Your beloved Kentucky elementary or secondary school student has already shown you the challenges of getting autism accommodations and services. Let us help. The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team is available in Louisville, Lexington, Fayette, Bowling Green, Owensboro, Covington, Georgetown, Richmond, Florence, Elizabethtown, Nicholasville, Hopkinsville, and across Kentucky to ensure that your student gets mandated state and federal special education services. We can represent your student in the Jefferson County Public Schools, Fayette County Public Schools, Boone County Public Schools, Warren County Public Schools, Hardin County Public Schools, Kenton County Public Schools, Bullitt County Public Schools, Oldham County Public Schools, Daviess County Public Schools, Madison County Public Schools, Scott County Public Schools, Laurel County Public Schools, and other Kentucky school districts. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now.
Autism's Educational Challenge
Autism can present parents with an incredible challenge in ensuring that their student receives appropriate K-12 school instruction. Your Kentucky K-12 student's teachers and other school officials may be showing strong sympathy for your student's autism. But they are probably not combining that sympathy with appropriate knowledge, skills, and interventions to ensure your student learns and develops like students without autism or other disabilities. Your student's Kentucky K-12 teachers and other school officials may not be taking advantage of the abundant technical assistance and other resources the Kentucky Advisory Council on Autism Spectrum Disorder offers. They may be blaming your student's autistic responses to the classroom environment and school stimuli on your student's misconduct and rebellious character, rather than properly intervening with helpful autism accommodations and services. Let us help you meet the extraordinary challenge that autism presents your student in the Kentucky K-12 classroom and school environment. Your student's academic and social development is worth fighting for your student's state and federal educational disability rights.
Autism in Kentucky K-12 Schools
Your student's Kentucky K-12 school district officials should be well aware that your student and perhaps other disabled students in the district face the challenge of learning with autism. The Kentucky Department of Education maintains an Office of Special Education & Early Learning to equip the state's K-12 school districts with guidance on how to comply with state and federal disability rights laws, rules, and regulations. Kentucky K-12 school districts accordingly form, staff, and empower special education units to serve autistic students and students with other disabilities. The Jefferson County Public Schools is an example, maintaining a Special Education in Jeffco office committed to ensuring that every disabled student reaches their full potential. The Fayette County Public Schools is another example, staffing a Special Education Department committed to providing effective, evidence-based instructionfor every disabled student. Let us help you hold your student's Kentucky K-12 school district accountable to similar commitments.
Federal Laws Assuring Kentucky Autism Services
Your Kentucky K-12 autistic student should have substantial support from Kentucky state special education regulations for accommodations and services. But those Kentucky special education provisions rely in large part on the following federal special education and disability anti-discrimination laws, as the Kentucky Department of Education's Office of Special Education & Early Learning interprets and applies them. Let us help you enforce these federal assurances.
The Federal IDEA Law and Autism in Kentucky Schools
The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is your Kentucky K-12 autistic student's number one ally in not only assuring but also funding special education services. Kentucky's Department of Education adopts and enforces elaborate special education regulations to qualify for the IDEA law's substantial federal taxpayer funding. You may already have heard of the IDEA law. But you may not know that the IDEA law's Section 300.8(c)(1)(i) unequivocally identifies autism as among the disabilities qualifying for special education. Like other medical and legal authorities, Section 300.8(c)(1)(i) defines autism by the repetitive and stereotypical motions, strong adverse reactions to environmental change or stimuli, and communication and interaction deficits it often produces. Our attorneys can help you ensure that your student's Kentucky K-12 school is respecting your student's IDEA law rights.
ADA Title II and Autism in Kentucky Schools
Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) also protects your Kentucky K-12 autistic student. ADA Title II, prohibiting disability discrimination in education, expressly defines autism as a disability qualifying for the law's protection. Title II regulations properly call autism a mental impairment substantially affecting the major life activity of brain function. ADA Title II requires that your student's Kentucky K-12 school reasonably accommodate your student's autism so as not to unlawfully discriminate based on disability. Accommodation must include reasonably available, affordable, and effective interventions and services. Our highly qualified attorneys can help you invoke both the IDEA law and ADA for your student's appropriate autism accommodations and services.
Kentucky State Laws on Autism Services
Kentucky's Department of Education promotes local school district compliance with not only the federal IDEA law but also parallel Kentucky state statutes and regulations. By authorizing the Kentucky Department of Education to enact its special education regulations, the Kentucky legislature ensured that your student's Kentucky K-12 school would qualify for and receive federal taxpayer funding for special education. Federal taxpayer money pays for those accommodations. Title 707, Chapter 001 of the Kentucky Administrative Regulations adopts the federal IDEA law's requirementsincluding these critical enforcement mechanisms:
- 707 Kentucky Administrative Regulation 1:002 recognizes the IDEA law's autism definition;
- 707 Kentucky Administrative Regulation 1:290 promises the IDEA law's free appropriate public education;
- 707 Kentucky Administrative Regulation 1:300 adopts the IDEA law's child find program;
- 707 Kentucky Administrative Regulation 1:320 adopts the IDEA law's IEP mandates; and
- 707 Kentucky Administrative Regulation 1:340 promises the IDEA law's procedural safeguards.
Let our skilled and experienced attorneys help you enforce not only the federal IDEA law and ADA but also these Kentucky special education regulations.
Kentucky K-12 School Child Find Duty
Do not let your student's Kentucky K-12 school officials blame you for not alerting the school to your student's autism. The federal IDEA law and Kentucky special education regulations require the school to identify autistic students and students with other disabilities needing accommodation and services. The IDEA law's Section 300.111 calls that school duty its child find obligation. As indicated above, 707 Kentucky Administrative Regulation 1:300 adopts the IDEA law's child find mandate. You should have no trouble convincing the school of its obligation to identify your student's autism as potentially qualifying your student for special education. You may certainly notify the school of your student's autism diagnosis. Doing so should help school officials recognize their IDEA law child find obligations. Let our attorneys help if those school officials are reluctant to investigate your student's special education needs.
Kentucky K-12 School Duty to Evaluate Autism
Your student's Kentucky K-12 school officials should not be guessing at whether and to what degree your student suffers from autism spectrum disorder. The IDEA law's Section 300.304 requires that those school officials refer your student for a qualified professional evaluation at school expense. Federal taxpayer funding pays for your student's autism evaluation. 707 Kentucky Administrative Regulation 1:300 adopts the IDEA law's evaluation mandate, meaning that your student has the backing of both state and federal law for autism evaluation. Your student's proper evaluation by a qualified professional should have laid the groundwork for your student's appropriate IEP. Let us help you invoke your student's evaluation rights if Kentucky K-12 school officials are resisting a proper evaluation of your student's autism.
Parental Consent to Kentucky Autism Evaluation
The IDEA law grants you control over your student's Kentucky K-12 autism evaluation. The IDEA law's Section 300.300 allows you to grant or withhold consent to evaluation. 707 Kentucky Administrative Regulation 1:300 impliedly adopts the IDEA law's consent mandate. You control whether your student must submit to an autism evaluation. If you grant consent, your student's Kentucky K-12 school must refer and pay for your student's evaluation. Conversely, if you withhold consent, the school must not refer your student for evaluation. Let us help you address any issues with your right to grant or withhold consent for your student's autism evaluation.
Denying Consent to Kentucky Autism Evaluation
You may have good reason to withhold consent for your student's autism evaluation. You do not need to give the school your reasons. But you may decide that your student, although on the autism spectrum, does not need autism accommodations and interventions. You may decide that your student will develop better character and discipline and better avoid stigmatizing and isolation by persevering without the school's diagnosis and accommodations. You may alternatively believe that the evaluator the school has chosen is unqualified or biased. You may object to the time, date, place, or nature of the evaluation or may not wish to burden your student with an evaluation that you and your chosen professionals have already completed. You may wish to influence the school to use those already completed, favorable evaluations rather than choose an evaluator who may deny your student's autism diagnosis and accommodations. We can help you use your right to withhold consent to influence the school's decision on whether to recognize and accommodate your student's autism.
Kentucky K-12 Autism Second Opinions
The IDEA law gives you yet another tool to influence your student's Kentucky K-12 school officials to properly accommodate your student's autism. The IDEA law's Section 1414 grants you the right to require that the school conduct a reevaluation of your student's autism. You can get a second opinion at the school's expense. 707 Kentucky Administrative Regulation 1:300 expressly adopts the IDEA law's reevaluation mandate. You may have found that the school's initial evaluation misdiagnosed your student's autism or refused to recommend needed autism accommodations and interventions. Your right to a reevaluation includes the right to choose your own evaluator, who may be better qualified than the school's evaluator and be without the initial evaluator's bias against your student and conflict of interest in the school's favor. Our attorneys have the skill and experience to help you choose a highly qualified evaluator and otherwise enforce your student's reevaluation rights to ensure a solid basis for a sound IEP.
Parental Consent to Kentucky Autism Services
Your student's Kentucky K-12 school officials may be offering your student autism accommodations and interventions of which you do not approve. In that case, the IDEA law's Section 300.300 grants you the right to withhold consent to disability accommodations. You not only control your student's evaluation but also your student's autism accommodation. Your right to refuse consent to the autism accommodations and interventions the school offers gives you a tool to influence school officials to offer different accommodations and interventions that you prefer. You can also withhold consent to accommodations that you feel might burden, harm, embarrass, or ostracize your student, or discourage your student from striving, building appropriate character and discipline, and receiving the due reward of overcoming the autism without accommodation. You decide whether your student receives accommodation. We can help you deploy consent-to-services correctly, both strategically and sensitively.
Scope of Kentucky Autistic Student Services
The above provisions can give you considerable control over your student's autism accommodations in a Kentucky K-12 school. Yet the central tool in determining the scope of your student's autism services is another IDEA law mandate. The IDEA law's Section 1401(9) guarantees all students a free appropriate public education(FAPE) in federally funded public K-12 schools. 707 Kentucky Administrative Regulation 1:290 reiterates and confirms the IDEA law's FAPE mandate. Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has a different mandate that can also influence the scope of your student's autism accommodations. The ADA requires your student's Kentucky K-12 school to reasonably accommodate your student's autism. The school must provide your student with reasonably available, affordable, and effective autism accommodations that do not unreasonably disrupt other students' instruction.
Available Kentucky Autistic Student Services
We can help you interpret and enforce these two federal scope-of-service mandates. Your student's Kentucky K-12 school may have reasonably affordable and effective autism accommodations available to it, but they have not yet been deployed for your student's benefit. Your student's school officials may be able to modify classroom lighting, retain and employ additional aides, assign additional educational support services, modify instructional materials, relieve your autistic student of burdensome or triggering schedules and inflexible rules, provide hearing protection, and conduct applied behavioral analysis and institute behavioral interventions and rewards, provide psychosocial counseling to your student, train teachers and aides, employ note-takers and readers, and designate a case manager to monitor these and other autism interventions. We can help you identify, advocate, and enforce these and other reasonable autism accommodations.
Your Autistic Student's Kentucky K-12 IEP
The IDEA law's core tool for your participation in your student's autism accommodations is the IDEA law's individualized education program (IEP) mandate. The IDEA law's Section 300.321 promises your participation in IEP team meetings. As indicated briefly above, 707 Kentucky Administrative Regulation 1:320 adopts and confirms the IDEA law's IEP mandates. Your student's IEP must include your student's autism diagnosis and recommended accommodations and services. Your student's Kentucky K-12 school officials must notify you of IEP team meetings so that you can participate. You may request an IEP team meeting, and the school must hold an IEP team meeting with your participation before modifying your student's autism accommodations, services, or placement. We can help you enforce these critical IEP team rights.
Kentucky K-12 IEP Goals and Measures
Your student's IEP should also include academic and behavioral goals for your student, ensuring that you have a way to measure your student's benefit from the promised autism accommodations. The IDEA law's Section 300.320 states the required IEP contents including not only your student's autism diagnosis and accommodations but also goals and measurements for goals. The goals and measurements your student's IEP mandates are your tool for challenging an ineffective IEP and advocating for improved accommodations, services, and interventions. Let us help you use those goals and measures to ensure your student's effective autism accommodations.
Warehousing Kentucky K-12 Autistic Students
Parents of autistic students have due concern over the inappropriate warehousing of their students in special rooms or detention centers outside of the regular classroom. Warehousing of autistic students and students with other disabilities has long been a concern. Segregating and isolating your student from other students can slow your student's social development and deprive your student of peer support. Warehousing can also deny your student the structured instruction of the classroom, slowing your student's academic development. Warehousing can also stigmatize, embarrass, and discourage your student. Removing an autistic student from the classroom during triggered outbreaks may be necessary. However, the triggers and outbreaks may have been due in the first place to the school's failure to reasonably accommodate your autistic student with mandated interventions and services.
Mainstreaming Kentucky K-12 Autistic Students
The IDEA law prohibits unnecessary and inappropriate warehousing or other isolation, seclusion, and restraint of autistic students and other students with disabilities. The IDEA law's Section 300.114 requires instruction in the least restrictive environment (LRE). The least restrictive environment means the regular classroom if autism accommodations enable your student to participate without undue disruption of instruction. Do not let your student's Kentucky K-12 school officials blame your student for classroom outbreaks that are due to lighting, noise, movement, instructional delivery, instructional support, and other triggering issues that the school could and should have removed or accommodated. The least restrictive environment is one in which the school provides the necessary autism accommodations and interventions, enabling your student to participate in a non-disruptive manner. Let us help you enforce the IDEA law's LRE standard.
Autism Spectrum Disorder's Learning Impacts
Your student's Kentucky K-12 school officials may need the Kentucky Department of Education's technical assistance or the Kentucky Advisory Council on Autism Spectrum Disorder's autism resources to understand and accommodate your student's autism sensitively and effectively. The IDEA law's Section 1463 authorizes funds for technical assistance to ensure that your student's teachers and support professionals have the requisite knowledge, skill, and expertise to deploy effective autism interventions. Do not, in other words, let your student's Kentucky K-12 school officials claim ignorance of the adverse impact and effects of autism on your student's learning or how to accommodate your student's autism. Ignorance is no excuse under the IDEA law's technical assistance mandate and with the resources and training Kentucky makes available. Let us help you hold your student's teachers and school officials accountable to use the available training, resources, and technical assistance.
Kentucky K-12 Autism Rights Enforcement
You have the tools available to enforce your Kentucky K-12 autistic student's special education rights. The IDEA law's Section 300.504 promises procedural safeguards that our highly qualified attorneys can invoke on your student's behalf to enforce the above rights. Those safeguards include your student's right to a formal hearing at the district level before independent and unbiased decision makers. We can help you invoke a formal hearing to present your student's evidence of the need for autism accommodations and to challenge the school's inadequate stance. If your student has already lost the formal hearing, we may be able to appeal the results at the state administrative level. If your student has already lost all available appeals, we may be able to obtain civil court reversal or negotiate alternative special relief through the district's general counsel's office.
Premier Kentucky K-12 Autism Attorneys
The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team is available across Kentucky to enforce your autistic student's special education rights. Our highly qualified attorneys have helped hundreds of students in Kentucky and across the nation successfully resolve disability rights disputes and other school issues. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact formnow to tell us about your autistic student's Kentucky K-12 school issues.
