Mary's List: Special Education Resources Iowa Parents and Educators Need to Read

Last week I visited with a parent of a child with a disability who said that she had recently learned that Iowa is the only state in the nation that uses a noncategorical system for identifying children who have disabilities and need special education and related services.  

She asked me if I could give her a list of Iowa-specific resources about special education law and procedures that she could read over the summer. 

I told her I'd be glad to provide her with links to Iowa-specific special education resources and would also share them on my blog.

Procedural Safeguards Manual for Parents' Rights for Children Ages Birth-3  and/or         

Procedural Safeguards Manual for Parents' Rights for Children Ages 3-21 at

The Iowa Rules of Special Education  

What You Need to Know as a Parent of a Student with a Disability 

What to Expect at an IEP Meeting  

i3 Iowa IDEA Information

ASK (Access for Special Kids) Resource Center  

and the link to this blog, Special Education in Iowa  

Nonsense, Responding to Nonsense, and Unexpected Support

Most Iowans are glad to hear when a state agency makes a local government unit reimburse a citizen who has had to pay for services that the local government unit should have provided to the citizen at no charge. 

That's what happened when the Iowa Department of Education (DE) determined that the Sioux City Community School District failed to provide services to a student during school hours required by his IEP.  In its ruling on State Complaint 23-45, the DE ordered the District to reimburse the parents for the $31,000 they spent to provide those services for their son that the school district was obligated to provide - but didn't provide for over a year. See State Complaint 23-45. 

So what does this have to do with “nonsense?” Unfortunately, the “nonsense” consists of falsified facts about this case that are being circulated as “reasons” for Iowa's governor to do away with the DE. 

A few weeks ago I heard this nonsense when searching for a radio station while on the road to the Iowa State Bar Association Annual Meeting. The scanner paused and I heard someone say, "I hope the  governor will get rid of the education department because it made the Sioux City Schools give a $30,000 handout to some parents who complained about how the school treated their handicapped kid.” 

“Nonsense!” I thought, and restarted the scanner.

I heard it again last week when my law clerk and I were finishing lunch at a restaurant, a man sitting with some local residents in the next booth began giving his opinions about state government. His voice grew progressively louder as he complained about the agencies he thinks are “boondoggles.” Among his targets was the DE, which he described as “another boondoggle” and said, “[w]hen it’s not paying schools to feed breakfast and lunch to people’s kids, it’s making schools pay the parents of handicapped kids.”

“Nonsense! I thought. However, my face began to flush as he continued to speak, saying, “[s]ome parents complained that the Sioux City Schools didn’t perfectly teach their handicapped kid,” so the DE “ordered it [the school district] to pay them $30,000. To scrape up the money to pay them this summer, it had to close down all the city’s public swimming pools.” 

The man was still ranting as my law clerk and I left the restaurant. Once we were outside, she said, “Mary - why didn’t you call him out?”

I responded that calling him out might have felt “righteous” - but it's ineffective when your purpose is to correct misinformation - especially when no one has asked for your input. Calling out someone in front of others usually makes the person angry, embarrassed, and defensive - and a person in a heightened state of emotion isn’t likely to listen to you or think about what you’re saying. As a result, by calling out someone, you've just made them feel bad without solving the problem.

The next day I sent a pleasant email to the local residents who sat with the “misspeaker,” in which I recalled the good time we had volunteering together during RAGBRAI’s stop in Coralville a few years ago. Noting that I practice education law, I wrote that I thought they’d want to know the $31,000 that the Iowa Department of Education (DE ) ordered the Sioux City Community School District (SCCSD) to pay the parents of a student with a disability was to reimburse the parents for the money the parents spent to provide services that the school district was required to provide for their son - but didn’t provide for over a year. 

I also said that I  checked out their lunch companion’s statement that the school district had closed Sioux City’s public swimming pools and was glad to learn that all the city pools are open at regular hours. I indicated that perhaps he’d heard that the school board recently closed two of its three high school swimming pools - but that wasn’t due to the reimbursement order. It was related to the end of the Covid emergency funding (“ESSER”) on September 30, 2024. 

The school board’s minutes show that the board wanted to continue some of the programs and staff paid with those funds, the board needed to find over $7 million in the rest of its budget. The minutes of the May 13, 2024 school board work session show that those pools were built over 50 years ago and have received minimal maintenance. One pool was no longer operational. Each pool needed over $200,000 in repairs and had annual operating costs of over $50,000/year. 

The School Board’s June 24 minutes, showed that the Board approved making necessary repairs to the West High School pool and permanently closing the pools at East High School and North High School unless outside third-party contributions are received to fund the necessary equipment replacement,  repairs, and the annual pool operating costs.  

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I didn’t expect any responses to my message. However, today, one of the recipients called and thanked me for letting him know the Iowa Department of Education had helped the parents. He explained that in the 1950s, his baby brother had polio, and later he didn’t get to go to school. The school board in his rural community said he couldn’t be educated with normal children because he couldn’t climb stairs due to his wheelchair, he had difficulty holding a pencil and speaking, and the school board thought the sight of his deformed limbs would upset other children. The man said that he always thought his brother was “really smart,” and he wished there'd been laws that would have kept the school board from refusing to educate him. I said I agreed and thanked him for sharing that with me.*

You never know where you’ll find support, so be careful when you’re tempted to call someone out. 

Note: I asked him for permission to repeat his story in an article on my special education website, explaining that most younger people aren’t aware that until Congress and state legislatures passed laws requiring public schools to educate children with disabilities, school boards often excluded children who couldn't climb stairs, wouldn’t "fit" into a regular classroom,  or whose appearance they thought would upset the other students. He kindly agreed as long as I kept his name private. 

Remedies, Relief and Corrective Action Under the IDEA and the Iowa Rules of Special Education: Plenty of Pain - No “Pain and Suffering”

 Parent Questions: 

I heard on the news that the Iowa Department of Education made the Sioux City Community School District pay a student’s parents over $30,000 because it didn’t follow their son’s IEP. It also made the school district follow that IEP.  My daughter’s IEP says the school district must provide her with a sign language interpreter when she's at school. She doesn't see well enough to lip-read but the school district hasn't provided her with an interpreter for almost a semester. I have two questions:  Question 1:  Would the Department make my daughter’s school district start providing her with the sign language interpreter required in her IEP? Question 2: Would the Department order her school district to pay damages for the emotional distress that she's suffering because it isn't providing her with a sign language interpreter? 

Mary's Responses: 

[Before this blog article was posted, the first question was resolved. The student is now receiving full-time sign-language interpreting services at her school and compensatory education services to allow her to complete the courses she had to sit through without an interpreter, unable to hear, and unable to see well enough to lip read.]

Regarding the second question, in 2023 the Iowa Department of Education (DE) ruled on State Complaint 23-45. In that case, the student's IEP required the school Sioux City Community School District to provide him during school hours with certain medically necessary services (services without which the student would become ill or not survive). When the school district failed to provide the student with those services, his parents paid for them out-of-pocket and filed a complaint under the IDEA with the DE. In its decision, the DE directed the Sioux City Community School District to reimburse a student’s parents the $31,000 they had paid out-of-pocket for those services. Here is a link to that decision: Iowa Department of Education Decision in State Complaint 23-45 (July 11, 2023).  

Relief, Remedies, and Corrective Action

The IDEA doesn’t authorize administrative law judges or courts to award monetary damages to compensate students for pain and suffering. Congress decided not to authorize monetary damages because public schools have limited funds and such awards would decrease funds needed for educational expenditures. See D.L. v. Waukee Cmty. Sch. Dist., 578 F. Supp. 2d 1178, 1190 (S.D. Iowa 2008) citing Diaz-Fonseca v. Puerto Rico, 451 F.3d 13. (1st Cir. 2006).  

Remedies authorized under the IDEA focus on ensuring that students with disabilities receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE). Courts and administrative law judges have broad discretion to order corrective action. The specific type or remedy and amount of relief must be determined on a case-by-case basis. See Iowa Department of Education Decision in State Complaint 23-45 (July 11, 2023).  

Relief may involve requiring a student’s IEP team to develop an IEP that is reasonably calculated to allow the student to make educational progress. It may require implementing procedures to ensure the student receives specially designed instruction tailored to the student’s unique needs and to ensure the related services necessary for the student to benefit from instruction. 

Corrective action may include compensatory education. See Iowa Administrative Code r. 281-41.151. It can take various forms including tutoring, extended school year services, or specialized programs. The goal is to address the educational deficits resulting from the school district's failure to provide the student with a FAPE. See Minnetonka Pub. Sch., Indep. Sch. Dist. No. 276 v. M.L.K. ex rel. S.K., 42 F.4th 847, 852 (8th Cir. 2022). It may also require a school district to reimburse a student's parents for the cost of services they paid because the school district failed to provide them. See B.M. v. S. Callaway R-II Sch. Dist., 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 163235. It may also involve, technical assistance activities and negotiations. See 281-41.152. 

Remember that this blog article does NOT provide an exhaustive summary of information about relief, remedies, and corrective action under the IDEA. Nor does it cover information about remedies when a parent files a court action under the Americans with Disabilities Act seeking relief that isn't available under the IDEA.

Fall 2024: ACHIEVE Family Portal Launch

ACHIEVE is Iowa's online data management system. It was developed to support the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The ACHIEVE Governance Council, which makes decisions about the system, consists of two AEA Special Education Directors, two LEA Special Education Directors, and Department of Education staff. 

According to the April 2024 Superintendents Notes published by the Iowa Department of Education, in the Fall of 2024, ACHIEVE's functions will include a family portal that will give parents round-the-clock access to their child's historical information, the ability to view and sign documents electronically, the ability to access their child's records and view their child's real-time progress on goals. https://educate.iowa.gov/pk-12/accreditation-program-approval/school-improvement/superintendent-notes 

Iowa will be the first state in the nation to offer families this type of access to their child’s special education information.

Special Education, Long-Term Suspensions, and Transportation

 I am writing today because during the current school year, I've had an unusual number of cases in which the parents had the same special education issue. 

• The parents in each case have a child with an IEP that includes behavior goals.

• The parents live and work in a town located 15 or more miles from the school building is located to and from which their children ride the school bus.  

• Between late September and mid-December 2023, each of the children was suspended from school for the remainder of the school year after making a statement at school that was regarded as a threat by their school district. 

• All of the children were evaluated and none of them were found to be a danger to themselves or others.

After the children missed ten days of school, their suspensions became a  “change of placement,” requiring their school districts to provide them with services for the rest of the suspension period, to enable them to continue to participate in the general education curriculum and make progress toward their IEP goals. 281-41.530(4)(d).

• Each school district provided those services at a public school or education center located 19 to 36 miles away from the child’s home. 

• To provide these children with a FAPE during the suspension period, their IEP teams should have added transportation as a related service to their IEPs. 281-41.34(1), or, contingent on the parent's willingness to provide the transportation, the school district should have compensated the parent for providing the transportation.

• However, when the parents asked their children’s IEP teams to add this to their IEPs,  school administrators said their school districts do not provide transportation for suspended students, and the IEP teams were unwilling to add transportation to the IEPs.

Until after those parents contacted me and their matters were resolved, every school day they were making two round-trip home-to-facility drives (morning and afternoon).

• Depending on the specific home-to-facility distance from their homes to the facilities, the parents were driving distances ranging from 300 to 700 miles each week. 

• Using the 2024 IRS mileage rate of $0.67, the parents' weekly expenses for those trips ranged from $201.00 to $467.00.

Each time I ponder these cases, I wonder -

• why did the school districts deny transportation when special education law so clearly requires them to provide transportation as a related service when due to the program's location, the children need transportation to access those services? 281-41.412(1), and 

• why didn't the school district and area education agency professionals on the children's IEP teams recognize that denying transportation as a related service under these circumstances was inconsistent with providing the children with a Free Appropriate Public Education?

 

Parents Deserve Drafts of All Documents Before IEP Meetings

Too many IEP meetings begin with an AEA staff member announcing that the team is going to review a new draft IEP (or BIP, safety plan, etc.) that the parent has never seen. Then they proceed to discuss the document. 

This procedure places all or most parents at a keen disadvantage by giving them only enough time to “see” and “react” to the material during the meeting - but not enough time to think about content sufficiently to give meaningful input.

By withholding drafts from parents until IEP meetings commence, school district and AEA members of IEP teams effectively demonstrate an intent to prevent parents from fully participating as members of their children's IEP teams. 

The IDEA requires districts to ensure that the parents of each child with a disability are members of any group that makes decisions about their child's educational placement. 34 CFR 300.327 ; 34 CFR 300.501 (c)(1). This means that districts must go beyond merely allowing parents to be present at IEP meetings. Substantive harm occurs when LEAs seriously infringe upon a parent’s opportunity to participate in the IEP process. See Bd. of Educ. of the Hendrick Hudson Cent. Sch. Dist. v. Rowley, 458 U.S. 176, 208, 73 L. Ed. 2d 690, 102 S. Ct. 3034 (1982) (“Congress sought to protect individual children by providing for parental involvement . . . in the formulation of the child's individual educational program.”). Parent participation must be more than a mere form; it must be meaningful. See Deal v. Hamilton Cty. Bd. of Educ., 392 F.3d 840, 858 (6th Cir. 2004). 

I strongly recommend that parents give their children's IEP team written notice that they request that at least two school days in advance of their child's IEP meeting, the team provide them with copies of all written documents that will be discussed at the meeting. 

Moreover, Iowa law should not accord fewer rights to parents participating in IEP meetings than it provides to the members of condominium associations who are legally entitled to receive ten days before condominium association board meetings, drafts of all proposals for action to be considered at those meetings. 

To ensure that parents have the opportunity to participate meaningfully in developing their children’s IEPs, I recommend that the Iowa Department of Education amend the Iowa Rules of Special Education to include a rule providing that: “At least two school days before an IEP meeting, the school/AEA is required to provide parents with copies of any written documents that will be addressed at the IEP meeting.”

Related Services and Supplementary Aids and Services

A free appropriate public education (FAPE) is comprised of special education and related services tailored to meet a child's unique needs and supportive services to permit the child to benefit from the school’s instruction, extracurricular programs, and nonacademic settings. See 20 U.S.C. §§ 1401 (9), (26), (33).

“Related Services” refers to services that are connected to a child’s development. They include transportation, speech-language pathology and audiology services; interpreter services; psychological services; physical and occupational therapy; recreation, including therapeutic recreation; counseling services, including rehabilitation counseling; orientation and mobility services; and medical services for diagnostic or evaluation purposes. Related services also include “school health services and school nurse services, social work services in schools, and parent counseling and training. See 281 I.A.C. 41.34,

“Supplementary Aids and Services” means aids, services, and other supports that are provided in classes,  other education-related settings, and in extracurricular and nonacademic settings, to enable children with disabilities to be educated with nondisabled children to the maximum extent appropriate.  refers to the additional supportive services that a child needs in order to benefit from the school’s programs in education, extracurricular, and nonacademic settings, and to enable the child to be educated with nondisabled children to the maximum extent appropriate. See 34 C.F.R. § 300.320(a)(4); 281 I.A.C. 41.42. Examples of supplementary aids and services include adaptive technology, direct services and supports to the child, instruction modifications, instructional delivery, testing accommodations, and support and training for staff who work with the child.