“Back to school” elicits images in my head of long lines in stationery stores, exorbitant shipping fees for backpacks I forgot to order, and the promise of a great new school year. None of that, however, was part of back to school 2020, at least not for us.
As we have learned, nothing is written in stone with COVID-19. Here in CT, we heard schools had to open at full capacity. Then they were allowed to consider a hybrid plan. Now some are only offering virtual options and some withholding services from those taking the digital offerings. Special education is changing rapidly and we are adapting accordingly.
Today I am going to talk to you about important information you need to help you preserve your child’s rights and hold your school accountable during these unusual times.
The one thing that has not changed is the IDEA and your school district’s requirement to provide your child with a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). Despite changing information and ambiguous guidance, the IDEA and all its protections for students with disabilities remains intact. This, however, does not mean your child will receive the exact same services in the exact same way as pre-COVID. Everything has changed and so should your child’s IEP
This episode is not meant as legal advice specific to your child but rather general information that can help you in your journey. Some of the links I discuss:
Need to Know Episode Can You Comp My Ed?
Need to Know Episode LRE: What Now?
Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
child, least restrictive environment, services, school district, parents, school, education, attorney, iep, mask, implementation plan, hear, compensatory, iep meeting, wearing, person, podcast, entitled, connecticut, require
SPEAKERS
still Dana, Dana Jonson
Dana Jonson 00:02
Hello, and welcome to need to know with Dana Jonson. I’m your host, Dana Jonson and I’m here to give you the information you need to know to best advocate for your child. I’m a special education attorney in private practice, a former special education teacher and administrator, a current mom to four children with IPS and I myself have ADHD and dyslexia. So I have approached the world of disability and special education from many angles. And I’ll provide straightforward information about your rights and your schools obligations, information from other professionals on many topics, as well as tips and tricks for working with your school district. My goal is to empower you through your journey. So if there’s anything you want to hear, comment on, join our Facebook group, it’s aptly named need to know with Dana Jonson, or you can email me at Dana at special ed dot life. Okay, let’s get started.
01:02
Thank you for joining me today. Today I want to talk about back to school because if you are anything like I am, then you are right now and knee deep in trying to figure out schedules, services, when you’re going to work, how you’re going to entertain your children, and possibly what’s for dinner. Well, actually, I am no longer the person in charge of food in our house
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I used to be but I quit. At some point during the quarantine, I decided that I would quit being in charge of food for my house. So that one thing is off of my plate, but it might be on yours. So what I wanted to do is talk to you a little bit about with all this chaos, what is staying the same, what has changed what’s new, and what you need to look out for. And I feel like I have done so many podcasts, Facebook Lives, blog posts, whatever it is about this exact topic, but it has changed about 27 times since March. So I’m gonna keep doing it. So right now most people have their child either in school full time in school part time and learning distance wise part time in school part time only distance learning part time only, or distance learning entirely. Those are a lot of options. And everyone’s got something different because we don’t have standard guidance coming down from the state or the federal level, at least not in Connecticut. If you are in a different state, maybe your State Department of Education has taken control of the reins, but here for us it has not. And my understanding is that that’s the case for most of the country, which is unfortunate. But on one hand, it means we’re all in the same boat. So for parents that I here saying this isn’t working, it’s a nightmare. My kids not going to catch up. I can’t stand watching them go through this. It’s horrible. Do I have to do it? The answer is yes ish. Sorta. It depends. Which is exactly the answer I’m sure you were expecting. But let’s talk a little bit about what staying the same and what is changing. And if this is not working for your child, I will revisit at the end things that you can be doing to help advocate for your child and to help get the program and services they need during this chaotic time. So first of all, what staying the same, I’ve heard the word unprecedented more than I ever want to hear again, if I never hear that word again, I will be just fine. So I guess I don’t have to remind you that the IDA or the federal law that governs special education and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act did not account for a global pandemic in school shutting down suddenly, and having no mechanism through which they can provide services to some children. However, the ID EA is still intact. So while it does not specifically address a global pandemic, it still exists and your child is still entitled to all of the entitlements under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and section 504 if that is what they’re qualified for. So what does that look like? That is the biggest question. I’ve seen some schools that are insisting on maintaining the IPS, the way that they were, even though the environment has changed, the school has changed, the location has changed how services are delivered have changed. All of this has changed. And I along with many of my colleagues are very strongly in the camp that the IP needs to reflect what the child is receiving the guidance we’ve had, at least in my state has been mostly counterproductive to the idea. So it’s a little hard to follow. And I think a lot of schools are struggling with that as well trying to figure out an efficient way to address all the IP needs that are in districts and there are tons of them along with this new model for which they have received no training. And that is really a Herculean task, and I’m not belittling that at all, but that doesn’t mean that your child isn’t entitled to services. They still are and I know that it’s really hard for the school district and I’m not going to ask you to be patient because I feel like special ed parents have been patient The whole time we’ve been patient as long as our children have been in school. So it is a little condescending and difficult to hear. When people say you need to be patient, we’re doing our best because what I think parents of children without disabilities don’t realize is we’ve been hearing that all along. You just started hearing it in March. I’ve been hearing it since my first child’s IEP meeting. So I think that that is a really important piece.
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When I spoke with Meredith Masony the other day, she had a line that I thought was really, really perfect, which is they’re playing a different game, we are playing a different game, and parents of children with disabilities have been having difficulty getting the services they need for their child through the proper process. And now that process has disappeared, and many schools are pretending it doesn’t exist. I have a colleague who filed a state complaint and the state said, Nope, we won’t even take it. We don’t think that’s something to state complaints about. So we’re not even going to accept the paper that it was written on. So there’s a lot that’s still up in the air. And and what this means when I hear parents say, Can schools do this? Can they can they just do that? Can they say I can’t have an IEP meeting for my child? Are they allowed to say that? Well, the short answer is no. The Ida provides that you can request an IEP meeting at any point to discuss your child’s program. However, there are no special education police, there’s no group of people where you can call and say, Hey, the school won’t give me an IEP. And they go over and make the school hold IEP meeting that doesn’t exist. So it’s us, the parents, the advocates, the attorneys, we’re the ones who have to hold the school district accountable. And that is really difficult to do in a time when we don’t know what’s going to happen next, because the remedy for the IDA, if your child is not getting what they’re what they require, then the remedy is an appropriate program and what we need to do to get to an appropriate program, if your child is entitled to services and they do not get them, then your child may be entitled to compensatory services or compensatory education. Another term I know you’ve heard a ton about and to get either of those if you are in dispute with your school district, if your school district does not agree with you with what an appropriate program is for your child, then the only way to address that is through things like state complaints, OCR complaints, and filing for a due process hearing, very few of the problems we are encountering due to covid have been litigated on any level, there have been a few and some have gone very well for families. That being said, there are not a lot of them. And no one wants to create bad law. So for example, if you ask your district for an independent educational evaluation, and they say, No, they need to file for due process against you, you can withdraw your request and the due process hearing should go away. However, I have heard some parents say, Well, I don’t care, they’ve been such jerks, I’m going to go forward with the due process hearing, I’m going to do it myself because they’re wrong. And even if I lose, I’ve made them pay for their attorney. And that just makes me feel better. Well, that’s great, I totally get it. I’ve been there, I’ve engaged in similar similarly motivated activities. But if you get a bad result, if you lose, you have just made law for every other parent out there. And that makes my job more difficult as an attorney, and it will make your job more difficult as a parent, because now there’s some written document that says under these circumstances, a parent does not get that. So it’s important to understand why as attorneys, some of us are not chomping at the bit to go to due process, because we want to figure this out, we want to know what’s next. And we want to figure out what parents and children are entitled to and what they require and how we get there in a strategic manner, so as to preserve the most rights possible for all parents. So I think that’s really important to understand. And none of those entitlements have gone away. So you definitely have all the entitlements that you had before. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to enforce them in this crazy time. So there’s very little advice that I’ve given to any parents that does not involve please consult with an attorney. And I think this is a good moment to remind you that nothing in this podcast or any other podcast I do is meant as legal advice for your specific child in their specific situation. So if at the end of this podcast, you’re thinking or if at any point during the podcast, you are thinking, wow, I need to talk to somebody about this because these are issues I need to address. You’re going to want to find a special education attorney or advocate and I’m not going to go into great detail on how to do that right now. But what I will tell you is that there’s a phenomenal national organization called the Council of parent attorneys and advocates or COPPA co p a.org. And they have a national directory of attorneys and advocates and other service providers who are members of that organization. It’s a wonderful organization. It’s a fabulous resource for all parents, advocates and attorneys, they hold an annual conference that can’t be rivaled. And I would recommend you go there and look in their directory for an attorney or advocate near you, if you don’t have anyone to recommend one, because you want to get somebody who, you know, does special education law, COPPA does not endorse any
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of the people on their directory. Those are just people who are members, but it does give you a place to start. So this podcast is not legal advice. But it is hopefully information that is going to help you moving forward in this back to school time. So what’s what’s staying the same, what is not going to change? Again, I already said no waivers, so that is still the same. Don’t sign anything, please don’t sign anything. And yes, that’s still a thing. At every step, there has been something that a parent has been asked to sign that would have revoked their rights, or impeded their right for their child at every single step. So please, don’t sign anything. Even if you think I know what this is, I’m gonna sign it because it’s exactly what I’ve signed a million times just be extra careful. Schools are not only worried about your services for your child, they are worried about the rights of their staff, they’re worried about the rights of the other children, they’re worried about the rights of the other families, and about 47 billion other things. So they may be asking you to sign something that is meant to be protective of them or their staff, and not meant to impede you in any way. But depending on how it’s worded, it could in fact, impact your child’s education and their special education services. So if you’re asked to sign anything, please, please, please have it checked by an attorney. IEP meetings, they still exist. And yes, your school should still be holding them. That has not changed. When we first shut down in March, a lot of schools were not they were refusing IEP meetings. And that was very frustrating for families, especially for families, for whom distance learning was not working, there was no mechanism by which to document that their child’s program was not being implemented. And you may recall that you were probably told in some Facebook Live or some webinar, or some podcasts that you went to, to document document document. And I will tell you that if COVID never existed, I would tell you to document document document. So the fact that your child is spending or has spent much more time at home with you makes it even more important to document pre covid, I would recommend that parents get a little notebook for their child. And all you’re gonna put in it is communications to and from the school, whether it’s a conversation in the parking lot, or a phone call or an email, or something your child came home and told you about just keep it all in one place. Because you’ll be shocked at what you don’t remember in three months. And the details that you forget, now that we’re in COVID. I’m still recommending you get that little notebook, but now you’re going to write more in it, you’re not just going to discuss your communications to the school district and what you asked for and what they agreed to. And vice versa. You’re also going to write down what is working, what isn’t working? Is your child unable to focus for the whole time during class on zoom? Are they out of sorts when they get back from school? If they’re going in person? What what’s going on that is different? What valuable lessons have you learned being at home with your child, or whoever the caretaker is who’s been home with your child? For some parents, they haven’t been able to be that person. So someone has been the caretaker and they need to be documenting what is working for your child? What is not working? What is your child’s reporting from in person experiences? What are you observing at home, all of those components, you’re going to want to be documenting all of that that’s going to help you moving forward so that has not changed. And in fact, if COVID disappears tomorrow, that will still be the same I will still be telling you to document document document. What else I do want to touch on compensatory education. I did an entire podcast with attorney Piper, Paul. And you can find that on my website where the podcast is or wherever you find this podcast. I’m sure you can find it. It’s with Piper, Paul, and we talk about compensatory education and the legal paradigm that it is and how you may or may not qualify for it. But what I want to touch on right now is that your child may still be entitled to compensatory education for last spring, but if you’re having trouble now, they may be entitled to compensatory education for the fall as well. So just because schools have or are providing a little bit more now, just because they have figured out some of this and are offering hybrid models or at home models that are better does not mean that they are right for your child. So if your child is not getting what they should be getting, you need to be documenting this and you need to be be speaking to an attorney to talk about whether your child might be entitled to compensatory education and discussing with that attorney how you might move forward.
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Okay, so
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what’s new, what’s new is that we are going back to school in an environment that requires many precautions to keep all the staff and students safe. And one of those requirements is wearing a mask. Now, I can’t speak to other states, I can only speak to Connecticut. But in almost all states and all schools, you’re going to have to have your child wearing a mask. If this is not something your child is able to do, it needs to go in their IP, this is now a life skill. wearing a mask is a life skill. Being able to sit in front of a zoom class for 45 minutes is now a life skill. If you think about it, moving forward, learning how to use zoom for school for communication for anything, is actually a life skill, because this is something that existed before COVID. And it has only just become more popular during COVID. So it will continue to be used in almost any business or educational setting moving forward. So those things like wearing a mask, and sitting in front of a computer are now life skills. So you might want to talk to your team about that regarding the requirement to wear masks in Connecticut. And I want to be really clear this is in Connecticut, we had an executive order requiring face coverings. And if you are in Connecticut, and you want to learn more about this, it is on my website, special ed dot log, go to the COVID-19 update page, and it will be there. What happened in Connecticut is that executive order seven BB, which was issued on April 17 2020, our governor required face coverings in public, they’re also required for school. It also mentioned a medical exemption. So if you had a medical issue that prohibited you from wearing a mask, you did not have to wear one, I heard a lot of concern about this from both parents and school staff that anyone would be able to claim a medical exemption and not have to wear a mask but not have to demonstrate any evidence of that medical condition. And so the idea was people are just going to utilize it to not wear masks because masks are a pain. And they are. However on August 14, our governor issued another executive order seven and n n which indicates
still Dana 17:27
that
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if you are using a medical exemption for wearing a mask, you must provide written documentation that the person is qualified for the exemption from a licensed medical provider, the Department of Developmental Services or other state agencies that provides or support services for people with emotional, intellectual or physical disabilities, or a person authorized by any such agency. So if you have concerns about whether there will be other people in the school who are not wearing a mask, or if you have a child who has an issue with wearing a mask, but needs to go into school in person, then you want to find out in your state or your school exactly what are the obligations for wearing a mask? And what are the exemption? And how do you demonstrate that exemption? So do you have to provide a written note from a doctor or a service provider or is no evidence required. And those are important for you to know. Because if you have a child who is very susceptible, but is going in person or that you have concerns about and you aren’t sure if you want them around other people who are unmasked, then you need to find out are these people unmasked for a reason are the proper protocols being followed. And if there are people in the classroom without masks on what other measures are being taken to keep both yours and other children safe. So those are all really valid questions that you would have to ask your school district. Now they can’t say, well, Johnny has blah, blah, blah. So Johnny doesn’t have to wear a mask. This is where it’s getting tricky, because your student is coming home and saying Johnny isn’t wearing a mask. So it will be challenging to address these issues, when we are dealing with confidentiality issues as well as health issues because somebody’s not moving a mask can impact you and your child and your child not wearing a mask can impact other children. So it’s a really critical area to look into and find out what are the state or federal guidelines on this? Or is there an executive order addressing it specifically in your state? And if so, get that order and read it and talk to an attorney and figure out if your child is eligible for not wearing a mask and or what you need to do for it. I know for me personally, knowing that there has to be written notice or written evidence of someone requiring the medical exemption does make me feel better. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the right thing to do. So Let’s talk a little bit now about the least restrictive environment or LRE. I did do a full podcast on that the other day as well, I’ve been trying to keep up with all of these topics that you have been telling me you want to hear about. So I’m trying to get them all in. But I do want to touch on it. Now if you want to hear more detailed discussion, about least restrictive environment in the current climate, these do go find my least restrictive environment podcasts, which I did with educational advocate, Stacy, Thai, here in Connecticut. So that would be a good reference for you. But I do want to talk to you a little bit about it. And it’s important to know that just because the regular education environment has changed does not mean that your child’s right to a least restrictive environment has as well. So the first thing that I want to cover is that the least restrictive environment is not a location, it’s a legal paradigm. And we often talk about the least restrictive environment or the LRE, as your child’s local classroom with their teacher on local bus. But it’s not a location, it’s a paradigm, it means that your child should be educated in the regular education environment with non disabled peers to the maximum extent that is appropriate. And right now, if your child is in a hybrid program that has been provided by the school district to all students, that is the regular education environment right now. So your child needs to be in that environment to the maximum extent possible. So what does your child need for that environment to
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be successful,
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that’s what you’re looking at not what’s Least Restrictive. If you were in the brick and mortar building, what’s Least Restrictive. Now, if your child is on distance learning, if your child is in a classroom that has been cohorted, with all other special ed kids, that’s not least restrictive. And this is a problem that we’re seeing pop up, it makes perfect sense, I completely understand why school districts would want to group kids together with similar special education needs. So these kids all get ot let’s put them in a cohort so that we can manage that schedule, I understand the reasoning behind it. But it could create a huge problem for the least restrictive environment. Because if kids when they come in are not interacting with non disabled peers, or have very limited access to non disabled peers, we’re going to have a big LRE issue. So if you have a child who is not successful at home on the on the remote learning component, and requires supplementary aids and services, they are absolutely entitled to that. It’s also important to remember that the least restrictive environment needs to be the one that’s appropriate for your child. So you know, we can’t say all kids with ADHD are going over here, all kids with dyslexia over there, and all kids with autism over there. If there are separate programs like that, and one happens to be appropriate for your child, then that’s fine. But we also don’t just say all kids go to their regular education classroom and stay there because it’s Least Restrictive, we say, is it appropriate. So you need to be looking at your remote learning situation, your in person situation or your hybrid situation and not compare them to each other, but look at it as a standalone and say, Is this the least restrictive environment for my child that is appropriate right now. And when you’re looking at what’s appropriate, you’re not looking at what the school can or can’t do, you’re looking at what’s appropriate for your child. And remember, there can be more than one way to skin a cat. So you might want to do something a specific way or the school might want to do something a specific way, and you have a better idea, or you have an idea that’s easier for you. And you have to communicate that to your school. So if you have a child who requires supplemental aids and services for remote learning, or in person learning or hybrid learning, don’t compare those programs to each other. Look at it as a standalone, which program is your child in? And do they require supplementary aids and services to access that regular education component? And then what are those supplementary aids and services and if we implement those and those are not successful, then we have to start looking at something else we have to start looking at more supports or a more restrictive environment, and that may or may not be going into the public school. So the LRE is a regular education environment. It is not a location. It’s not your local classroom. It is the regular education environment as provided, your child is entitled to supplementary aids and services to be successful in that regular education environment that they are currently assigned to or in right now, whether voluntary or not, and if those are not successful, then you need to start looking at more services, different services and possibly a different placement. Which then brings me to fate FAPE still exists, but specialized instruction and related services have to be provided to your child, whether they are going in person or not. Now, what I’ve heard a lot of lately is for students who have chosen either the hybrid plan or the home plan, who need more services, the school district is saying, well, you chose to be home, if your child wants more services, we are open full time, and they are welcome to come five days a week. From my perspective, that’s not okay. Again, not something that has been litigated yet. However, if they are offering the hybrid program or the remote learning program to regular education, children, then your child is as entitled to it as everybody else. So your school can’t say sorry, we don’t provide that for hybrid kids. Or we don’t provide that for remote learning kids for that you have to be an in person, kid. That’s not how this works. So if you have a situation like that, where your child can’t go into school full time, and your school is saying in order to access their IP, they have to be in school full time, then you definitely need to be talking to an attorney to figure out what your obligations are. And if there are additional ways to obtain those services. And there usually, our another word I don’t really want to ever hear, again, is creative, let’s be creative. Again, if you’re a special ed parent, you’ve been creative for as long as you can remember, probably, but it is a good point. And I do believe that the burden is on us. Now as parents to come up with those creative ideas. I am finding that individual teachers are struggling because they’ve got so much put on their plate school districts and teams have so much more that they’re worrying about it is going to be more productive, I believe, if you come to the school with the options, if you say the Xoom speech is not working, they are only getting in person twice a week, and I can’t bring them in the other three days, because we’re on the hybrid plan, then you need to find something else, maybe your child, maybe you have a private speech therapist who is set up to take children safely under the COVID situation. And they can provide services, either in their office in person or some even I know are going to people’s homes to provide services. I think that’s really few and far between at this point. But I also know a lot of professionals have set up their offices, they’ve changed their modalities and their functions and everything about their offices so that they’re safe. So a lot of environments like that might be much more safe than your school district. So that is an opportunity or an option that you can utilize. Hopefully, at this point, you have been told at some point that if you are adjusting your child’s IEP for the current situation, so maybe you did have a meeting, and you have what’s called an IEP implementation plan, which is a plan for implementing your child’s original IP, under the current circumstances. Now that IP implementation plan can be for either the in person, the hybrid, or the remote learning components, you want to make sure that just because your child is getting services differently, they’re not losing services. So for example, if a child was doing really well with speech on zoom, and was skyrocketing, and doing a lot better, the teacher might come and say, Hey, we only need to do 30 minutes, not an hour, because he’s doing so well on zoom. No, that’s not how we’re going to do this. Just because they’re doing better than most kids does not mean that they are ready to move on. So be very cautious if you are told that any services need to be minimized or reduced due to the current educational model that your school is using, because that does not alleviate them of their responsibility. So they can’t say, Hey, we’re only going to do 30 minutes, because that’s what works best. And he’s doing really well on zoom. So he doesn’t need the rest of it. That’s not that’s not how this works. If they really feel that your child has made so much progress, they would do well with reduced services, then ask for an evaluation and and demonstrate that your child is at that place where they require that and they’re ready to have less services, but do not let your child get reduced services because the format of education has changed. That being said, if your child had an aid in the classroom, they’re probably not going to send an aid to your house to help them with math. So there may be other ways to provide that, that under these circumstances might be really good and work really well for your child but not be necessary elsewhere. So for example, I have a student who does well in a small group in math in the public school. And with the remote learning model, they are getting online one to one tutoring once a week. So that’s a great fix. That child does not need one to one tutoring the rest of the time that they’re in the school building with their pushing group. But under this model, they do so you want to make sure that if anything changes, you’re still getting the same level of support even if it looks different. So if your child has a In the regular education classroom and having an aide in there for a small group of children to help out on a daily basis, if that was successful, and you can’t have that now, then maybe now that one to one tutoring is what’s going to fill that need. But that would be in your IP implementation plan, because it’s saying that when we get back to school, we’re not going to give you a one to one we get back to school, we’re going to go back to that pushin model. And what some parents are seeing is, oh, now we’ve got the one to one, and my child’s doing beyond better than they were before. Well, guess what, you just learned something. And your child might require one to one, not small group push it. So
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that goes
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all the way back to where I was saying document, document document, make sure that those IP implementation plans or whatever your school district chooses to call it is attached to the IEP. And that all of the services in there are what your child requires, and equates to the same level of support they were getting before. On the flip side, we also had some students who actually did way better on the remote learning component. And maybe those children, you don’t think need it anymore. Well, they did really great. So I’m just going to keep them on distance learning forever, that’s probably not going to work. Either, I would still request either an evaluation or a consultant to make sure that all IP needs are being met, we can determine whether they are happy or not happy, we can determine if they’re frustrated or not frustrated, it’s a little too soon to determine whether any of these successful models should be permanent in your child’s IEP. And I say that because despite some of the good numbers we are having now, there are a lot of bad numbers too. And it is still the prediction that we will get a second peak. And if we get a second peak, we all know we will be at home for three to four months again. And we cannot forget that for our children. Because we don’t want to be in the same position we were last year and we won’t be many people are much more prepared. That doesn’t mean they are prepared, it means they are more prepared than they were last year. And in my book, there was only one way to go with that.
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So
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do you want to be specific, you want to make sure you’ve got those IEP implementation plans or your child’s IEP written out the way that they need with the support that they need. They’re still no waivers, don’t sign anything. Yes, you are entitled to your IEP meeting, always document, document, document and continue to tally all of your hours from before for compensatory education. If you believe your child is entitled to compensatory education, please speak to an attorney as soon as you are able. So they can help walk you through what you would need to do to request and obtain that compensatory education. Check your school and your state for their policies on mask wearing and whether it impacts you or your child. And if it does get the specifics find out are they required? Do you need to get a medical exemption? Or does somebody else in the class need a medical exemption? What What is the policy and what are the procedures
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for your school as
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far as mask wearing goes? least restrictive environment is not a location, it is a legal paradigm and it is that your child is entitled to be educated in a general education environment. And that is what hybrid and remote learning is right now it is all still the regular education environment FAPE, you’re still entitled to but it’s going to look a little different because you are in a different location and you are in a different model. So if your child’s IEP does not reflect specifically what is and is not being done for them to make sure that their services are provided and that they’re receiving the support they need, then you need to have that IEP meeting and either have the IEP change, or an implementation plan attached to it. And if you know if your child is right now and an in person model, but you know, you’re going to go to full virtual at some point, you need to create that implementation plan for their in person now, but you don’t want to wait till we close down again to get that implementation plan for the next closing. So you want to have that IEP meeting and discuss that with your school district now and get that in order so that we are not scrambling at the end of the day. When this all comes crashing down again. I am really really, really hopeful that this is the last podcast I have to do explaining to people what they can and can’t expect from their schools under these ridiculous COVID restrictions. But I suspect it is not. So with that. I will simply say until next time.
Thank you so much for joining me today. Please don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast so that you get notifications when new episodes come out. And I want to know what you want to know. So join our Facebook group also named need to know with Dana Jonson or you can email me Dana at Special Ed dot life, but definitely reach out with your comments and questions and I’ll see you next time here on need to know with Dana Jonson have a fabulous day.
