My daughter attended her first IEP meeting today, it was a disaster. Does she have the right to write on the IEP under parental concerns? She wanted to write a statement about her daughter being dyslexic and they wouldn’t let her?
There is no legal or commonsense reason why a parent or any other IEP team member cannot write on a child’s IEP.
Some uninformed educators go crazy when a parent does this, saying that “the IEP is a legal document.” People write on legal documents all the time – to amend, change terms, to provide additional information.
If this has happened to you, take advantage of it!
This provides a good opportunity to tell your child’s story in more depth and begin to build a paper trail. If the school continues to be oppositional, letters and notes from meetings, made at the time, are invaluable in resolving the problem.
Write a polite letter to the head of the IEP team describing in factual terms (no emotions, nothing about how you “feel”) that you attempted to inform the IEP team your child has dyslexia. Explain that when you attempted to add this information to your child’s IEP, [name of school personnel] refused to allow you to provide that information.
Explain that the school will not be able to teach your child to read, write, or spell unless they know she is dyslexic and she requires specialized instruction, delivered by a teacher who is trained to use an educational method that is proven to work with children who have dyslexia.
This is probably only the first of many letters you will need to write over the years. Before you begin, read the “Letter to the Stranger” for the big picture. This tells the story of a parent who wrote an angry letter and the impact it had. After the parent revised the letter to tell her child’s story, the new letter had a completely different impact.
This article has practical advice about how to do this:
Also read this success story by a mom who was in a similar situation, how she handled it, and finally got the services her children needed:
and one more:
- See more at: http://www.wrightslaw.com/blog/?p=64#sthash.fepFz5sJ.dpuf
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