It’s 4:21 pm and folks are coming in. I see quite a few familiar faces. Many people I don’t know…yet. I will be updating throughout the meeting….stay tuned!
It looks like most of the people are here. It’s a packed house here at the Collette Education Resource Center. Many citizens of the state have come out to see what will happen here. Quite a few parents. There’s even a couple kids here!
Matt Denn is starting the meeting and greeting everyone. Introductions are happening. We have videoconferencing from Wilmington, sound quality is low. They just turned it up. No members of the public in Wilmington. Four people will be giving public comment at the end of the meeting.
Matt Denn is going through Senate Concurring Resolution 63 which created the IEP task force. Matt is citing the task force’s main goal as “difficult for parents to understand and navigate, and at worst in some instances, unfair and intimidating to parents.”
Denn said “Our challenge is figuring out how to protect those parents and those kids without negatively impacting the districts and parents.”
Delaware passed a statute in DE four years ago that gave a standard stating special education services need to be better. Quoted statement from 1975 that “children with disabilities are entitled to a Cadillac education, not a serviceable Chevrolet.” The statute indicated Delaware students do deserve a quality special education above and beyond, not just the most basic. Denn expressed the following: It’s complicated for families to work through an appeal financially for families. Appeals are expensive due to expert witnesses. Schools have that paid for already, but parents don’t. Delaware changed the law a couple years ago. If you win an appeal the attorney fees are paid by the school district. Other attorneys take cases on contingency.
Eight meetings over next four months. Last four will be for drafting report to Governor Markell. Second to last meeting will be votes on recommendations. Meetings will end by 6:30pm to allow all parents on task force and in audience to take care of children, especially those who are extending their work day. Task force will take written comments and will be distributed to members of task force.
Matt Denn said “This is the place to tell your personal story.” Denn wants the task force can get a good idea of what is going on in our state with special education. He express that this isn’t the place for pending issues with IEPs to get worked out. Matt Denn said he will shut up soon! Now we will get to the heart of this!
Kim Siegel from Denn’s office is talking about special education practices in other states. 13 out of 25 states provide parent guides. Some were over 200 pages while one was only 5 pages. Common parts of these include glossaries of terms and acronyms (of which there are many in this world), listings of community resources, explanations of legal rights, sample forms, and methods of dispute resolutions. Massachusetts has it’s own Bureau of Special Education Appeals to help parents with dispute hearings. Some states have several different options for parents knowing goals. A lot of states are dealing with behavior issues in classrooms and committing to looking at it within the IEP. Indiana actually has sections for the primary disability and secondary disabilities on their IEPs.
Denn talked about PIC (Parent Information Center) and how they are there to help with IEP meetings. He is now talking about attorney situations that are unavoidable. Delaware wants to do something in between, including supporting advocates attending IEP meetings. He said lawyering up is not always the best solution.
Liz Toney from Delaware PTA gets IEP questionnaire in Brandywine School District in DE, asks for parent goals and thoughts. She feels this is an excellent way to relieve tension prior to meeting. Toney will provide copy of questionnaire, many feel it is a great idea. This blogger agrees!
Doing second round of introductions due to some latecomers on the task force.
A member asked Siegel if information from other states was beneficial to parents, but Siegel said she was not able to dig that deep on it. PIC rep Meedra Surratte advised they let parents know to think about what their goals are. Mary Ann Mieczkowski from the Exceptional Children Group at DOE said PIC wrote a book on assisting parents through the IEP process. Surratte said it was revised last year and is not too comprehensive and long. PIC rep said reading level of book may go beyond some families reading capabilities.
Diane Eastburn, the Kent County parent representative, stated she likes parents to see copy of IEP prior to IEP meetings to add to parental clarity to event. Surratte said good idea, but needs to be stressed to parent that it is only a draft, not a final. Mieczkowski asking about how much is written beforehand, Eastburn answered she sees many situations where IEP is just read. Dafne Carnwright from the Governor’s Advisory Council for Exceptional Citizens (GACEC) said any IEP meeting is overwhelming, so parents having the IEP draft beforehand can relieve some of that tension. Bill Doolittle from GACEC agreed with this.
Senator Nicole Poore said she toured ten schools throughout Delaware and said there is no consistency. Her own son has had differing IEP goals and problems in the process. Eastburn said it would be easier to do IEPs by birthdate instead of cramming so many in during certain times of the school year, which causes severe burden on IEP teams. She cited one example where she saw the wrong child’s name on an IEP report.
Teacher on task force in Wilmington talking about how time is very limited for IEP development due to time constraints during the school day. Stating problems with IEP Plus (system Delaware uses for IEPs) often crashes. Another teacher is talking about how during IEP meetings staff picked to substitute aren’t always qualified for servicing certain special needs students. Doolittle stated we need to start thinking outside the box, and do we always need to be pulling special education classes out of their classes?
Tracy Bombarra, a school service provider, said sometimes administrator’s often tell teachers just to read the report in the IEP meeting and then leave (against IDEA law). She said she could be sued for not being there and taking minutes. Said it is a no-win situation. There was a question about service days, and Tricia Dallas, the administrator member of the task force from the Charleton School, said that could be looked at but service days are for professional development. Denn said more professional development needs to be done overall.
Denn said there needs to be more school willingness to engage parents prior to IEP meetings. Seth Kopp, a special education teacher member of task force, said parents just don’t understand the IEP process. Denn said even the most knowledgeable, sophisticated parent can see an IEP meeting fall apart over disagreement with just one service not being provided. He felt this creates an adversarial relationship with administrations, teachers, and service providers (ex. Occupational Therapist).
Senator Dave Larson talked about all the acronyms involved and how they can be very cumbersome . He said plain English is the way to go. Bombarra said interpreters are needed for uncommon languages for parents who may not speak English, Spanish or French Creole. She has run against problems with Vietnamese and other languages where services were not available.
Someone in Wilmington talked about how we may want to look at more student-led IEPs. LRE (least restrictive environment) was brought up by another Wilmington member, and said you can have the best IEP in the classroom in the world, but if it isn’t implemented in the classroom, it’s a waste. Doolittle said he has run into situations where schools don’t know how to implement certain services.
Mike Hoffman, the Delaware State Education Association member, said as a paraprofessional he is not shown the IEP which makes his problems much more difficult. Surratte said PIC recommends any paraprofessional attends IEP meetings. Senator Poore strongly agreed with having the paraprofessional be a part of the process since they are the ones making sure certain services are attended to. Hoffman said he asks IEP teams all the time “How in the world do you have stuff on the IEP without asking me?” since he provides so many essential services for students. Eastburn said this can impact the data for the IEP goals and this can greatly affect whether students meet goals or not. Carnwright said she often gets calls from parents who state that IEP goals can completely disappear from one year to the next, and the parents are confused about that. They aren’t sure if their child met the goal or if it was left out. Laura Manges, the task force member with the Delaware Association of School Administrators, stated children are served with the best of intentions. She said many changes will require time commitment and additional funding. She said teachers are still responsible for teaching special ed students Common Core standards and teachers are overwhelmed with what she labeled as “double duty”. Bombarra talked about a need for more information on the IEP form for services and less for testing accommodations.
Denn stated certain things in IEP meetings are mandated by federal law under IDEA, but some things don’t have to be there. He said he wants to look at what the state has discretion over and what they don’t. Denn wrapped up the discussion and said many topics have come up. He said when the task force compiles the report that not everyone will agree on the report. But he did clarify that any member is welcome to tack something on to end of report indicating why they don’t agree, which the Governor and the legislators will see. (Really liking Matt Denn even more right now!)
Public Comment time! This blogger made public comment which I’ll put up later. Wendy Strauss with GACEC talked about Disability Hub, a new informational website for children 14 years or older and adults with disabilities who are in transition post high school. She said the IEP process is very emotional and that my comments were very emotional. She believes teachers and parents need to know what is in the IEP, and it needs to be reread it throughout the year. She said several teachers, when asked, are not able to say what exactly is in the IEP.
Sonja Lawrence commented and said she assumes the IEP team has children’s best intentions at heart. She said her child is visually impaired, and braille instruction is an accommodation but it isn’t provided in the classroom and parents are asked by administration to make a choice at that point in time which is difficult. That choice is the braille service or classroom inclusion, but parents want both, according to Lawrence. She talked about the many problems with visually impaired programs in Delaware. She had concerns about large classrooms and 28:1 student teacher ratios. She said teachers are beholden to cases across the state and they are unable to service all those children. She had three recommendations: 1) Let’s put something in place that allows teachers to put services in as a whole, 2) Braille instruction is required by law, 3) Student services are under resourced and under funded. Debbie Harrington spoke next, and she has a daughter in high school, who is also visually impaired. Like Lawrence, she also wants more representation in Delaware for the visually impaired. She said there are too many inconsistencies in the process for the state.
The final public comment came from Greg Mazotta, who he was very surprised there were no school psychologists on the team, but believes the group has many strong members and thinks it is a good start. He said there needs to be more sustainability in the IEP process. He wants to volunteer his services for the taskforce to help improve quality services. He said there are several places to go to find workable services and best practices. He said strategic plans in school districts for continuous improvement don’t always include ancillary services.
Denn concluded the meeting, and said several things were brought up today that are very important. He asked if there were any other concerns, and a member of the Wilmington task force said health education is not being serviced to children with IEPs and they are most vulnerable in terms of sex education. Doolittle said he also wants to hear positive examples of how the process works. September 30th at 4:30 pm is next meeting. Nothing said about subgroups yet. Meeting adjourned.
Notes: It was very difficult to know who was speaking in Wilmington, so I apologize if I misrepresented anyone there. I will write more later, but I thought it was a great meeting. So many topics were introduced, including my own which I will post about later. This is going to be one busy task force. I really like that Matt Denn was making it very informal, and invited public response so graciously. I apologize if I raised fears in folks that this would be all about Common Core. Based on what I was hearing, as little as two days ago from an absent member of the legislative side of the task force, indications were pointing that way. It is not DOE focused as I also feared, and I believe good things can come from this. For the first time in a long time, I feel hopeful about special education in Delaware.
The Season Of Myths 