ISBE helps SpecEd Parents

The new Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) Parent's Guide explaining, in plain language, special education in Illinois has been published online. Hard copies are not yet available. Here is the link:

www.isbe.state.il.us/spec-ed/html/parent_rights.htm

Every parent of a student in Special Education in an Illinois school should have this (and I haven't even read it yet).

Don't count on getting information about it from your school district. It may be as rare as a block of ice on a hot July day. A few years ago there was a terrific ten-page Memo issued by the Special Education Division of ISBE that outlined what school districts must do for students in Special Education. A strong suggestion in the Memo was that the Memo should be disseminated to all parents of students in Special Education.

Was it?

That Memo had to be one of the best-kept secrets in the State of Illinois. About nine months after it was published, I learned of it through a parent support group in Rockford. The District 200 Superintendent didn't know about it. I could understand that the Superintendent might not have known about it, but I have never believed that the Special Education Department didn't know about it. And even after I brought it to their attention, information about it was never distributed to the parents of the then-900 students in Special Education.

Why not? My answer is, it's better for parents to be kept in the dark about the full range of services to which their children in Special Education are entitled.

But that's changing. parents are learning what the schools must do.

The interesting part is, if schools did more of what they are supposed to do (by law), their costs would probably go down!

FASlink

FASlink? What is it? Fetal Alcohol Syndrome link.

If your child might be affected by Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or Fetal Alcohol Effect, check out this website: www.faslink.org/

Having a hard time dealing with Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity (ADHD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and other alphabet-soup disorders? The more you can learn, the better you will be able to deal with it - to keep yourself centered and as calm as possible, and not escalate your child's unwanted behaviors.

Share this information with your child's teachers. Make sure they understand what is causing your child's behaviors. Don't accept "lip service" from them. If they don't "get" it, see that they do.

See that the proper Behavior Intervention Plan is in place. Many BIPs only make the problems worse - because of the Plan itself (which may not even be a plan) and the way in which it is implemented.

Watch this site for developing information on important parent support groups. Teachers and staff must understand why a child might be behaving in a certain way, in order to understand how to deal with it.

Chicago Abilities Expo - June 25-27

A national expo for persons with disabilities (and their familes and caregivers) will be held this Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Schaumburg.

Admission is free. For complete information, go to www.abilitiesexpo.com/chicago/index.html

Day One: Focused for professional therapists and healthcare workers who will attend dynamic educational seminars (earning CEU's to comply with their professional requirements) and a relaxed, informal networking reception at the end of the day.

Day Two:Focused for adult consumers and those with age-related fitness issues. This day will feature sessions about intimacy for people with disabilities, fashion and cooking shows, workshops on caring for a growing population and much more.

Day Three: Focused for families with sessions and activities for the entire family from kids to grandparents and those in between. Families come to Abilities Expo for a well-rounded experience that is both informative and fun.

Saturday's family day will be 10:00AM-5:00PM. Location? Schaumburg Convention Center, which is located on the east side of Meacham Road, north of the Illinois Tollway, south of Algonquin Road (Route 62). For those with GPSs, just plug in 1551 North Thoreau Drive, Schaumburg, IL 60173.

For advocacy information, be sure to attend Myra Christian's presentation at 2:00PM on Saturday, "Preparing for your child's future as an independent adult." Myra is with the Family Resource Center on Disabilities (FRCD). I met Myra in about 1997, and FRCD gave me a good start on my path of educational advocacy.

For information about FRCD and its programs and services, visit http://www.frcd.org/

Special Ed Group in Algonquin

Algonquin School District 158 is really stepping up to the plate this summer and is forming a Parent Advisory Committee for parents of students with special needs. And it appears that this group is being designed to actually use their minds, brains and voices and offer information and opinions TO the school district. Bravo!

I received the following emailed announcement of the first meeting:

"District 158 will host an organizational meeting July 2nd for its first Special Needs Parent Advisory Committee.The purpose of the committee is to allow parents of special needs children the opportunity to provide information, guidance, advice and support to the special services department.

"The committee also would assist in planning and coordinating activities aimed toward effective parental involvement, assist in improving public relations through community and business representatives and advise staff on specific program areas.

"All parents of special needs children in the district are invited to attend the meeting, which is from 6 to 7:30pm in Room 180 of the District 158 Administrative Office, 650 Academic Drive in Algonquin.

"The tentative agenda includes a discussion of strengths and concerns of the district's special education program, as well as goals for the year.

"For information, call Associate Superintendent Terry Awrey at (847) 659-6131."

Three cheers to District 158. It sounds like this program could be a model for every school district in McHenry County!

This article will also be posted on www.woodstockadvocate.com

IFF Conference, Springfield, June 27

The Illinois Federation of Families will hold a one-day conference in Springfield on Saturday, June 27.

Springfield, you say? That's 200 miles from here. Well, don't stop reading yet. The conference topic is "Parenting Youth With Emotional Challenges: Effective Interventions".

This is really great. I received the notice today. Early Bird Registration (until May 22) was $15 for parents, family members and caregivers. (Today is June 12!). Registration deadline is Monday, June 15, and the full rate is only $25 for parents, family members and caregivers. Sorry for the late notice. But don't let a little thing like a June 15 "deadline" keep you from going. Push a little (you probably won't have to push much) and just say, "I just heard about it."

For information or answers to your questions, contact
Cindy Sheppard: 630-661-0314 cshep@sbcglobal.net
or
Sue Gordon: 815-814-3893 s.gordon3@comcast.net

I was hoping to find the conference brochure online, but apparently it is not (yet). Don't bother to go to the website for IFF or call the phone number on the website. Or, if you do, don't get bugged if you don't find what you are looking for. Call either Cynthia or Sue at the numbers above.

There is a great room rate at the conference hotel - $70.00 single or double (of course, that rate was only good until June 5. So re-set the date on your calendar watch, and then call the Holiday Inn Express Crown Plaza at 217.529.7777 and try to twist their arms for this rate, unless you want a four-hour drive before and after the conference).

Dr. Mary McKay will be the keynote speaker. You can read all about her when the website link is working. If you can't wait, send me an email (gus@specialkids-specialparents.info), and I'll forward the email I received that has a link to the conference brochure (which I can't move from .pdf to this website).

SpecEd Bus Horror Story

This week I met a parent from Crystal Lake who related a horror story about bus transportation of his son on a special ed bus.

His 11-year-old son had a problem on his school bus. The bus transportation is provided for about nine students to a private therapeutic day school in Palatine. OK, so you tell me how an 11-year-old is supposed to endure a 90-minute bus ride twice a day! Half his life is on the bus!

Anyway, so as a result of the problem, a Crystal Lake police officer showed up. He took the kid into custody. The parent referred to it as arrest, but it may not have been that, legally. He was taken to the station for a "station adjustment", as the cops like to call it. The parents were prevented from immediate access to their child.

And the cop's comment about their son, who has autism? "I don't care if he is deaf, dumb and blind, I'm going to treat him like everyone else."

Man, talk about sensitive! This cop apparently has no understanding of special education and how to deal with, and relate to, children with special needs. And his assignment is apparently to deal with youth!

Many police officers and deputies have received Crisis Intervention training. All of them should have it, but it's expensive because it requires attendance at a 40-hour course. Frankly, I cannot understand why it takes 40 hours of training. One good 8-hour day ought to be adequate to cover the basics. And then you give more training to a handful of officers or deputies, and you call them as needed.

Parents of special ed students are often kept isolated from one another by school districts. This keeps parents from aligning with one another and creating the sufficient power of a group to effect positive changes in their school districts.

School districts are supposed to offer parent training. Ha! Just try to get that in your child's IEP, even those the Special Ed Department of the Illinois State Board of Education covered it in a Memo several years ago.

When schools interfere with parents

Do schools have the right to interfere with a parent's inquiry into a student's educational progress?

Parents turn over their children to schools for major parts of a kid's life. We expect them to educate our children and to be fair in their treatment and decisions involving the students.

What happens when a staff person at a school interferes with a parent who is seeking information about the services required to be provided to his student?

In my case, I am the ex-step-parent of a 20-year-old student in the Age 18-21 Transition Program here in Woodstock. I say "ex-step-parent", because his mother and I divorced nine years ago. I'm sure the District would prefer that I would had abandoned him and left Woodstock in 2000, but I didn't. For all practical purposes I'm his dad.

For legal purposes he signed a very broad Authorization recently that permits the school district to give me anything I ask for in terms of records and reports about the school year. It was unlimited in scope. It did not give me the authority to make any changes in his Individualized Education Program (IEP), but I could get the reports which were not presented at the Annual Review required of every IEP.

One week before the IEP I requested the reports, in order to study them and be able to ask questions. Not only did I not receive the reports, I didn't even receive an acknowledgement of my request!

At the IEP the Case Manager's supervisor ran the meeting and jumped right over any discussion of what had transpired during the past nine months.

After the meeting the Authorization was presented to the school district and I requested the missing reports. And so what happened?

The student got called into the Case Manager's supervisor's office and asked if he really wanted me to have what I was asking for! How's that for undermining a parent's role in a student's life??? What she should have done was provide the information. His Authorization was complete.

According to the Illinois State Board of Education, a school district cannot unilaterally refuse or fail to provide a service or program of instruction that the IEP Team has agreed to.

In this case the student refused to participate in a special reading program. I don't have all the details about it yet, but I understand that it was well below his reading level, rather than being structured to advance his reading level. They should have selected an appropriate program and administered it correctly. And then, if he still refused, an IEP meeting should have been called to discuss the problems. As a last resort, the program could have been removed from the IEP.

But a school cannot just decide, on its own, to drop a program that is in the IEP. And that's exactly what they did.

I'm not done with my complaint about the actions of the district's special education administrative supervisor in this case. We're going to get to the bottom of it, and in a way that such an action is never repeated.