If you are a special educator, again, that is— this is your job. You have to look very carefully at what is the actual problem. What I too often find when clients call me is that they will call and say, This parent is being really difficult. They have sent 1,000 emails. They reject every IEP. The student is doing really, really well. And, you know, I always take that with a grain of salt. No offense to anyone, because when you start to really drill down, sometimes I find that the administrator is listening to their staff. They have a lot of respect for the staff. The staff are professionals, and so they're sort of taking them at their word. But you as an administrator have to go back and look. You have to look at the technical piece. Have, you know, has the consent been sent out within 5 days? Did we do the evaluations that we said that we were going to do? Were they appropriate? Were they timely? Did we send out N-1s that carefully explained what we were doing and why? Did we miss our time, any timelines? And is our documentation not clear? chance as an administrator to really look at that through a lens of, you know, trust but verify. And if there is a problem, how can you fix that now? And then there's just the substantive problem, you know, especially with a lot of staffing shortages. Are we implementing, you know, an implementation? Are we implementing the IEP like we're supposed to be doing? Are the goals appropriate? Are they You know, are we, are we progress monitoring and looking to it? Is it, you know, is that the issue, or is it, are we doing everything right, both from a technical standpoint, from a procedural standpoint, and from a substantive standpoint, but for whatever reason, the relationship between your staff and the parent has broken down? And once you figure out what is the problem, that's going to help drive how you fix it.

So technical requirements matter because they protect participation in decision-making. But administrators also need to ask whether these technical violations have educational consequences. Suppose every signature is present, every timeline is met. Every invitation is perfect, and the student— but the student has made essentially no reading progress for 18 months. Which conversation matters more? We're going to return repeatedly to written plan, to delivery services, to student data. And if these tell 3 different stories, what we're going to say is investigate. And that's what we're going to talk about. And how I want to get to that is the neutral reader test. And this is, this is something that we often just don't pay enough attention to. But what I want to think about is, can you give the IEP to a competent special educator who has never met this child and ask whether the person then would know what to teach, how to teach it differently, the frequency, the duration, the accommodations, who would be collecting the data, and what success looks like? If implementation requires an oral explanation beyond that from the person who wrote the IEP, the document is probably not sufficiently clear. And why we have to think about these is we have to think about IEPs not just as compliance documents but communication documents, because many of these kids are highly transient. You know this as they're moving from district to district, and we need to do a better job of conveying what were the services that this child is reasonably expected to receive when they move and when they receive. But the other thing, this is vital, is that IEPs should survive staff turnover. Because we also have a lot of turnover. 1 in 4 principals nationwide change on an annual basis. Many of you can't get enough special education teachers. I saw the statistics just the other day. Only 49 states are reporting a teacher shortage. So it's interesting about this, that other state is a liar. I live in that state. They're lying. But it's interesting about that is what we're seeing is we need to be able to talk about, can someone else who is not And so we have— out there can understand what we're doing as a part of this one. That's the important part, and that's what we have to emphasize. Okay, so let's talk about this one.

Yeah, go ahead. I just— I— and I just wanted to chime in too. I, I think when you're looking at the IEP and, and can a neutral reader read it, a lot of times what I see is that, you know, especially if the student is in a substantially separate program within our building, we are not— we know what the program is. It's you know it's the launch program. It's the LD program. So we know what it is, but it is not clear from the IEP exactly everything that all the components that are in that program, and that is really a missed opportunity because if you go, you know again, if the parent takes this to PRS, if they go to the SEA, we want to make sure that you know if the speech and language pathologist is pushing into the classroom to provide some support. If there's a really specific teacher ratio, if there's a lot of consultation by an outside group, all of that information is contained somewhere in the IEP in a way that the parent can really understand the strength of our program.

Well said. And as someone I've, I've reviewed as a complaint reviewer for PRS, and when there was that backlog, I helped move that backlog forward. There was a lot of districts that didn't clarify what was going on. So, so let's talk about system failure versus compliance culture. I want to explain the difference between an IEP completion culture and IEP implementation culture. Completion culture asks, did we hold the meeting? Implementation culture asks, what changes for that student tomorrow? A team meeting should result in an operational plan. The meeting is not the intervention. Data collection is not progress monitoring unless someone looks at the data and makes a decision, and that's what we have to focus on. So administrators, we should praise good instructional design, not just merely completed paperwork. That is, that's an important part, but we have to move on beyond that one.

Right?

So keep that in mind as we shift on this, and so keep that in mind as we address this. Moving on to the next one.

Okay.

Alignment framework. I want to spend some time here. This is a core slide of what we're talking about today. The need is what disability-related skill or access problem are we addressing? The goal, what meaningful change should occur during the IEP year? The SDI, what will we do differently because the student has a disability? The data— how will we know whether it's working? Let me give you an example. The need— a student has decoding needs, has need decoding unfamiliar multisyllabic words. The goal is a measurable increase in decoding accuracy. The STI is explicit systematic reading instruction. The data is regularly skill-specific probes. If the need is decoding and the data measures reading comprehension, the chain breaks. Placement comes later. It supports the chain rather than replacing it. And too often what we don't do is we don't have a way of measuring whether what we're doing is effective. We can have great needs articulated, great documentation of goals, and great SDI, but if we're not checking, if we're not counting it, we can't prove what we're doing is a part of this one. And that's what we have to think about is what we're addressing.

Nope.

So let's talk about IEPs. Go for it, Paige.

Okay. This again is something that is extremely important that you, the trust, verify. You need to look very carefully at the IEPs, particularly when there's a complaint, to make sure that what is written is explicitly being delivered. So for instance, if the IEP says 2 times 30 of speech, PRS will find the IEP not to be compliant if due to the staffing schedule that the speech and language pathologist is coming in 1 times 60. That is not compliant per PRS. It may or may not be compliant. I think there might be a little bit more wiggle room with the BSEA as long as the student is still receiving FAPE, but PRS tends to be very rigid in terms of compliance. Are, you know, the services, are they written broadly enough that no one can verify delivery? Who is delivering the goal? I can't also begin to tell you, I'm going to hearing on a case soon where there are services on the service delivery grid that have nothing to do with the goal that they are corresponding to. And so the services are being delivered, but it's I don't even understand how this happened, but I have seen this before. But it's not clear that it's tied to a specific goal that makes sense and that the staff really have to understand what they are responsible for, for the accommodations and how they can document that they are providing the document, you know, the accommodations to the student. Because if the staff are providing them but they can't verify that through any documentation, that can be a problem later on with PRS. Because they don't really take evidence or testimony. And making sure that the data collection is assigned, someone very specific understands that they are collecting the data and not— and then there is also someone very specific that understands they are analyzing the data and responding to the data, particularly if it's a behavior plan. Who is looking at the data and who is adjusting the behavior plan? to address what the data is showing us.

A grid— I want to emphasize that the grid is a commitment. It's not an aspiration. Service descriptions must be specific enough to implement and to monitor. Compare this. Let's talk about what I— the one of the most common ones that I see. Reading support as needed is listed instead of specialized reading instruction, 45 minutes, 5 times weekly. Let's think about how we delineate that very specifically and how we clarify that one and what is— and what is meant as needed. Can you identify where every required minute appears on a student's schedule? The schedule and the grid disagree. The grid does not disappear. Administrators need an escalation mechanism when staff see a mismatch. And that's what we gotta focus on here, is when we indicate that there's a problem, what are we going to do to change that problem? And that's what we have to think about as addressing that one. So let's move to a case example. I'll just walk through this.

Okay.

Just walk through this as a prevention protocol. You fix the schedule, you assign ownership, you create backup coverage, you document things, you examine progress and reconvene. The biggest mistake is allowing a temporary implementation problem become a semester-long implementation problem. Early transparency, which is really often what we don't see, but it generally puts a district in a stronger position than denial followed by reconstruction months later. When you see something, do something. Don't just push it off. Don't wait until a parent complaint. Don't wait till the kid is failing. Don't wait till the semester's over. If you see something and you see— this is something we have to think about as a part of this one, is making sure that teams understand precisely when they're supposed to be doing something. And that's what we have to focus on about this one. But this is where we have to think. All right, listen, wait, there's more. Okay.

Okay, um, go ahead. So for this case example, again, this is exactly the kind of thing that becomes hard to defend. Um, if the IEP says, you know, the student is going to be getting 5 times 30 of, of reading, the reading teacher goes out on maternity leave, someone is filling in from another building maybe twice a week. Again, we all know that we have to document those missed services. We have to send the interruption of letter, the interruption of services letter to the parents. As soon as possible, the guideline is usually if there's going to be ten, you know, ten services missed, ten, ten days of missed services, we should be sending the interruption of services letter. That letter, through regulation, requires us to tell the family what we are trying to do as a district to fix the problem. We are, you know, it as much as we are advertising to get another person in. We are, you know, providing services maybe not through a reading specialist but through a special ed teacher. In other words, what are we doing to try to mitigate the loss of services? And even if the parent says, oh, you know what, that's okay, it's fine, um, or, you know, the team feels like they've, they've talked to the parent about it, we have to follow it up with documentation about that letter. What's missed? How long it's expected to be missed, what we're doing about it, and then an opportunity for the team to meet and discuss whether compensatory services are appropriate. The other thing is, if you know, for instance, a staff member is going on a four-month maternity leave, and they're not, and you don't have someone, and the student's going to miss that many services, I, if it's possible, I would do some you know. So we want to do some progress monitoring before the person leaves and then, you know, after the missed services so we can really look very carefully at what, you know, what was the learning loss, and then that will help drive the conversation about compensatory services.

Well said, because too often people, parents, think that it's an hour-for-hour missed service, and it doesn't have to be that case. So that's that great suggestion of delineating what was actually missed and what would take to get the child back is a really clear example. All right.

So yeah, and yeah, and the other thing about that I think that's important is that I do, you know, if you have missed services and it's a PIRAS complaint, I, I have found PIRAS to be very responsive to taking, you know, a district taking corrective action, saying we acknowledge we missed this, we maybe acknowledge that we didn't send the interruption letter in a timely manner. However, we have looked at the data and we are offering this specific amount of compensatory services, we're offering a meeting for those services. PRS is, you know, they look at that in, in a way that is favorable to a district. So you always have an opportunity, even at that late stage, to do something to make yourself look better and to get a better result from PRS. Okay, the other issue is looking at goals that are not legally defensible. Um, I, you know, what I often see when I look at IEPs and I'm— and there's a complaint is that the present levels of performance are not really updated and they're, they're anecdotal and they're vague and they don't really address what the goal area is. So if it is, um, you know, a reading goal and, and you're— the student is working on vowel-consonant blends, the present level of performance has to talk about where the student actually is functioning functioning at the time the goal was written. And again, when the benchmarks are just too vague and it's talking about a growth of, you know, 20%, but 20% of what? And it's, you know, it's based upon what the class is doing, what the curriculum is, rather than, you know, what is the skill the student needs to develop in order to make progress. Um, it's also really important, and I think the new IEP does a pretty good job of this, is sort of helping us identify how we're going to measure progress. And particularly with students in high school, particularly for students that, you know, may have lifelong disabilities and be ready for graduation but still have disabilities, we have to write IEP goals that are achievable within 1 year. And if you come to an IEP meeting and the student has not made the progress in the year that everyone anticipated they would make, we should not leave the goal the same as it was last year. It's still— we should still update the goal, and we should think and really explain in the N1 why the student didn't make it, you know, didn't make their goal. Maybe it was due to absences, maybe it was due to some other factor. What was the reason and what we're going to do about it? And be realistic about what is achievable based upon the student's individual potential.

Nice, nicely teeing up for this one. Thank you. I appreciate that. Strong goals are specific. Strong goals are measurable. Strong goals are connected to disability-related needs, but also realistic, but appropriately ambitious and linked to data. I want to stress, and this is something we're going to stress, I may do this multiple times, so stay awake for this one, is stress the annual endpoint. The goal should tell us where we expect the student to be at the end of the IEP cycle. Then work backwards. What instruction is necessary to get there? And that's the SDI. Too often we don't think about what the SDI is. Too often I see teachers testify that the SDI is 30 minutes of resource room. That doesn't tell me SDI. We need to tell what we're going to teach the child so that they can get from point A to point B. Professional-sounding language is not the standard. Usable language is. And again, going back to using this as a communication document, something that really does matter is what we can do to address this one. So moving on to words that matter. Improve math skills. I want to make sure you understand which skills, from what baseline, by how much, measured how. I'm going to ask you those kinds of questions. Use appropriate behavior. Appropriate according to whom? In what setting? What observable behavior? Strong goals identify an observable skill. And I want to encourage teams to eliminate vague verbs such as understand, know, improve, and my recent favorite, appreciate. Students will appreciate others. I don't know what that means, but I see, I've seen it on multiple IEPs this year. If you cannot observe it reliably or measure an outcome represented, it probably does not belong as a central behavior in the goal. And that's what we have to think about as a part of this one, and that's what we have to pay attention to. But become more specific. And constantly ask these questions. By when? By whom?

How?

Ask these questions. Not this administrators. You know we're not asking you often to write the IEPs. We're we're asking you to lob the questions so that people will make sure that we're actually doing this appropriately. And shifting to one of my other favorite topics. Ready? Go.

Okay, for so progress monitoring again that does not drive decisions. I The progress monitoring has to be in with a frequency that will allow us to adjust our instructional decision-making and that will really be able to demonstrate progress over time. It has to be, if it's collected by different staff using different methods, there still has to be one sort of gatekeeper that's collecting all the data. If it's a, you know, an RBT collecting data, the BCBA has to have have time in the consultation to review the data, to make changes to a behavior plan, and really having progress reports that are data-driven. The progress reports— if the progress reports are not substantive, that can be really challenging at an IEP, at a BSEA hearing, and it can be really difficult for parents because they Are— they don't, you know, it creates a trust issue. So again, what— thinking carefully about what is the data that we can collect, who should be collecting it, on what frequency, and that will allow us to drive the instruction.

Which brings us to this. We have 3 possible categories typically: adequate progress, Questionable progress, inadequate progress, adequate progress, things like this. But what I want to emphasize in building on what Paige very nicely stated is what data were we taking that causes us to change instruction? Many districts have data, fewer have decision rules. So I want to— things, if we have questionable data about this one, if we have inadequate progress or questionable progress, Questionable things we need to do is examine fidelity, examine the intensity, examine the attendance, and examine the measurement of what's being done as a part of this one. Inadequate instruction. If a kid is making inadequate progress, and I feel comfortable in saying this, is this is probably one of the most important things we want you to do. If a child is not making progress, you need to change something. Change the instruction, change the dosage, change the method, change the grouping, change the supports. Or reconvene the IEP. But most of that can be done without an IEP team meeting, and we have to give the teacher the latitude to do this, these kinds of things. But if the child is not making progress, we need to change something. And then often I say after that is document the snot out of that, that you've changed. But that— and that's the formal legal term. But the data should have consequences. Okay, we should emphasize measurement consistency. Do not change the ruler. every week and then pretend that you have a trend line. That's what I often see is we're taking different measurements at different points, and that's what's posing problems, is we need to make sure we're being consistent as a part of this one, right?

Yeah, and just, I just want to add to that too, that, you know, a team cannot be afraid to tell a family that the student is not making the progress that they thought the student would make. It is far better to have that conversation and then to talk about what you're going to do to change it than to have a student, you know, unexpectedly to everyone not make progress for a long period of time and until the parent, you know, gets an outside report and sees that from someone else. So that's just something to think about. The other piece, you know, that often comes up is kind of evaluations and eligibility. Really carefully looking at what is the referral question. Is it too broad? Is it too narrow? You know, how is— what are the parents' concerns? Um, if the parent— there was a question that was brought before this, um, you know, we started that someone sent in about, you know, there's been this influx of parents, students who are general education students, and parents walking in with an outside neuropsych and saying Here, here's this neuropsych. My child needs to be eligible for an IEP, and I need an IEP, and here's the neuropsych. And what do we do about that? So at that point in time, you know, there are really 2 options, right? We can either, um, if we, if we can decide that we have sufficient information from that to have an eligibility determination meeting. I don't really think that that's possible because we have an obligation to do our own testing. So you have the conversation with the parent. You know what, we have an obligation and responsibility, a right and responsibility to do our own testing. We can have an eligibility meeting now, but without our own testing, we can't really make a decision. Or, you know, you have the meeting and you kind of accept their report, but then you have to accept all their recommendations. So that is not really preferable. But really, you know, listening to parents about what the concerns are. And for a lot of students who have very complex disabilities, There are a lot of concerns. And so when you're thinking about the evaluation, sort of prioritizing what is the most important issue for the parent. If it's a student with autism who's in, you know, a very complex student with a lot of needs who's in 3rd grade and is not toilet trained yet, maybe for, for you, that is your staff, that's not the priority. But for the parent, it really is because it prevents them from going out and doing things in the world. And so listening to the parents and then, and having evaluations that are really designed and targeted to answer the questions. Yep.

Which, thank you very much for picking up on this one. But just think about this one, okay? When, when wait becomes a risky page, think about this one. We need to distinguish intervention from evaluation. MTSS can provide valuable information for us, but it should not become an Definite holding pattern where disability is reasonably suspected. Watch patterns, things I want to address as a part of this one, is repeated academic failures, escalating behaviors, chronic attendance consistency, repeated mental health access issues, or years of intervention with minimal response. These are all red flags that are being waved in your face, and what we have to think about is doing something with them. But also, Paige eloquently stated this about parent communication. We need to be sure that parents are not surprised by this. That they are aware of what's going on. They do not, and they do not need to use the phrase IDEA evaluation for the district to pay attention to what is being communicated. Silence and informal handling creates risk. What we have to think about is stepping it up so that this is not something we pay attention to as a part of this one. And so this, we, we need to address this quickly.

Right.

And in terms of the evaluations, you know, And this again seems some— that's something that's really simple, but I often see is kind of missing, is during a team meeting, um, when the evaluations are being reviewed, there are— they have to have recommendations at the end, right? And so the recommendations should be flowing from what is the concern, what questions are we trying to answer, what data do we have, What data don't we have, and how can we get it? And then, you know, having the testing, explaining why we're using that particular test, looking at the recommendations, and then it's really hard if we have recommendations and those recommendations do not find their way into the IEP. That makes the IEP very hard to defend. And also, there is a real opportunity to explain, to, you know, demonstrate to parents. To PRS and hearing officers, if you— if we take an outside evaluation that contains a lot of recommendations and we agree and accept those and add them to our IEP, that also makes our IEP very strong.

Discipline, right?

Okay, the other— yeah, so MDRs are to me the hardest meetings to have, right? It's often the team chair reading the 2 questions. The teachers are petrified. The principal has gently suggested the student cannot return to the building. No one really understands what they're doing and why, and no one knows how to handle it. They are meetings that I think cannot happen without a pre-meeting so everyone understands what an MDR is and what their role is. It cannot just be the team chair asking those questions and everyone looking like deer in headlights. So a few things have to happen for an MDR. First of all, you have to have everyone at the table. You must have a school psychologist in almost 99% of MDRs. The school psychologist should present the evaluation as if they're presenting it at the, you know, at an eligibility meeting. They have to talk about it's not that the student was dealing, you know, selling pot because Uh, or consuming pot because they're impulsive. It's this student has ADHD, and how does that present for this student? And the only way you can know that is if the school psychologist presents their report. Then you have to have— if there's any social-emotional testing, that has to be present— presented. Any behavioral testing, those have to— we have to spend a long time looking at those. And so the school psychologist has to have a really good understanding about What is the conduct and what parts of the, the testing that they have can they talk about and emphasize when they're, they're presenting it? And then we have to have the, you know, evaluations presented, and then we have to turn to the teachers and any service providers and look to see how is this student functioning in school in a way that is consistent or not consistent with the evaluations that we've just reviewed. And if there's a behavior plan, you know, know, there has to be a discussion from whoever it was addressing the conduct, whether it be the assistant principal or whoever, a dean, you know, that they were using— they were implementing the behavior plan when they were addressing this conduct with a student. Um, and making sure that, you know, it— we're not just kind of going into these with that sheet and checking off a box, but that we're really analyzing this— the student's disability Not the label, but how it presents for that student, and what data do we have? What data might we need in making our decisions? Okay, and again, these are the 2 questions. It is also, you know, important to know that we're going to present these questions, and if you've had your pre-meeting, it's not a predetermination, but it's a meeting to talk about what information, what members of the team are going to be Use you know what how they're going to be able to contribute. Obviously, you need the teachers and any staff to talk about how the IEP is being implemented, how the student was getting the accommodations. If you know there is something in a behavior plan that says the student, I had one once where it said the student, you know, after they've engaged in an incident, should not be physically touched by anyone. They should be people should give them space and allow them an opportunity to take a walk. And lo and behold, the the system. Principal got in there and said, you know, the student went and did, you know, this conduct, and the other attorney, the attorney for the student, said, well, what did you then do? And he said, well, I walked over and I took his shoulder and I led him away. Well, you know what, he wasn't implementing the behavior plan, and so then we weren't able to, you know, it, it was a manifestation of the disability. So they have to understand that what they're saying, what the impact of it, so that can be planned. And also it's important to know that there should not be a vote. We should not be going around voting. It's a consensus. It is what is the team consensus, and the parents probably do disagree with the consensus, and that is okay, but we're not going around and doing a poll. That is not appropriate. I see it all the time on the internet. It is not required. It's a really bad idea. You need to get the language that's used in the guidance is consensus. And again, if parents disagree, the team chair will say, you know, we'll note your disagreement, but at the end of the day, the consensus of the team is this is not a manifestation of the student's disability.

Warms my heart for her to say that it's not a vote, by the way. Yes, I, I tell people that at the same time, but please get this out to your colleagues more.

Okay. Okay, um, placement and least restrictive environment. Again, sometimes we are, you know, shoving, um, like the IEP into fit a program or a placement, um, and obviously that's not appropriate. It's not how it should be. So they're really, even though, you know, we have a program and the program has certain components, we, we do really need to have placement following, um, the IEP development. And describing very specifically if there are going to be opportunities for the student to have reverse inclusion, if there's going to be times where the student might be removed from instruction. That all has to be set out in the IEP so parents understand when is the student with peers, when is the student not with peers. You know, there's a huge difference between push-in and pull-out and, and looking at what is the least restrictive environment for this student. So it, it may not be That a sub-separate setting may be less restrictive than having a student in an inclusion setting, but being pulled out and pulled out and pulled out and receiving the majority of their instruction in a 1-to-1 setting. And, you know, acknowledging if we don't have the program that's appropriate for your child, can we add to a program that we have, or do we have to look elsewhere? And, you know, that's, that's just how it goes sometimes. Sometimes we don't have a cohort and we have to just acknowledge that. The other thing that's been happening a lot in Massachusetts is that the out-of-district, you know, approved special education schools are requiring that the IEP service delivery grid be changed before the student is going to be allowed to enter their school. So you will always need to have a transition meeting. You're going to have to have conversations with the family if, you know, you need to do an agreement that this is not— this, you know, the parent Is still wants these services, but wants the student to go to the school that doesn't have direct speech. What is going to happen? But that is something that, you know, again, most out-of-district schools now will not accept a student unless they can fully implement the IEP, because the contract with the out-of-district school requires that. All right, in terms of parent participation. It is really important that we are responding to parent concerns, that we are responding to their emails. If they are rejecting an IEP and we— they want to have, you know, they send you a 40-page letter with all of their rejections, and some of their rejections have to be, you know, or that there's no comma after this word, or this should be capitalized, or these things, and you're just You know what, our IEP is perfect, we're not changing anything. We really have to allow the parent to meaningfully participate. We have to explain— let them explain why it's important, and we have to reflect this. The best way that we can demonstrate that we have allowed parent participation is through our N1, very, very explicitly explaining what the parents said, what their concerns were. why we made decisions to change the IEP or not change the IEP based upon the parent concerns, and to continually respond in writing. So many cases are won when the district is seen as being very diligent in making sure that the parents have had an opportunity to meaningfully participate in the process.

Let's talk about this one. Let's come up with a 4-point part. And I'm going to go through this really quickly because we're about to run out of time. But I want to make sure— acknowledge, investigate, identify the next steps, then give a realistic follow-up. Hey, thank you for raising the missed reading sessions. I'm reviewing the service records within the team and we'll follow up after we've determined what actually occurred. That is better than either defensiveness or immediate admission before facts are known. Good communication is specific, good communication is timely, and good communication is often boring. But it's boring because it does not escalate conflict. And that's what we have to think about this one. And I'm going to skip down to documentation reality and talk about this one. If it's— I would— I want to modify the common phrase slightly when speaking If it's not documented, months later it becomes very difficult to prove what happened. I don't encourage documentation merely for litigation. Documentation should support continuity and should support decision-making. Good records connect with concern to action to data. Service logs need to exist contemporaneously with this one. Do not create the service delivery history after you receive the complaint. Progress data should also show the team why they are addressing this and paying attention to this one, which leads us to a document which we're gonna scroll through really quickly. But staffing shortages, vacancies are very real, and administrators cannot manufacture personnel. Might want to talk to Parallel about this, though. You might want to— you might consider this one. I strongly endorse that. But IDEA obligations do not disappear because the labor market is difficult. You need a responsive system where you identify the gap, you obtain coverage where needed, and just record what is missed, and then communicate what's going on there. Staffing is the explanation. The next question, though, is what did the district do about it? And so this is, this is what we should think about this one, right? Is here, we don't do that here. Problem sounds categorical and program-driven. This isn't available in billing. Availability is an individualized analysis. The parent is unreasonable. That tells us nothing about the student's needs. We'll fix it at the annual review. It's not acceptable if the student needs action now. The student is passing. We can lock ourselves in a room, and I bet we could come up with a bunch of ways that grades can be manipulated. Every one of those statements closes inquiry. Administrators should be open to inquiry, and that's what we want to focus on as a part of this one. So we have, uh, I think we have time for like 1 or 2 more slides. So Paige, I'll let you take this one.

Sure. Yep. And again, the best thing that you can do is make decisions and talk with parents about what data. Um, another, you know, oftentimes we get into trouble, the no good deed goes unpunished, where the parent's asking for something and it's not, you know, it's not super expensive, it's not Super something that we can't do. So we just, okay, we'll just make them happy, we'll give it to them. And that just starts to feed a beast. So you have to make decisions and you have to really look carefully about what is the data. And again, this is going back to the trust but verify, making sure that you have the data, your team has the data. And again, what are we going to do if progress is not adequate? And when do we reconvene and how do we reconvene and what do we, you know, what is the purpose of that? And then we're really running up to time.

So yeah, so what I want to emphasize here is we have additional things, but we are willing to take additional questions. But what we have is we put together some templates for you, and we field tested these in multiple states. We field tested these templates relating to IEP delivery. We field tested these templates related to what is SDI, and we field tested these relating to progress monitoring. Just to kind of heads up, I mean, they're all summaries of books that I've written. That so if you buy, if you get these templates, you don't have to buy the books, but I can't legally tell you that. And so I should be, should, I think the publishers want me to say go buy the books. But we think we have to think about what we can do to provide additional sources. We have sources for you to provide assistance on this one. We've a lot more we can obviously say. Paige and I have brought a wealth of background to this one. The reality of the situation, though, is you're not going to have zero complaints. We can talk about this and we can work to reduce complaints. We truly wish that there was a world where there didn't need to be special education litigation, but the reality is that we're a field defined by a law, and one of the big things is we have to provide appropriate education Appropriate is very much in the eye of the beholder, and it's a very contentious issue. And that poses a problem because people look at this with very different expectations and very different realities. What one person might think is appropriate, others might not think is appropriate, and that's where a lot of the contention lies. So what we have for you is we have resources. What we also have, we have questions that have been posted to us that we will get the answers to you. And I— we promise we will get the answers to you, and we promise we will provide this I'm going to turn it over to Demi, who has— who can share one more slide as a part of hers, as part of this one. But thank you very much, and we appreciate your participating.

Okay. Yes, and we have quite a few questions here in the chat and questions that we got before the meeting that we are going to answer in our follow-up. We'll also be sharing the slides and the recording for those of you who have asked. So be on the lookout for that. And then, yeah, so thank you so much, Paige and Tobin, for sharing your expertise. Expertise with us today. We really appreciate you and everyone who joined us today. We hope this conversation was super helpful and gave you some practical takeaways that you can take back to your team. And of course, if anything comes up today after today's session, or if you need support with services or anything else, please don't hesitate to reach out. I have included my QR code here again so you can easily connect with me. As a former special education teacher, my favorite part of my job is getting to meet with you all and learning more about your districts and your students and figuring out how we can be most helpful. So please go ahead and book some time. But thank you again to both of you and for ACE for partnering with us, and thank you all for spending time with us today. Thank you.