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Based upon my experience as: a parent of a child with special needs, former leader and participant of many parent support groups, member of numerous committees, councils, task forces, and organizations throughout the state, as well as current president of Mothers From Hell 2 in which I routinely network with thousands of parents and professionals throughout the nation, many right here in Illinois; and survivor of a long complex due process suit I submit the following observations and proposals on bringing the state of Illinois into compliance with IDEA.
The following observations and suggestions are also gleaned from many sources and not necessarily based upon my own direct personal experiences. As long as these are utilized in a way that will benefit children with special needs, no further permission is necessary to forward or quote (accurately and in context, only) from this document. Beth Randall, busymom_x_4@yahoo.com.
Observations:
The Office of Special Education (OSEP) of the US Department of Education has repeatedly found that Illinois schools are out of compliance with IDEA and that the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) does not ensure compliance as they are required to.
ISBE has issued important, informative memos regarding the federally mandated implementation of IDEA in areas that parents have difficulty getting compliance with, such as discipline, extended school year services, and least restrictive environment placement with appropriate supports and services.
ISBE publishes a comprehensive Parents Guide to the Rights of Students with Disabilities.
The memos and the parents’ guide have language directly within the documents themselves that state they are to be distributed by schools to all parents of children with disabilities.
Parents are not in fact receiving these vital pieces of information from their schools, advocates, or anyone else thereby denying them the tools they need to compel schools into providing the mandated services for their children, and to substantiate their claims when filing complaints. The memos are available on the ISBE website, however unless parents know what to look for, where and why, the information remains unavailable to them, and with the recent changes to the ISBE website it is now difficult to find the special education pages unless you have previously book-marked them.
Parent training institutes are, by virtue of their grant requirements, focusing more on ‘collaboration’ between schools and parents, and less on training parents in the laws, their rights and the methods needed to obtain services.
There is no mandatory training by ISBE for school boards, staff & administration in IDEA requirements and obligations. Consequently many such are uninformed as to their obligations under the law; which leaves them to make uninformed, potentially costly and damaging decisions on services.
Parents are ultimately charged with enforcing IDEA through mediation, formal written complaints and due process hearings.
Parents hesitate to exercise their responsibility to enforce compliance issues in fear of retaliation (which is obviously illegal, and yet occurs too often) and because of the undue burden of hiring an attorney, as well as the lack of access to qualified special education legal representation.
Parents and advocates often are not aware of the extent that a due process hearing is a legal process and parents must have an attorney representing them in order to have a fair and just hearing. The perception of informality of a due process hearing has been perpetuated to the detriment of parents. No school enters into a due process situation without legal representation.
School administration that is informed often seems to be assessing the risks of which is costlier- providing services they do know are mandated or taking a chance that a parent will actually file due process and hold them accountable. When such a situation becomes an adverse risk the school often settles and provides the services they were required to in the first place.
Parents, advocates, school staff, administration and boards are not informed as they should be in what constitutes FAPE, most have little or no knowledge of the following:
Related services- most of the above individuals are not aware that recreation is the school’s responsibility as a related service; or that psychological services delivered by a qualified psychologist, whether or not one is ‘available’ at the school is also a related service. The same can be said of nearly all of the IDEA specified Related Services -which can be found listed in the ISBE memo LRE April 10, 2003.
Supports - Most of the above stakeholders are not aware that the child with an IEP is entitled to an assessment in adaptive PE, or Assistive Technology, beyond augmented communication possibly that is, or that special education can and most often should mean an adapted curriculum delivered in the regular education classroom; also per ISBE memo LRE April 10, 2003.
Use of positive behavior interventions before restrictive interventions is clearly stated in IDEA and the ISBE Discipline memo 2000, as well as the 1996 Guide to Behavior Policy. The same with review and revamping of BIP once restrictive are used, and bringing in behavior experts to review behavior intervention plans and conduct functional assessments. All are required by the ISBE guidelines, policies and IDEA, but are not occurring.
Disability harassment is a denial of FAPE as per OSERS/OSEP memo July 2000.
Extended School Year service eligibility does not rely solely on the magical “regression/recoupment” formula the schools consistently use to deny it, in fact ESY may be indicated for socialization and consistency concerns, per ISBE ESY memo 2001.
Some advocates and schools express concern with giving parents too much information so they often withhold information until a parent “asks for it” or does not provide services until the parent “asks for it.” I ask - how can a parent ask for a service or support they do not know exists, or that they would have any legal basis to ask for it?
Most parents are hesitant to complain to ISBE or file due process as they think ISBE is there only for the districts - this in particular must be remedied immediately.
Instead of ‘forcing the issue’ when their children aren’t receiving the educationally appropriate services or worse yet are being maltreated, parents are turning more and more to home schooling. This is not a positive or appropriate choice for many of these families. They feel pushed into a corner and end up sacrificing services, socialization, and often family income in order to protect and educate their child with special needs. The school often feels this is beneficial as they no longer have to provide services, and the loss to them of state aid for this child is not as large of a burden as the services appear to be under the current paradigm of service delivery.
What needs to be done to begin to remedy the non-compliance:
Creation and maintenance of a confidential master mailing list of parents/guardians of children with IEPs and 504 plans, as well as those whose children are undergoing eligibility evaluations for such services. (The Illinois Early Intervention System has such a base, and does mail information directly to all parents on it.) Hereby referred to as the “database.”
Immediately mail a packet to the database that includes: The “big blue” Parents Guide to the Educational Rights of Students With Disabilities 2001, ISBE Behavioral Interventions in Schools: Guidelines for Development of District Policies for Students with Disabilities, January 1996, The April,10, 2003 “LRE” memo, The 2001 ISBE “ESY” memo, the June 14, 1999 Communication on Discipline of Students with Disabilities memo, the February 28, 2002 Isolated Time Out and Physical Restraint Rules memo, and the July 2000 OSERS/OSEP Disability Harassment memo. Included in this packet will be a cover letter informing the parents that ISBE wants their help in ensuring school district compliance with these federal mandates, giving addresses, phone numbers, and names of ISBE contact personnel and the website information.
Create and include an initial brief written complaint form and post it on the website. This form would have pertinent information requested and would tell the parent to be sure to enclose copies of all relative documentation or to send it to Program Compliance if filing the complaint on the internet. If emailing the complaint it should be followed up from ISBE with an automated response reminding the parent to send the document copies and the address again as to where to send them. If mailing it the parents should receive a follow up phone call.
As new parents enter the system they would receive this packet in the mail directly from ISBE along with any other pertinent memos and correspondences as they are issued. Once on the Database, all new pertinent memos and correspondences as they are issued by ISBE (or received by ISBE from federal sources) will be mailed or emailed (as per parent preference) directly to the parents. Parents may be removed from the database by their own written request, or when the child leaves the Illinois school system.
An independent IDEA compliance unit could be created to oversee the formation and implementation of the Database. This Unit should be governed by a board consisting of representatives from the following groups: parents of children with disabilities, youth/education advocates, OSEP, ISBE, teachers, both regular education and special education, related service personnel, paraprofessionals, and school administrators.
The compliance unit could also oversee mandatory intensive training for all school staff- certified and non; administrators and school boards in IDEA and what it means to comply. The training would be straight unbiased fact and explaining many of the issues that I cited above that all stakeholders seem to be unaware of to some extent. The schedule of all of these trainings statewide would be sent to the Database and parents would be encouraged to attend their own district’s or any other’s sessions. This could begin the “collaboration” between schools and parents as they would be privy to the same information. Level the playing field as it were. Along that same vein all school staff- certified and non; administrators and school boards would also receive the information packet given to the Database and be asked to inform ISBE if newly released information is not distributed to them by their administrators (they can monitor the website and keep in touch with parents as to recent communications - this will keep them abreast of changes, the website and bring them closer to the parents to work as a team - more collaboration.)
This project could be funded by any monies currently used to ensure compliance as well as parent training, etc. Other federal and state funds could be pursued as well.
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