Specific IEP questions

Is she homeschooled and getting speech on the side? If she doesn’t have a Doctor’s diagnosis of serious illness I don’t believe the district has to provide homebound services. I have had clients on homebound services with extreme medical conditions, such as cancer, dysphagia, mental illness, or autoimmune difficiences.

We requested a full case study on our youngest daughter, with an expected completion date in December. Here are my questions.

1.Is the referral date the date of written request for a case study the date I requested to have the full case study performed, or the date district agreed to perform the case study, which is also the same day I provided written consent.

The have 50 days from the time you gave written consent.

2.Where should the accomodations made at a Determination of Performing a Case Study meeting be held. Would the accomodations be temporarily placed in her speech IEP?

This question you posed seems ambiguous to me can you clarify?

If she is getting speech services and being homeschooled you only can get the speech services, until the IEP team determines wiith your informed input otherwise

3.Isn’t written notice of a Determination of Performing a Case Study meeting required if a speech IEP is in place? Wouldn’t I also have to waive my rights to the meeting if the meeting was placed less than 10 days after my written request?

You don’t waive your rights for a meeting that is held 10 days after a written request. You waive your right to have the meeting within 10 days notice.

4.What exactly happens if I do not waive my rights to the general clause of “10 days notice”? Say for future notices of course.

They can postpone the meeting to a later date.

5.Phew, and district denied our doctor’s note for homebound services. I’ve asked the doctor to send a note meeting what I will presume to be ISBE’s requirements to request homebound services:

1)stress as her medical condition

Is the stress due to homeschooling, mental or physical impairments?

2)that her emotional well being and tolerance levels are being affected by current conditions

What is stressful about the current conditions, one can’t make recommendations based on what you have said.

3)that her condition will last over ten days and may be remedied by accomodations placed within her IEP.

Is her condition life threatening or can it be dealt with through counseling?

I never really heard from either ISBE or the district as to a clear and defined procedure to follow while requesting homebound and or homebound & services.

I have only seen children who have had serious medical problems such as mental illness, cancer, or other physical impairments receive home services. If it is temporary they don’t have to provide homeservices.

Any ideas on how to proceed?

I am not familiar with Illinois law so I can’t advise you on this one.

Thanks for the reply, here is the additional information:

-Is she homeschooled and getting speech on the side?
I am homeschooling her now, but we have not formally removed her from the school district. We had hoped district would allow us to homebound until the case study could be completed & the IEP accomodations determined.

>If she doesn’t have a Doctor’s diagnosis of serious illness I don’t believe the district has to provide homebound services. I have had clients on homebound services with extreme medical conditions, such as cancer, dysphagia, mental illness, or autoimmune difficiences.

The doctor has stated that she is suffering from high degrees of mental stress while she was attending school. Our child was an entirely different human being, and has since stabilized since being removed from the pressures and stresses she encountered in first grade. We also used the time removed from school for additonal private testing. We were also unsure of the degree of her disabilities. But I can confidently state that she can easily complete 3 hours of coursework at home with 15 minute break periods on a daily schedule. I know she can do the work. I also see how she can do the work, and I know a greater degree of her medical condition.

-Regarding our questions:

-1.Is the referral date the date of written request for a case study the date I requested to have the full case study performed, or the date district agreed to perform the case study, which is also the same day I provided written consent.

>The have 50 days from the time you gave written consent.

Okay after further investigation with an educational advocate we discovered that Illinois law is 60 days from the date given written consent.
Is your 50 day answer federal law or an individual state law?

-2.Where should the accomodations made at a Determination of Performing a Case Study meeting be held. Would the accomodations be temporarily placed in her speech IEP?

>This question you posed seems ambiguous to me can you clarify?

District replied that they had the right to hold an eligibility of determination of whether or not to complete a full case study. They complied with holding the meeting within ten days of my written request to perform the case study. At this said meeting, which was not held according to IEP normal standards, accomodations were requested by us (her parents) until the case study was completed. The accomodations were not placed into her speech and language IEP.

ie. 5 sight words instead of 10, slower simple directions, no further assignments returned through our daughter with a “U” grade. The Unsatisfactory graded assignments were to be returned to us in a sealed envolope with written communication. Directions were to be repeated and simplied. A few other minor temporary accomodations were requested to make sure she did not become discouraged etc until the case study was complete.

These accomodations were not met by district, and this is another one of the reasons we requested homebound by the district. We were not in hopes of receiving homebound services. We only wanted a temporary moment to regain our daughter and attempt to discover the issues at hand
We wanted a medical diagnosis and to complete hearing tests etc. We did not remove her from the school district until we were positive that all domains performed were complete.

In our minds, district would also be notifying us on her speech and language IEP within 2 weeks, and that allowed us the opportunity to meet again and discuss the issues at hand, still waiting for the actual determination of elibility meeting to be held by December.

>If she is getting speech services and being homeschooled you only can get the speech services, until the IEP team determines wiith your informed input otherwise

The above information probably helps here a lot. But we would have hoped the soon to be speech iep meeting would have permitted new opportunities such as the accomodations modified/adjusted, or new solutions such as part time attendance until the case study was complete.

-3.Isn’t written notice of a Determination of Performing a Case Study meeting required if a speech IEP is in place? Wouldn’t I also have to waive my rights to the meeting if the meeting was placed less than 10 days after my written request?

>You don’t waive your rights for a meeting that is held 10 days after a written request. You waive your right to have the meeting within 10 days notice.

Right (I think I meant to say “more than”) but again, with her speech IEP in place, we were not given any formal notice of the determination of eligibility to complete the case study evaluation. The meeting was announced as a Collaboration Meeting and we signed only that we were in attendance.

4.What exactly happens if I do not waive my rights to the general clause of “10 days notice”? Say for future notices of course.

They can postpone the meeting to a later date.

But, they have 60 days to complete and then nearly (unless further procedures are followed) implement her IEP, after written consent.
If they do not notify me 10 days before hand, I just sorta have to sign the waivor just so they wil hold the meeting? They seem always hand me a notice and need a meeting immediately, but in the meantime break a yearly speech and language IEP ending date. Or they need to hurry up and have us have a meeting to comply with implementing an IEP after 60 days of written consent. Seems to me like this would be breaking compliance. Of course we want the meeting, but we should also be given the notice properly, and desire the IEP to be in place as it should be.

As a parent I often waive my rights to parent teacher conferences, and we do so within our son’s IEP. We review his IEP annually, with his entire sixth grade team of teachers. about the time of conferences and I think this way everyone is happy. We truely hate to see the amount of time teachers and professionals are removed from the classroom.

5.Phew, and district denied our doctor’s note for homebound services. I’ve asked the doctor to send a note meeting what I will presume to be ISBE’s requirements to request homebound services:

1)stress as her medical condition

>Is the stress due to homeschooling, mental or physical impairments?

Her stress was with being within district attempting to keep up in first grade coursework and with a teacher who was unable to make accomodations. She was completely frustrated and discouraged and regressed to a pre-kindergarten level. She was by no means happy and well adjusted as she had always been. She can communicate very well, but was more or less unable to discuss with us the difficulties she was encountering. She would also not discuss her coursework or assignments. Our entire family quickly felt her pain.

-2)that her emotional well being and tolerance levels are being affected by current conditions

>What is stressful about the current conditions, one can’t make recommendations based on what you have said.

Three or more Us on papers a day is stressful to anyone, much less a first grader who made Es for kindergarten. Whatever was going on in that classroom was changing who are daughter was and will become. We have no idea what was creating such havoc, but everyday we found her in tears and often angry about school and her schoolwork. It quickly reflected in how tired she was, how little she was eating, and how easily aggravated she was.

>3)that her condition will last over ten days and may be remedied by accomodations placed within her IEP.

>Is her condition life threatening or can it be dealt with through counseling?

Her condition could have easily have been met with communication between a qualified teacher and parent and with the accomodations requested. I am not saying in any way that we have an unqualfied teacher. But something was seriously wrong. The case study evaluation testing and reports would have helped tremendously.

-I never really heard from either ISBE or the district as to a clear and defined procedure to follow while requesting homebound and or homebound & services.

>I have only seen children who have had serious medical problems such as mental illness, cancer, or other physical impairments receive home services. If it is temporary they don’t have to provide homeservices.

Okay, more investigation states our district policy is that homebound services can be requested for any condition requiring over ten days absence from school. The ten days of permitting absences would have scheduled exactly to the date of being notified of her pending speech and language IEP meeting. Since we knew district’s testing was complete, we felt that ten days was ample time to test our daughter as well, before convening a speech and language IEP meeting.

-Any ideas on how to proceed?

>I am not familiar with Illinois law so I can’t advise you on this one.

*** I truely appreciate your time ***

or for a request for homebound services…You pulled her out on your own accord, due to differences with the teacher and what you felt was a hostile environment for your daughter. I am not saying that your actions weren’t justified I am just saying that legally the district seems to have a stronger case than you do. from my own expereince with due process. Your case could be solved if they just gave her a different teacher who wasn’t as rigid.

The district must keep with the Annual and Triennial review dates to remain in compliance but your actions and pulling her out of school put a different spin on everything. Techincally, since she is being homeschooled, they would only have to offer you speech services on a Service plan which would be 10 sessions. If she is still enrolled as a student then she would get what was written in her IEP in the state I am in.

I am not aware of the federal guidelines regarding the difference between 50 and 60 days…just what I have learned as a special education teacher and being a parent of a child with special needs. With my child we prevailed in due process because we could prove they were negligent with a paper trail that covered 4 years or more.