"the school doesn't provide that service"

As much as you probably don’t want to hear this, its a long shot that you would get a 1:1 aide if your son is not severely handicapped.

Speaking from experience, if the outside evaluator feels your son needs a 1:1 aide its going to take a pretty hefty diagnosis (such as the deep end of autistic spectrum) to get such a service.

Also, if 1:1 is recommended, resource room is not gonna “cut it.” He will never get what he needs if the evaluator is recommending such intense services.

Does your school offer a self-contained classrooms? This would provide the more intense intervention (smaller class size, more aides and SpEd teacher). The question for that, though, is whether your school’s self-contained class is used for behavioral problems. Most LD kids (like my own) are not behavior problems so they are forced into inclusion classrooms where they do not get the attention they need. Yet the only options are resource room (totally inadequate at our school) and self-contained for behavioral issues).

My son was being pulled out (at their convenience) for resource room for language arts and it was unacceptable. It was being used as time to redo papers and tests he bombed on in the regular classroom. He was also being taken out during classes he was either successful at or enjoyed to redo this stuff.

All we were asking for was a self-contained instructional language arts block with the special ed teacher. We got the excuse you are citing too. “The school doesn’t provide that service.” We hinted around due process and had my son’s private psychologist (yes, it got that bad that he needed one) write a letter to submit to the school that stated exactly what he believed; the school’s intervention was wholly inadequate to date and he was not in his “least restrictive environment. Well, things changed in a hurry.
We got the class and things are going wonderfully as of today (knock wood, of course).

Try having your evaluator write a letter using the proper terminology, not just recommendation but that his least restrictive environment would be …

Remember too, schools are NOT obligated to honor outside evaluations done privately; they must only “consider” them. Unfortunately, you are in a sticky situation and need to proceed cautiously and confidently.

Best wishes

In preparation for this IEP meeting,I would focus on what it is you want for your son.
You didn’t mention whether the evaluator suggests a 1 on 1 aide or not. I would be interested to know the why behind that reccomendation? Is it due to major need for intensive remediation? Is it because he is in need of 1 on 1 remediation? An aide to assist him in class isn’t necessarily one on one,and Little Lulu is absolutely right, that getting one would be like ice water in you know where. More important then that, what would it do to your son? In a social sense he probably would derive more harm from having someone sit there with him all day then benefit. Most of these Aides,have no training or experience in dealing with a kid needing behavior intervention,let alone in need of remedial reading help. In other words,you might get it,but you might not get what you really need.

With that being said,I do want to get into the whole legal aspect of the IEP meeting. Little Lulu is correct again stating that they don’t have to take the reccomendations of the private eval.,BUT,if they don’t, they MUST provide to you ,in writing, a reason.
The parent is an EQUAL member of the IEP team. If you feel he needs an aide,then like the school side of this team,you better be prepared to prove it,or sell it. If the school side of the team feels like he doesn’t need an aide,then they better be prepared to prove it,or sell it to you.
Legally,it is illegal to state that they just don’t provide an aide. If the child needs one,then they MUST provide one. They must have a continium of services. This means from almost none to intensive services,depending on the need of the “individual” child. This is the whole thing. IEP is for the “individual” child,otherwise why have one,right? For anything you want from the school,make sure you have a reason,clearly stated,without emotions,in writing. If they refuse you,make sure you have their reason in writing. Holdiing them accountable for their answers,often helps you get what your child needs. They know what they can legally do,they also know what they can afford to do,and which parent they can do it to.If they say no to an aide,ask for the answer in writing. Just make sure your focus is on what your kid really needs,how your going to measure his progress,and whether it is going to help him or not.Otherwise your fight is for what?

Lulu, I have a student who is privately diagnosed with high functioning autism. His private evaluator recommended a 1:1 aide. He doesn’t have one, even though his parents try to ask for this at every IEP. He is making progress in school with resource help and manages fine in general education. Private evaluators, not having to accept responsibility for their own recommendations, are often willing to recommend supports and services that are really above and beyond, services that might be nice in an ideal world, but in the real world are not required to provide FAPE.

Yes, the team does need to look at the recommenations and consider them. The parent advocates around will tell you you have a right to PWN for everything refused. I just write this stuff on the comments page where I can write what amounts to minutes and background, I explain what parent asked for, what was discussed and reason for decision.

Finally, you are initiating resource servivces. You need to give resource services a trial before you conclude that resource services alone does not provide FAPE. You cannot know what the outcome of resource services will be until you try them. If the ADHD interferes, then you need to have accomodations and modifications in the IEP and quite likely a behavior plan. All of these things are viable interventions that must be documented BEFORE your district is even going to consider an aide. In a sense an aide is a more restrictive intervention than a behavior plan, so you must proceed from least to greater.

I’m a frequent poster here but I’d better keep my name quiet this time. I personally do not think a one-on-one aide is that beneficial in most cases. Remediation is essential. A behavior plan might be essential, but I really don’t see the benefit to an aide. For that matter, it depends on what they do in the resource room as to whether I’d go for that placement as well. What materials are they using? How many kids will be in there? What are their diabilities? You must check this out before agreeing to placement!

You know who has the one-on-one aides in my district besides the severe physically disabled kids? Children with rich parents who the district perceives might have the money to sue.

I would agree that your student with the high functioning autism would NOT need the 1:1 aide. Since he/she is not on the deep end of the spectrum I would not even take a chance on requesting this. Possibly your school’s resource services provide the adequate REMEDIATION and not just a holding room like my district. I’m sure you know that your experience with resource is not the norm. I read more postings of frustration with resource than satisfaction.
So, you student obviously is in his LRE.

I believe private evaluators shoot for the stars because they see that many schools do not provide FAPE to learning disabled students; and they are trying to foster a change in the what the SCHOOLS consider adequate intervention. No harm there.

I would agree that you should adopt the “do less harm” philosophy. Start out with the least intrusive and when that doesn’t work, continue up the scale until you find the match.

But, as I stated previously (initially I used my own experiences) resource services are usually inadequate. Its all in the postings here everyday.

And again, all of these decisions are subjective because what I consider adequate is different that what the system considers adequate.

Also, just to note, I think its a mistake to assume that ADHD would naturally involve a behavior plan. But I think you are right that a 1:1 is more restrictive in most cases.

I think what Jen may be looking for really is an instructional block of remediation, so she WILL have to determine if HER resource room (as it is provided now) addresses that. Ours did not; hence my conclusion.

As I have said many times, the $150 we spent to consult with an educational rights attorney BEFORE we went into the IEP process was the best money we ever spent. She was able to tell us exactly what we could/should ask for, and what we could not explicitly demand. We also went through the “if they say this, what should we say?” exercise over and over again - many times, so that we were very thoroughly prepared for whatever tack the school district took. This was very helpful, and we were able to head “the team” off at the pass when they just perceived we were just another pair of trusting parents who would go along with whatever their recommendations were.

I should also state that many of her recommendations were “counterintuitive” to what our own intuition would have told us to do when faced with those issues without the knowledge she gave us. This is an intricate, sometimes complex process, and we ended up not having to go back and try to “fix” a bunch of things that we otherwise would have.

We ended up, with a bit of wrangling, with an effective IEP for our son, which would have never happened without the legal consultation. We were able to keep in pretty much non-adversarial, as well, because they never even knew we had consulted with this attorney (they thought we had just done our homework - and they were right).

Maybe a lot of folks are much smarter than my husband and myself, but we didn’t consider ourselves legal experts in what is arguably the most important legal arena we may ever enter. Even if you are an educator (my husband is a 28-year veteran schoolteacher), you may not completely understand your child’s rights. Conversely, in retrospect, my husband felt he had been “brainwashed” by the district educrats into believing that the district was not responsible for a lot of things that they actually are. We found that many of the direct service providers (teachers, tutors, SLPs, OTs, etc.) just accepted the district’s party line on things. When we challenged these things at the district level, however, doors miraculously opened!

Just my opinion based on our own personal experience, of course.