Governor Chris Sununu is right to be concerned that many special education students are being left behind during remote learning, but will his Emergency Order #48 make a bad situation worse by burying schools in paperwork?
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Part 2 of the order states, “Each school district must ensure that they hold IEP [Individualized Education Plan] team meetings for every student identified for special education services no later than 30 calendar days after the first day of the school district’s 2020-2021 school year.
At the meeting, the IEP team will consider what Compensatory Education Services, if any, are required to be provided to make up for services not provided during the period of remote instruction and support, student regression, or student’s failure to make expected progress as indicated in the student’s IEP.”
By now, school districts and special education case managers know which special education students haven’t engaged in distance learning or haven’t received services because of the state-ordered remote learning, and they’re struggling to find ways to help them; however, mandatory additional IEP meetings in a tight time window will keep schools tied up in meetings and paperwork that will in itself do nothing to educate special needs students.
Parents of students with disabilities know that, although IEP meetings are necessary, these meetings are also bogged down with layers of bureaucracy from state and federal regulations that sometimes render them worse than useless. Consider what a special education teacher has to do to hold one IEP meeting:
- Find a mutual meeting time where the parent, student, classroom teacher, administrator, service providers, and outside advocate are available.
- Prepare and mail an invitation listing the people attending the meeting.
- If a team member becomes unavailable, the case manager must either receive parent and administrator permission to continue without them or reschedule the meeting.
- If a parent is unresponsive, the case manager must make multiple phone calls, and send a certified letter.
- If the district is proposing to amend the IEP, the case manager must prepare the proposed amended IEP and mail it five days in advance.
- Hold the meeting to discuss the school’s proposal. If the parent and district don’t reach an agreement about what services the child needs, go back to step #1.
- If the special education team reaches a decision, the district (usually the special education teacher) will write the minutes and mail home a Written Prior Notice, a final proposed amended IEP with any changes from the meeting, with a self-addressed posted envelope. If the parent doesn’t respond, the case manager repeatedly calls homes, and often sends a second copy of the documents.
- After the documents are returned by the parents, the district (often the case manager) files and mails home the signed documents with another return envelope.
If this doesn’t sound daunting, imagine going through these steps for 25 students simultaneously in the first 30 days of the school year while you distribute and review IEPs with teachers, service providers, instructional assistants; developing and delivering IEP goal datasheets, implementing behavior plans, and planning and delivering remedial math, reading, and writing.
Yes, special education teachers may hold their IEP meetings over the summer, and even though they aren’t contracted, many will because it would be impossible to serve their students otherwise; however, many of the required team members won’t be available, and special education teachers will be competing for the same administrators, speech and language pathologists, and regular education teachers in the building in July and August.
Half of special education teachers leave the job within five years; this is in large part due to well-meaning bureaucrats who believe that the best way to meet student needs is with meetings and forms, leaving the teachers little time for teaching the children. Meeting the needs of struggling special education students should be a high priority, but we need a plan that offers children and parents real solutions instead of producing volumes of checked, signed, and dated forms.
