My back was getting sore from hunching over the low-slung kiddie table. The room was hot and stuffy, despite an open door. Both case managers were in attendance. After Pleasanton’s show of confidence, they attempted to steer the discussion to the change of placement, but Geri insisted that we discuss goals first. “The goals drive placement,” she said. “Not your convenience.”
Katie’s teacher, the adored Mr. F, had been worried that his goals would not pass Geri’s scrutiny, but he passed with flying colors as did the speech therapist. Others did not fare as well. The meeting dragged on.
Geri had already discussed the placement options with the case managers. There was the classroom in Pleasanton, the life skills class at the Dublin middle school I had already rejected, and a few non-public school (NPS) options that all involved lengthy bus rides outside the Tri-Valley region and would provide no opportunities for mainstreaming with typically functioning peers. None of these options felt right for Katie, but I’d been impressed with the comments made by the women from Pleasanton. I also knew that the suspension on Katie’s birthday had been designed to send me a message. Katie would be suspended over and over until I agreed to one of the alternate placements. I didn’t want to prolong the inevitable.
In private, Geri had said she was tempted to insist on the NPS in order to inflict maximum financial pain on the school district. But in the end we agreed to a thirty-day trial in the Pleasanton classroom. Geri requested an independent psych evaluation to provide the missing cognitive data as well as an independent behavioral analysis because the FAA conducted by the school district was invalid. Besides, she argued, Katie was transferring to a new program so the behaviors would be different. She also requested that Katie be evaluated for alternative communication technology. This last request lead to a heated exchange in the hallway, but in the end, Geri prevailed.
There was a whispered conversation between Geri and me in the nurse’s office. Then we eased our way back into the cramped meeting room and Geri told them we had a deal. The majority of the team dispersed, but Geri and I remained to sign the IEP documents.
The case manager couldn’t figure out how to print the IEP document from a remote location. Geri and I waited for nearly an hour, but no document was produced. The case manager assured Geri that she would email the document as soon as she got back to her office that afternoon.
No IEP document arrived that afternoon. Nor did it arrive that evening. Or the next day.
When it finally arrived, two days late, Geri responded to the case manager by saying, “I mean no personal disrespect, but I have to say, this is the most disorganized IEP document I have ever seen.”
And it was. The school district had just bought software, like most school districts, to help manage IEP preparation and documentation. But it was clear that no one had received any training on how to use the software. Old IEP goals, with their progress reports attached, were intermingled with the new goals for the upcoming year. There were duplicate reports, and in some cases, conflicting reports. Goals that should have been deleted were not. New goals had not been modified as agreed. Copies of suspension paperwork were intermingled with everything else. In short, it appeared as if someone had thrown 96 printed pages into the air, let the wind blow them around, gathered up the resulting mess, and then scanned everything in whatever order it happened to be in.
Yes, it was that bad.
Geri spent three hours—that I paid for—cleaning up the mess.
To be continued…
NOTE: For those of you who missed the earlier parts to this story (or simply want to refresh your memory), you can find them here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7. Sorry, but as you can see, my IEP stories are never short.
Until next time,
Cynthia Patton
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