Time-line for ARD meeting in TX

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I just got a paper about my sons ARD meeting coming up in December for his first IEP. I know they are already done with his evaluations so the meeting will be coming about 3.5wks after the evaluation report will be done.
Is that a normal time line? It seems like 3wks will be so long for my son since he is in trouble every day from being so overwhelmed with school. I don't know if he will last 3wks. He has already been in ISS 4 days this year and suspended one day. He is only 6yrs but the school is treating him like a problem child. He was evaluated for ASD but we don't have the results yet. I am waiting on the special ed CO-OP that did the evaluation to call me.

3 weeks is a long time. Since they have done the evaluation will they give him any accommodations to help him thru until the meeting? If he has a disability, suspending him really shouldn't be an option. If things are going badly it is because the school is failing him not vice versa. I highly recommend that you find an advocate to meet with you before the IEP and to attend the meeting with you. A school that would resort to suspending a 6 yo doesn't seem like they can be trusted to write a decent IEP for your child.

Thank you for your reply. I do have an advocate ( our behavioral therapist) I guess she might not technically be an advocate but she knows accommodations. She is in the process of getting a good plan together for his underlying autism characteristics. She said even if he doesn't get an ASD diagnosis she will still use the same interventions.
The school doesn't handle him well at all and I think I will ask tomorrow why our ARD is so far out since we are clearly having major issues right now. He is on a 504 and does have some accommodations when they implement them properly. He has a visual schedule and a token behavior system. Problem is I haven't seen a token since he's been getting in trouble everyday which means he has no positive experience at school only negative. He is spiraling out of control again. We had a good thing going and he was doing so good at home. No meltdowns and minimal issues. Now after almost 3 months of school he is lashing out again with violence and outbursts

He is on edge all the time and every small thing sets him off. We are back to walking on eggshells all the time.

I found this:

http://www.texasprojectfirst.org/SEProcessStep5.html


So, yes they seem to be allowed to delay the meeting that long. That said, if your son is looked at as a "problem" sometimes that will incent them to expedite things. I don't know what your rapport is with your son's teacher and or any of the administrators or members of the ARD committee, but I would find someone (maybe the teacher b/c the teacher is the one dealing with this day-to-day) and use charm and powers of persuasion to expedite things. Convince his teacher to advocate for you so that her life can be made easier than it currently is.

There is also a procedure that they have to follow when your child is pulled a certain amount of time. I do not recall how much pulling they can do, first offhand, but all this stuff should be in that booklet on parents rights that they are supposed to have given you. I would hope given what is going on that has already been folded into the current process regardless of pulls. If an FBA is not part of the process begun, it should be. A functional behavioral analysis is when they attempt to analyze why your son is doing what he is doing, document the behavior and list what works and what does not to fix it.

We had an FBA, and it was a joke. By the time it got to this point things were so bad, I all but decided to pull him out of school, anyway. Is there any allies that you have up at school?

I just messaged one of my allies at the school to ask her opinion. She was his PreK teacher so she saw the issues before I even talked to her about them. I am going to ask them tomorrow about why it is so far out since we have clearly got a problem. I think from what I have read it is for sure legal for them. They have 30 days to have a meeting after the FIE is done. They did a FBA along with the evaluations. I just want the results and some better days at school for my son. He is the one suffering.
His teacher is done with him sadly. She is going on maternity leave in December and she just doesn't deal with him well at all. She causes a lot of his meltdowns at school in the way that she reacts to him and talks to him. So I don't know that going to her would really make a difference.

Thank y'all for the advice. This process sucks

Yeah.... And I can tell you from experience, just a transition to a new teacher mid-year might be an additional issue -unless- she is light years better. Has anyone given you any information on the sub, and how they plan on easing your son's transition? We had an issue last year where my son's teacher had to have surgery and we got a sub for 8 wks. Our school at least tried to make a smooth transition. The sub was someone my son had met before, and he was given adequate warning. It was one of the few things they did right. We still had issues that could have been better handled if the original teacher was there, but it could have been a lot worse at that point if they did not at least handle that transition well.

I do not know anything about 504s, so these next questions may be very stupid. Has your son had any occupational therapy at school? (I am guessing not or he'd be under IEP already) Has an OT been called in an part of your current evaluations? Could they institute temporary measures for any sensory issues that are going on? I do not think it would be unreasonable to ask for this in the meantime. Also, if they already know some of the antecedents to the problematic behaviors are they doing anything at all constructive or only doing ISS? It might help to suggest it to "make the teacher's day go better." I am saying that b/c based on what you are saying, appealing to their sympathy for your child may not get you where you need to go, and you may need to appeal to how it benefits them.

Also, I don't know if this is logically feasible, but you might want to go in and observe things. No one is going to know your boy like you, and yes, your son, the teacher and the other kids will all act differently with you there, but I would go in and observe. You may figure out what the heck is going on there and be able to offer them some solutions. At the very least it will help you if at ARD they claim a bunch of things are not happening (say bullying) and you can say you were there and SAW IT.

Is your advocate going to the meeting with you?

They have been getting all the kids used to the idea that their teacher is going to be gone after break. I think they have been bringing the sub in to get used to the kids also.

I am working with the behavioral therapist. (private therapist) She is trying to help figure out the antecedents to the problematic behaviors so they can try to handle them differently. The only thing they do every day is remove him from class to the principals office. The next day he will have lunch detention then if the next day is bad also they will keep him after school. I think they keep him after for like 3 days and then its ISS.

I will go in tomorrow and ask about what changes we can make while waiting for the meeting because things aren't working the way we have them. He doesn't get OT and therefore they don't really address his sensory needs. They give him one break in the early afternoon to go get a snack because he has a very high metabolism so that can set him off too.

I had someone tell me that if the ARD is scheduled then they have the eval results so I am going to ask about that tomorrow also. His behavioral therapist is helping me so much. She has done so many things pro bono because she sees how horrible the situation is with the school. She is attending the meeting with me.

At the moment the behavioral therapist is working with a lady who will be on my sons iep case if he qualifies. They are using the Ziggurat Model to develop a good plan of intervention. We went over it today and it seems like it may show the school that his behaviors have an underlying cause.

I forgot to address observation. His behavioral therapist has observed quite a few times and tried to give them some pointers. They don't listen I have thought about going and observing from the hall because I can see where he sits from the hallway without him seeing me. I just still have a hard time seeing triggers for his behaviors. His therapist is better at seeing things that I don't see.

No wonder your son is melting down all the time. What they are doing now may be what is easier for them, but it is making it worse. They tried that staying after school thing with us, too, and it was so horrendous they stopped it. The bad behavior yielded consequences that set him off which yielded more punishment, which set him off etc. They need to focus on what calms your son down. Do you have any calming schemes that might work in the classroom that they could try while all this gets hashed out?

This is exactly what is going on and they just don't know how to handle him. He has begun running from anyone who has every "disciplined" him at school. The assistant principal told me on the phone that he "thought it was a game and wanted me to chase him" I told her that he in no way thought it was a game and he DIDNT want her to chase him. He was trying to avoid the situation. That is the mindset they are stuck in and it is making things so much worse.

The problem with the calming is that they let him get so worked up before they try to help him. I tried to tell them the earlier you catch it the easier it will be to diffuse the situation, but the just don't have the training? to deal with him. Our behavioral therapist wants to see if she could hold some workshops at the school on staff development days. She said she has never had a school district let a child have so many problems without stepping in and making something change.

Could I call an emergency IEP meeting?

Yeah, that sounds like how our school got towards the end, last year. They made false assumptions about motivations etc. They did not understand inappropriate laughter. They did not understand not to require eye-contact (especially when chastising him) It was bad.

I am not aware of any thing called an Emergency IEP Meeting, but you could look in your booklet and ask your advocate. I pushed things up by being a PITA, not through legal citations. Charm is not my strength but I would have used that too if I had it in my quiver.

You could also just try to set up regular meetings prior to the ARD to discuss what they know, what they are trying etc. I don't know if you can force them, but if they will not even voluntarily meet with you, given the circumstances, they are as Bombaloo said, going to be very difficult to get good product from. I didn't have to call those kinds of meetings, I was called up there a lot, and they had no clue what they were doing. If they also won't meet to try to fix it, it means they are both clueless, and uncooperative, which is very very bad.

I have no understanding of the process (starting on the process for getting DS6 a 504, and expecting it to be so bad that I end up just caving to whatever they want).

However. It sounds like they have a combination of ignorance and self-righteousness that is going to prove intractable. I really hope I'm wrong...

...but I think I'd probably start investigating plans for potential alternative education arrangements.

Our school seems OK-- though I can't separate "OK" from "PC window dressing"-- and I'm still developing plans for homeschool. In case-- you know, in case this sinking feeling in my gut doesn't turn out to be just a once-bitten ASD mother catastrophizing.

I will be honest about it. We have always (reluctantly) assumed that homeschooling would become something we would have to consider. I had just kind of crossed my fingers that we would have at least made it through 3rd grade, instead of just barely stretching public school through 2nd. We have always arranged things here, so that we could transition quickly, if needed.

There are people who are very enthusiastic homeschoolers, but it was never what I wanted and I know I failed b/c I had to pull him out. That said, I do not regret it b/c public school was just not right for my son, and this year would have been worse than last year.

So, yeah, I have been holding back on saying that that may be something the OP should keep on the back burner along with private school, (finances and local option alternatives permitting.) There are people on here who have similar behavioral issues and have managed to make PS work. I am not one of them, so my commentary is most useful when addressing when things look wrong. How they look on the turn-around side, I have very little experience with b/c, again when things got really bad, they kept getting bad, and what I did did not work and so we pulled him right after second grade.

I can say that when we had (less severe) issues in first grade, we got a part-time temporary one-to-one aide and that helped a good deal. I could never get the district to reconsider adding one back afterwards. In second grade there was a part time inclusion aide who set my son off. If she were one-to-one, it would have been worse. So I stopped pushing. What I should have done was push for a one-to-one TRAINED paraprofessional. That might also be an option for the OP. There are downsides, as your kid will look like a dork. (My son did not care, or even have social awareness to understand that had I explained it.) It is however a good way to keep the bullies away when the aide is there, and the aide, can help with behavior if the rapport is OK.

That y'all. We have definitely considered that homeschool might be our next step but I am also not a homeschool enthusiast. I have my daughter home still half a day and him being home with her before school is a bad combination. I am hoping to at least try to make it to third grade because that is when our k12 online school starts.

I am going to just ask the school today what's up and see if maybe that was just the first time everyone can get together. I will also ask if there is any possible way we could meet before hand just to go over what interventions aren't helping and find new ones that hopefully will help I don't want my kid to be the one who runs out of the school because he just can't handle it anymore

I hear you. The rocket scientists over at my son's school started making me pick him up when he got disruptive (It was not even that bad, yet) My son is smart little guy and figured all he had to do was act up and he'd get to go home. No matter how much fun I took away to try to counter their stupidity he still preferred home. By the time they figured out what they did (never mind that I warned them as soon as they started doing this that it was a reward not a punishment) the damage was done and then when they didn't send him home, the behavior got worse and worse so they would. He would not unlearn the lesson no matter what I told him. It took everything his teacher and I had to get him through the year, and not without great cost to his emotional health. I was this close to pulling the trigger before the year was up, but I really wanted him to leave on a high note and not feel like a failure. I thought long run, that would have been worse.

That is exactly what I told her when she suspended him that one day. "I hope this doesn't become a habit"

I'm anxious to see how today went at school. I am going to talk to them today about the ARD meeting and see if we could at least call a 504 meeting since he is still under 504