Attn. Woodstock D200 Parents

Do you have a child in the Age 18-21 Transition Program of Woodstock District 200 School District? Or a child in Special Education in Woodstock? Or know someone who does? If so, I'd like to hear from you.

The Age 18-21 Program is for students in special education who have earned their credits for their diploma but who have elected to take a Certificate, in order to remain eligible for special education services until the day before their 22nd birthday.

The program in D200 has three tiers, and the student is supposed to progress through them, becoming more independent as each year passes. The classes are conducted in the morning at McHenry County College. Most of the Transition students are not college students; the classes merely meet at MCC.

One thought is that by meeting at MCC, the students are supposed to begin having the college experience. But is that the case? Do they really just meet at the College for classes? If that's the case, why not meet in a D200 building?

It seems to me that the word "inclusion" does not exist in the vocabulary of the D200 Special Education Department. Special Education students are supposed to be included in mainstream activities. For high school students is this really done, or are they mostly kept isolated from mainstream students?

The Transition students could be integrated into MCC activities by assisting them in enrolling in and being successful in MCC classes and activities. Instead, D200 has chosen a hands-off position. A D200 Transition Program teacher cannot be in contact with the MCC instructor regarding a student's progress.

This needs to change in District 200. But it will only change after all parents of Transition students learn what is really going on and provide input to the D200 Special Education Department.

I would like to see a support group for parents of students in Special Education get established in District 200. I would like for it to parent-led. Most parents of Special Education students have learned a fair amount about IEPs and Special Education laws. We who have slugged through the system for 12 years have tried to get permanent improvements made, so that parents who follow won't have such a hard time. But we wonder whether we have achieved that.

There are over 1,000 Special Education students in District 200. Most are K-12; some are the Transition Program students mentioned above.

Contact Gus Philpott at gusphilpot@aol.com (N.B., one -t- in my AOL email address), so that an email distribution list can be built to inform you of developments. Please forward this to every parent of a special ed student in Woodstock District 200. The list will be used only for this purpose. Thanks!

ATTN. Woodstock Special Ed Parents

You'll want to become aware of parent activity in School District 158 (Algonquin, Lake in the Hills, Lakewood, Huntley, Union), where parents have banded together to address the services that their special education children are (not) getting. Somehow, in some way, they found one another and, through the power of numbers, they now have the attention of the school district administrators.

Three of the four key special education department administrators left District 158 recently. Is that merely a coincidence? Did they all end up in the same (new) school district?

What does District 200 do for parents of students in Special Education? Anything, except the direct education (we hope) of the students?

A few years ago District 200 started a support group for parents of students in Special Education called Parent-2oo-Parent. I think it lasted one year - maybe two. They kicked me out because I wasn't a "parent". No matter that I was the very involved ex-step-parent in the child's life. That was why I got kicked out; I was asking too many questions and informing other parents of the special education rights of their children.

In District 200 parents of special education students are pretty much kept isolated from one another. No support group exists. No education or training for parents of special education students is provided. No meetings of parents. So parents don't get a chance to meet one another and find out who is satisfied and who is not.

An IEP is supposed to be a "team" effort; a partnership, a collaboration, a working together by parents, teachers and staff for the benefit of the student.

The efforts of special education parents in District 158 should be a model for District 200. And it can be, IF enough parents show up and speak out.

Contact me at gusphilpot@aol.com and I shall build an email distribution list of parents in D200 for communication about special education services and programs that we'd like to have. Or just email me your suggestions. Better yet - post them right here as Comments for all to read.

District 200 will get a bunch of stimulus money. Let's see how they are supposed to spend it and how they do spend it.

I can tell you how quickly 12 years pass. The parents of younger students now in D200 Special Education should not have to fight all the same battles that those of us who have learned the rights of our children had to fight. Somewhere, there should be progress that stays in place.

Read the articles in local papers that followed Thursday night's meeting. Yes! Thursday night - the night before a holiday week-end!

www.nwherald.com/articles/2009/07/02/r_4rdpzzoxr8ynqcj1l7rclg/index.xml

www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=304531

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.

What Help is Needed?

What kind of help do parents of children with special needs want and need, with regard to the education of their children?

There is a huge amount of information available from many resources. So much information is available that parents often do not know where to start. At the same time, many parents are so overwhelmed with day-to-day caring for and providing for their children that they do not have time, energy or expertise to investigate the resources available to them.

Needs are often so complex that careful evaluation is needed to design just the right educational package. State and Federal laws are in place to guarantee certain rights.

As one wise person said a while back, "If you don't know what your rights are, you don't have any."

School personnel should be in one of the best positions to know the educational rights of a student in a special education program. After all, who should know the rules better?

Unfortunately, while personnel may know the rules, they may be under pressure to refrain from providing complete information and services to a special education student because of the cost involved. The old "We can't afford that" routine.

While schools might be caught between a rock and a hard place, they don't have a choice. If a special education student needs a service, then the law says he is to have it. The law does not say, "If the school district can't afford it, it does not have to provide a needed service."

In following articles I shall write about some of my experiences with the Woodstock (Illinois) District 200 Schools from 1996 to present. It may appear that I am "picking" on them, but I have no doubt that what I have experienced has been experienced by tens of thousands of other parents across the United States.

Along the way I'll share resources that you may find valuable as your child and you go along the special education highway.