Answers to Frequently Asked Questions is not intended to be legal advice. These responses were written by the Executive Director in response to client questions and comes from her experience and scholarship in special education and law and society research.
A: My first advocacy actions on behalf of my son included a letter writing campaign. Looking back, I see that it was probably little more than an effort to make myself a nuisance to the district. It worked. I became a nuisance. You may write that letter but I don't think the director is going to say "okay, since you wrote me personally, I'll enroll your child in special education." What you are asking for is more than just Resource. You are asking for special education eligibility.
Eligibility, by law, has to be driven by assessment - which includes observation and the use of standardized assessment instruments. No single measure can be used to deny eligibility and a host of data sources must be used in the eligibility decision. That eligibility decision is an IEP team decision. If the head of special education is not an IEP team member, then that district head is not in a place to make the decision to allow your child to be made eligible for special education. Also, saying that the school should "try resource" and "see if it helps" does not match the legally required process that schools must go through to determine an educational placement or service. Eligibility, placement and services are driven by the deficits the school has discovered a child has and through an examination of the needs that arise from those deficits within the educational setting. After the needs are discovered, then the appropriate placement and services are given that meet the child's need in order to help that child access the curriculum according to the child's ability. In fact, if the director were to say "okay, enroll the child," the director could have a compliance complaint filed against him/her for not following legal procedure. There is no such thing as director as IEP team; the IEP team must decide upon eligibility, placement and services.
A: Yes. If you go to a mediation, as part of a dispute resolution session or due process hearing preparation, you may find yourself negotiating for placements and services outside of an official IEP team meeting. The negotiated settlement agreement may include services that parents agree to as compensatory education for the harm their child experienced while not receiving an appropriate education. This mediated settlement agreement and its placement and services may coexist at the same time that an IEP team decides on other services. In other words, an IEP team may decide upon services that do not match the services agreed to in the mediation agreement. In this case, the services provided through mediation last as long as the mediation settlement agreement says they should, even if the IEP team decides the child should get other services. So, the child can conceivably be receiving services from a mediation agreement and from an IEP team decision.
A: There is no law that says the principal has to be polite. He/She may be nasty but hasn't violated the law. If you can identify the principal's actions as being adversarial during an IEP meeting, then you can write a complaint. The IEP team meeting is supposed to be a non-adversarial meeting. If the principal or another district individual makes the IEP team adversarial by name calling, behaving in an unprofessional and directly confrontation manner that stops collaboration and you can prove it with documentation, then you have a state compliance complaint.
As an individual person, you can write a uniform complaint against a district personnel for violating your child's rights. If you feel a district employee has done something personally and knowingly to violate your child's rights, then you can file that uniform complaint. A uniform complaint is a local district complaint that will produce an investigation of a person's actions. This investigation, if the person is found guilty, can produce a corrective action that stops the individual from violating your child's rights.
There is also another civil legal procedure you can use called the "Gebser" letter. If a district official has personally and purposely violated your child's rights, you can write a Gebser letter asking that person to stop immediately. If that person will not stop, then you can take that official to civil court and sue for damages. You will need an attorney and the Gebser letter has ten pieces of important information you need in order to establish your case properly and win in court. You will also need an attorney who is able to file a civil case.
If the principal is part of a district or IEP team action that has violated your daughter's rights, you can gather the evidence and file a state procedural safeguards complaint alleging the school violated your daughter's procedural rights. A procedural right is one in which the district has to do or not do something. It is a simple "did you follow the procedures or not" question. If the school failed to follow procedures correctly, you have a state complaint. Other than the three aforementioned options, you can't really do much about jerks.