How to start IEP process

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We've enrolled my daughter in the local school (she's 5). We've been told we need to do an IEP for her, but don't know how to start. The state department of rehab services told us to just call the count special ed co-ordinator. We left a couplle of messages, but haven't heard back from her. Someone else told us to do it in writing, but who do we send it to? Is there a special form?

I'm kind of wondering if we even need one. The main problems we forsee would be trouble with transitions between activities, sensitivity to noise, and misunderstandings about instructions. I'm thinking that just a parent-teacher meeting would do the trick. The main thing I would like would be that the teacher not force her to socialize and would allow her to wear earbuds (without music!) for noise attenuation.

The Special Education Coordinator should have jumped on the request. I hope the fact that s/he didn't isn't an omen.

If you put the request in writing, that starts a clock on the school. State laws vary as to the amount of time they then have (30 to 90 SCHOOL days is normal). The request does not have to be an any specific form. Reqeust normally go to the principal, certified mail-return recipt requested (so you have proof it was deliveried) with a copy to the special education coordinator and the teacher. Some people, myself included, start the process more informally by asking the teacher or the principal to test. If that doesn't work, then one can fall back on a letter.

There are actually sorta three levels of service available. The IEP is the most formal and it has the most safeguards in that it requires schools to test and accomidate. Its a formal, legal document...a contact if you will. The informal approach of asking the teacher to accomidate often does work. But if it doesn't, you have no rights to force the issue. And, if she needs more support as she gets older, you have start the IEP process at that late date and it does take time. The middle step is called a 504Plan.

By federal law, each state must have a parent training center. Here is yours.
Alabama
Parents as Partners in Education of Alabama
576 Azalea Road, Suite 105
Mobile, AL 36609
251-478-1208 Voice & TDD
251-473-7877 FAX
1-800-222-7322 AL only
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: http://home.hiwaay.net/~seachsv/

The training centers are not well funded so some of them are little more than store fronts where you can pick up copies of state and federal law. Others have outside funding and are more full service. Mine even has free advocates available to parents. If nothing else, your center can give you info on state laws.

You might want to pop over to Schwablearning.org and see if their are any other AL parents there. They could give you valuable insight on the local lay of the land.

Barb

The problem with anything not in writing is that then later you have nothing to fall back on when things aren't happening. There's also the problem of definitions. What you mean by "not forcing her to socialize" and what the teacher thinks may be two different things. Do you mean during centers or cooperative play time during class time? Or out in the recess yard? Or in PE? And probably wearing earbuds would require something in writing in most schools.

Transitions are a big problem for many of our kids. In my son's IEP it is written how far in advance he is to be notified of schedule changes, and every day he is provided with a schedule for that day's events.

Thanks for the response. Alabama has apparently gotten pretty strict about AS not automatically qualifying for services. They're going strictly by whether or not the child performs at grade level academically (which she does, she's 5 and reading and doing simple math in her head). So far she has done remarkably well in classroom settings, usually becoming the teacher's pet and just kind of going along inher own little world. The school so far has been very cooperative in letting us tour and showing her around to get her used to the building. We'll be having a meeting with the teacher before school starts, and I think we may get farther asking for favors than demanding something in writing in this case. If it doesn't work out, we'll just go back to homeschooling.

I hope that Alabama's education goals do not include social skills, otherwise they are in for a rude awakening like a school district in Maine found out.

New Mexico is great when it comes to their IEP's. They get a lot of funding and grants with children in special ed catagories. We had that in the bigger school systems when we lived in the city. But now that we are in a small town with no secluded special Ed and no knowledge of AS, it's been a struggle and a learning expierence for both the school and us. But we've always found out the IEP process is simple when you ask for it here in NM. It's getting the programs going and the education going when they get the results. It's been a huge learning expierence.