Parents of high school students with disabilities know that disabilities affect student learning in high school. Disabilities can involve much more than physical issues like an inability to stand and walk requiring a wheelchair ramp, blindness requiring braille or readers, and deafness requiring sign language. Statistics show that as many as one in seven high school students is in special education. Many more high school students suffer from learning disabilities like dyslexia, ADHD, or even dyscalculia, dysgraphia, or dyspraxia, constituting the top five learning disabilities. These students can prosper in high school if the high school reasonably accommodates their disability. But when that doesn't happen as it should, the student suffers, not just in learning less but also in high school discipline. Retain national education attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law firm student defense team if your high school student faces a disability rights issue, including issues with an IEP. Don't let your student suffer high school suspension, expulsion, or alternative disciplinary education.
What Are Your IEP Rights?
High school students with disabilities have special rights under federal law. The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires high schools to reasonably accommodate student disabilities. Under the Act, high schools must identify students with disabilities. And under the Act, identifying your student's disability is the school's responsibility, not your responsibility, although you may certainly notify the school. The Act further requires the high school to prepare an individual education plan (IEP) and then implement that plan. Those are your student's three most substantial federal disability rights: (1) the school's identification of your student's disability; (2) the school's adoption of an IEP for your student; and (3) the school's implementation of the IEP reasonably accommodating your student's disabilities.
What Is an IEP?
You can see how significant an individual education plan (IEP) is to your high school student's disability rights. Without a solid IEP and the diligent implementation of that IEP, your student cannot hold the school accountable to reasonably accommodate your student's disability. The IEP records the school's plan for accommodating your student's disability to achieve your student's educational goals, whether those goals are to prepare for college, prepare for vocational training, or learn life skills and accomplish other general development. An IEP team develops, evaluates, modifies, and updates your student's IEP. The IEP team must meet at least annually to review your student's IEP but may meet much more often. You can also request an IEP meeting at any time, especially when you see your student encountering undue obstacles relating to your student's disability. Ensure that your student with disabilities has a current IEP in place under which you can hold the high school accountable.
Who Prepares an IEP?
Under 34 CFR Section 300.321, your student's IEP team must include you (the student's parents or guardians), at least one of your student's regular education teachers, at least one special education teacher, the school's IEP supervisor, specialists who can interpret evaluations, and your student when appropriate. A properly constituted IEP team can be a powerfully positive agent for your student's pursuit of achievable educational goals. Ensure that your student has a properly constituted IEP team in place. Don't let your student's high school omit the regular and special-ed teachers, supervisors, and specialist members your student's IEP team should include. And don't let your student's high school omit you and your student from IEP team meetings and decisions. You and your student have the right to attend and participate.
IEP Issues for High School Students
Those are your high school student's IEP rights. But just having rights doesn't mean that your student's high school will respect them. High school students nationwide can face substantial IEP issues that can not only delay and detract from their high school education but even prevent their graduation or require them to attend an alternative disciplinary high school. Retain national education attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm's student defense team for skilled and experienced disability accommodation representation if your high school student faces any of the following issues.
Failure to Identify Your Student as Having a Disability
High school teachers and administrators, and even a school's disability accommodation officials, sometimes fail to identify a student as having a disability affecting the student's learning. The applicable federal regulation 34 CFR Section 300.8 defines a student with a disability as “having an intellectual disability, a hearing impairment (including deafness), a speech or language impairment, a visual impairment (including blindness), a serious emotional disturbance…, an orthopedic impairment, autism, traumatic brain injury, another health impairment, a specific learning disability, deaf-blindness, or multiple disabilities, and who, by reason thereof, needs special education and related services.” Notice that the regulation defines disability very broadly to include an “other health impairment” requiring “special education” services. Your student need not have one of the listed disabilities. Other impairments needing special education services can qualify your student as disabled. Your student won't get accommodations if not identified as disabled.
Failure to Properly Constitute Your Student's IEP Team
High schools may fail to appoint the required regular teacher, special-ed teacher, supervisor, and consultants to your student's IEP team. An IEP team without one or more of those required members may fail to discern the needed special education services.
The IEP Team's Failure to Meet Annually and as Requested or Required
Your student's high school may have constituted a proper IEP team, but that team may not have met annually as required, may refuse to meet when you request it to do so, or may fail to meet when your student obviously requires an IEP review and modification. If your student's IEP team fails to meet, your student isn't likely to receive needed special education services.
Failure to Adopt, Maintain and Update an IEP
Your student's IEP team may have met as required, but it may have failed to adopt and share with you its written plan for your student's needed special education services. And if those services are not in a written plan, chances are good that your student won't receive those needed services.
Failure to Reasonably Accommodate
No matter how your student's IEP team performs, meeting as required or not, and adopting an appropriate IEP or not, the high school still has the legal obligation to reasonably accommodate your student's disability. High schools don't always adopt sound IEPs, and when they do adopt a sound IEP, they sometimes don't follow their own IEP. If your student's high school hasn't implemented your student's IEP, then your student probably isn't getting the required services.
Failure to Conduct a Manifestation Determination
When high schools fail in their obligations to reasonably accommodate student disabilities, the students can face discipline for misconduct. The school's failure to accommodate may, for example, trigger the student's psychiatric event related to mental impairment and disability. 34 CFR 300.530(e) requires that the school conduct a manifestation determination before changing your disabled student's placement because of alleged misconduct. Don't let your student's high school violate your student's disability rights by changing your student's courses, suspending your student, expelling your student, or transferring your student to an alternative disciplinary school before conducting the required manifestation determination.
Sanctions High Schools Impose
Unfortunately, misguided high school officials will, at times, impose disciplinary sanctions against students whose disabilities are unduly affecting the student's academic performance and social behaviors. When a high school fails to accommodate a student's disabilities as federal law requires, the school's failure may cause the student to fall behind, get low grades, fail courses, fail to meet attendance requirements, or even act out in a disruptive manner. High school disciplinary officials may, as a result, charge the disabled student with behavioral, academic, or even sexual misconduct or identify the student as failing to progress academically. The result of those charges can include the following school sanctions:
- lost high school honors, service awards, and other distinctions that may be motivating your student to succeed or may be helpful or necessary for college admission or other post-graduate opportunities like internships and jobs;
- loss of high school athletics privileges and co-curricular or extracurricular activities like choir, band, and clubs that may be key to your student's physical, mental, and social development;
- course reassignment, teacher reassignment, and other changes in your student's academic work that may reduce your student's motivation, move your student off of a college-preparation track, and place your student on an inappropriate vocational track;
- high school suspension that removes the student from the school to home for schooling away from peers, teachers, and supportive environments and relationships;
- high school expulsion that turns a short-term suspension into a long-term suspension and eliminates your student's ability to graduate with peers and a high school transcript qualifying your student for preferred college admission; and
- alternative disciplinary placement in a non-traditional high school that warehouses your student in an unstructured and part-time academic environment that may be some distance from your home, leaving your student without substantial educational support.
What More Is at Stake with IEP Issues
The above list shows the sanctions that a student with disabilities can face when high school officials fail to accommodate those disabilities, as a well-formed IEP would require. But students suffering high school discipline face other losses, too. High school students are in transition from youth to adulthood. Traditional high schools help students navigate that transition not just inside the classroom but outside the classroom through peer relationships, teacher relationships, coaching relationships, and other mentor relationships, as well as through group competitions, clubs, and activities. Interruptions in high school due to loss of privileges, suspension, or expulsion can seriously hamper a student's physical, mental, and social development through a loss of those environmental and social supports. Don't let an unnecessary IEP issue ruin your student's high school education. Get the skill and experience your student needs by retaining national education attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento to enforce your student's IEP rights.
How a National Education Attorney Advisor Can Help
Parents of high school students with disabilities may be tempted to go it alone when disputing their student's IEP rights with high school officials. But parents don't always know their rights. They can also lack the procedural skills to enforce those rights in academic and administrative proceedings. Other parents retain unqualified local criminal defense attorney representation. Instead, get the qualified representation your student needs to favorably resolve IEP issues. A skilled and experienced national education attorney advisor knows education law and academic and administrative procedures and can quickly get the attention and respect of high school officials for your student's best possible outcome. Let a national education attorney advisor strategically invoke school procedures, research and advocate the disability laws, and conduct communications, conferences, and negotiations to enforce your student's disability rights and help maximize the benefits of your student's high school education.
Alternative Special Relief
Don't give up if you have already exhausted all administrative proceedings in your student's high school district. Instead, retain national school discipline defense attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento to explore alternative special relief through the district's general counsel, outside retained counsel, or another oversight office. Litigation may be an option for relief in some cases, but litigation can take months or even years to obtain a positive result. Attorney advisor Lento has successfully helped many students by negotiating with oversight officials for special alternative relief, reinstating the student to school even where the student had already lost all hearings and appeals.
Premier Attorney Advisor Available
National school discipline defense attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento has effectively represented high school students nationwide on disability rights, IEP, and other issues. Don't let your high school student suffer reassignment, suspension, dismissal, or alternative placement because of disability-related issues. Instead, let attorney advisor Lento's skill and experience give your high school student the best chance to succeed. Call 888.535.3686 or go online now to retain attorney advisor Lento and the Lento Law Firm's student defense team for your high school student's IEP issue.
