Request and Insist on Receiving Advance Copies of Draft IEPs and Amendments to IEPs

Parental review of a child’s IEP drafts and amendments in advance of IEP meetings is vital to their participation in the development of their children's IEPs.

However, IEP teams in Iowa typically wait until IEP meetings to provide parents with copies of draft IEPs and IEP amendments. This puts parents at a great disadvantage in with respect to participating meaningfully in the development of their children’s IEPs. By withholding draft IEPs and amendments from parents until meetings, IEP teams deny parents the time needed to read and process the content and formulate their own questions and input.

I strongly recommend to parents that as soon as they learn that an IEP meeting is being scheduled, they prepare an email requesting that at least three to five days before the meeting is scheduled, the IEP team send them an advance copy of any IEP draft or IEP amendment, and send the email to their child’s special education teacher, school principal, the school district’s special education director, and the Area Education Agency representative who serves on the child’s IEP team.

If an IEP team doesn’t honor a parent’s timely request for advance copies, and at the meeting begins passing out or displaying IEP drafts or amendments, rather than lying down before the steamroller, parents can politely arise and state that the meeting should be terminated and rescheduled for a mutually acceptable date and time after they have had several days to read and consider the contents of the IEP draft or amendment, compare it to the current IEP, and prepare for the meeting.