Children with learning disabilities sometimes need extra services or interventions to succeed in school. But that process can be difficult to navigate.
“You’ll often see students who are being criminalized or punished because they haven’t been appropriately evaluated or identified and given choices that could help respond in a positive way to those types of behaviors,” he said. “And instead, the school relies on punishment, exclusion or arrest to remove the child from the learning environment entirely or place them in an alternative education environment.”More than 90,000 students aged 5-21 in Alabama have IEPs, according to state data.
They make a determination at that meeting whether a child is eligible to be evaluated. At that point, if the answer is a yes, the school system is obligated to pay for those evaluations, including screeners for hearing and vision, IQ, achievement, autism, speech and language, and ADHD.Mixson: No. A parent can ask for a second opinion outside of what the school system offers, but even that can be funded by the school system.Mixson: No.
Contact a state investigator, who has 60 days to review and issue a complaint. Those are usually a little more cut and dry, and have more to do with whether a school system failed to have an IEP meeting, failed to invite participants, or follow disciplinary procedures.Mixson: The whole process could take months. For example, most families might seek out a referral meeting in August, but might not get the IEP until after Fall Break.
Mixson: It comes down to what the IEP team decides on, but that’s also informed by speech therapists, evaluations or independent providers. But just because you are non-verbal doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from speech services. Tafelski: Generally if it’s in the IEP, the school district is responsible for covering the services. To the extent that the district is unable to provide the services, the school can seek additional resources from the state, and they have that affirmative obligation to seek them out.