Alaska IEP Representation
Alaska can be a great place to educate your disabled child. But Alaska school teachers, administrators, and officials can present just as many challenges to parents seeking special education services for their disabled child, as parents face elsewhere. Retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Education Law Team to swiftly and effectively advocate for special education services for your disabled student. We are available across Alaska, including in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, Badger, Knik-Fairview, College, Tanaina, and other Alaska cities and towns. Federal and state disability rights laws promise your disabled student the individualized education plan (IEP) services, equipment, and accommodations your student needs. Call 888.535.3686 now or complete this contact form to tell us about your student's case.
Qualified IEP Representation Matters
You may have already advocated as vigorously as you know how. You may also have enlisted the help of school advisors, special education professionals, friends, and confidantes. If you have still not been able to gain your student's needed services and accommodations, then trust the impactful advocacy and important role of our highly qualified Education Law Team attorneys. Don't let your student fall further behind without needed services and accommodations. We know how to advocate exhibiting special knowledge, exercising special administrative skills, and displaying the appropriate sensitivity and diplomacy to preserve important school relationships. Our reputation often precedes us. Our appearance on your student's behalf may be all it takes to open lines of communication for our effective advocacy and negotiation. Get the highly qualified help your student needs.
Avoid Unqualified IEP Representation
You should already know the harm that an unqualified professional may cause to your most important interests, like the educational progress and attainment of your disabled student. You wouldn't take your child to a dentist for a broken arm or to an orthopedist for a toothache. Don't retain an unqualified local criminal defense attorney, real estate lawyer, trusts and wills lawyer, or business lawyer to advocate ineffectively in your disabled student's school administrative matter. The laws, rules, procedures, customs, conventions, and expectations are all different. Avoid unqualified legal representation that may delay and fail to accomplish your student's needed relief while setting your student back further. Instead, retain our premier Education Law Team.
Why Alaska Schools Fail to Meet IEP Requirements
You may already have heard the school's excuses for not doing as the federal IDEA law requires, providing your student with an IEP for special education services. School officials may have claimed they don't have the money to pay for equipment, devices, or services when federal and state funds may well be available. School officials may have claimed that they lack the knowledge and expertise to choose and implement the necessary services and accommodations when, to the contrary, state and federal agencies offer abundant technical assistance and resources. Your student's school likely has the funding and expertise available. The main reason school officials are not doing as the federal IDEA law requires is more likely that they don't wish to take the time and effort to modify their usual and convenient habits and practices. Let us help you convince school officials of their obligation to do so.
Overcoming Alaska IEP Frustrations
Don't just stew in your frustrations. Getting upset and angry isn't likely to lead to swift and positive resolutions. Our attorneys will certainly understand your discouragement, annoyance, and anger. But we want to do more for you than simply commiserate. Our services provide you with prompt and effective actions, not just sympathy. You need school officials to act, not just listen to your frustrations. We know how to bring the information, evaluations, and resources to those officials' attention and to invoke the school's, district's, and state's procedures to spur prompt and effective action. Get over your frustrations. Hire us to help your student get the needed services so that your student no longer suffers academic delays and setbacks.
Alaska School District IEP Representation
Alaska has approximately 54 school districts organizing and serving over 500 schools. Together, those schools enroll over 130,000 students. Some of Alaska's larger and more prominent school districts include the Anchorage School District, Juneau Borough School District, Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, Haines Borough School District, Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, Copper River School District, Galena City School District, Hoonah City School District, Ketchikan School District, Dillingham City School District, Iditarod Area School District, Kake City School District, and Valdez City School District. Alaska certainly has a large and sophisticated enough school system to provide sophisticated special education services backed by substantial resources. Let us help your student get the needed services through the state's admirable educational system.
Alaska's Commitment to IEP Implementation
Alaska's Department of Education and Early Development makes a strong public commitment to special education, including carrying out the federal IDEA law to obtain the substantial available federal funding. The Department of Education establishes and funds an Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) that monitors school district compliance with the federal IDEA law to ensure continued federal funding. Alaska's Department of Education and Early Development and its Office of Special Education Programs support other task forces, committees, and workgroups to ensure that local schools and school districts have the state-level support they need to fulfill the IDEA law's IEP mandates. We can help you identify and gain the advocacy of those state-level agencies and officials in your student's local dispute seeking needed special education services.
Alaska Department of Education IEP Guidance
Alaska's Department of Education and Early Development and its Office of Special Education Programs write, publish, and distribute forms, protocols, assessment tools, manuals, and other guidance to help school districts and local schools meet their IEP requirements. The Alaska Special Education Handbook, running to more than 150 pages of technical information, is the key such resource. Your student's school has all the information it needs available to it from the state and its Special Education Handbook to meet your student's IEP needs. We can help you hold your student's school and its officials accountable to the state's clear articulation of IEP requirements.
Alaska IEP Eligibility Process
The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development's Special Education Handbook makes crystal clear the eligibility process that your student's school should have followed to qualify your student for IEP services. Federal law mandates a child find procedure, clearly articulated in the Special Education Handbook, placing on the school the duty to identify students needing and qualifying for special education services. Of course, you may and should advocate for your student. However, the school bears the responsibility for identifying your student as disabled and in need of special education, even if you do not advocate.
To properly complete the IEP eligibility process, your student's school should have notified you and asked for your consent to refer your student for disability evaluation. The evaluation report should have properly identified your student's disability and recommended appropriate services. The school should further have constituted an IEP team for your student to review and act on the evaluation. You should have received a copy of the evaluation so that you could advocate for or against it at the IEP team meeting. You have the right to request a second evaluation at the school's expense and to use the reevaluation to advocate for IEP services. You also have appeal rights if the IEP team denies qualifications or unduly limits services. We can help you pursue these IEP process rights.
Alaska IEP Adoption
Your student's evaluation report should have been a good first step, provided that it properly identified your student's disability and recommended appropriate services. However, the evaluation is not an individualized education plan (IEP). The evaluation just informs the IEP team as to what the IEP should include. The IEP team should have notified you that it was a meeting to consider the evaluation, whether to qualify your student for an IEP and, if so, what to include in the manner of services. You should have been able to attend that IEP team meeting to advocate for your student's qualifications, plan, and services. You have the right to approve the IEP or contest an inadequate IEP or the team's refusal to qualify your student as disabled. We can help you exercise those rights.
Alaska IEP Implementation
You and your student may have gotten as far as helping the IEP team adopt an appropriate plan. However, the individualized education plan (IEP) does not enforce itself. The IEP is only a document, albeit an important document. The IEP states the special education services your student is due. The IEP does not actually provide those services. Your student's IEP team should have distributed the IEP to every school teacher, specialist, aide, or administrator who would have any role in carrying it out. Once distributed, the IEP should have governed the special education services, assistive devices, and accommodations your student received. School personnel are not to ignore, reject, or revise the IEP. They may advise the IEP team that certain services are unwarranted, unhelpful, or unavailable, but the IEP team itself must decide. Others should be carrying out the IEP, not contesting or ignoring it.
Alaska IEP Monitoring
You can play an important role in monitoring your student's IEP implementation. The school should carry out your student's IEP. But it might not. Ask your student if your student is getting the specified services and accommodations. Ask your student's teachers at conferences. And ask the IEP team. Monitor the school's implementation of your student's IEP as best you can while encouraging and expecting the other IEP team members to also do so. Call to the IEP team's attention any undue departures from the IEP that you discover. Show the team how those departures are adversely affecting your student. And get our help if the IEP team does not correct the oversights and omissions to comply with the IEP. Your student's IEP is a legally enforceable document.
Alaska IEP Team Meetings
Use your student's IEP team meetings to their best effect. The IEP team meetings are your most important opportunity to contribute to your student's special education. As a parent, you are not in the school providing instruction or services. The IEP team meeting is your chance to hear from those who are in the school and to advocate with those educational professionals to do the best for your student. Attend all IEP team meetings. Ask for the rescheduling of any meeting you are unable to attend. Make sure the IEP team holds the required annual meeting, usually at the start of the school year. Make sure the IEP team holds other meetings whenever conditions change, or you think the IEP needs adjustment.
Attending IEP Team Meetings
When you attend your student's IEP team meeting, make sure that you participate. You may not have the special education and training that the professionals at the meeting hold. But you are still the most important member of the IEP team, most knowledgeable about your student, and most committed to your student's support and development. Speak and be heard. But also listen carefully. Request to review any document team members share or to which they refer. Get copies of documents for your home review. Advocate, negotiate, and compromise only where best for your student. Let us help you if you find that the IEP team is not letting you participate meaningfully in team meetings.
IEP Team Meeting Disagreements
Don't expect every IEP team meeting to be all roses. Treat other team members cordially and respectfully. Expect them to treat you the same way. But don't be surprised if other IEP team members exhibit a lack of knowledge, lack of commitment, or even a lack of respect for your input, insights, opinions, and views. Not every school teacher, specialist, or administrator has strong interpersonal skills. Keep your cool and insist that others also do so. If disagreements and conflicts lead to an inadequate IEP, then get our help.
IEP Team Meeting Representation
Our attorneys may be able to attend your student's IEP team meetings or a special meeting called to resolve an IEP team dispute. Some IEP teams welcome attorney representatives, hoping and expecting that cooler heads will thus prevail. Indeed, our attorneys can bring to an IEP team the professional knowledge, balanced attitude, and other skills and sensitivities to resolve IEP team disputes favorably. Our attorneys won't pound on tables or argue aggressively and disrespectfully like you see lawyers do on television. They know better, especially in an academic administrative setting where the customs and conventions are to avoid adversarial stances. But our attorneys also know how to be firm and stick up for your student's IEP rights.
IEP Team Members
Federal law determines who has the right to attend IEP team meetings. The IDEA law gives you the right to be an IEP team member, present, and participate in all meetings. In our view, you are easily the most important IEP team member, even if the school's personnel do not view you that way. The school must also include your student's regular classroom teacher, who may be an effective advocate for your student if administrators resist. Classroom teachers generally prefer to get extra student help, not to ignore struggling students' issues. The school must also include your student's special education teacher. The school may decide to include principals, directors, coordinators, or other teachers or staff whose input could help inform the team's adoption or revision of your student's IEP. Let us help if the school does not have a proper IEP team according to the IDEA law's mandates.
Your Student's IEP Team Attendance
Federal law also authorizes your student to attend the IEP team meetings as a valued and potentially important member. Involving your student in decisions about your student's instruction can help your student take responsibility. However, young or immature students, or students lacking the appropriate disposition, may be better off when left out of IEP team meetings. You and your student get to decide. You know best, although listen to the professional IEP team members. They may need to hold frank discussions and make frank disclosures that your student would better not hear.
Federal IEP Law Alaska Schools Must Follow
The acronym IDEA stands for the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The IDEA law is the one that requires individualized education plans (IEPs) for qualifying students with a disability. The IDEA law requires the school to provide disabled students with a free appropriate public education (FAPE), meaning the education non-disabled students generally receive. The IDEA law also lists the types of special education assistive devices and equipment the school must provide, as well as addressing the above-described IEP procedures.
Qualifying as Disabled for Special Education Services
Unfortunately, for some disabled students, the IDEA law recognizes only certain qualifying disabilities. Those qualifying disabilities include only orthopedic impairments, emotional impairments, hearing impairments, speech impairments, vision impairments, cognition impairments, impairments due to autism, and impairments due to brain injury. Fortunately, the IDEA law also permits students to qualify for IEP processes and services if they can show a health impairment or learning disability similar to the ones the IDEA law specifically lists. Let us help your student qualify if the school has not already recognized your student's disability.
Special Education Services Without a Qualifying Disability
Your student might get special education without having to qualify under the IDEA law. Some schools relax the strict eligibility requirements, preferring to help struggling students, no matter the nature or extent of their disability. If your student's school is already offering appropriate services without going through the formal IEP referral and evaluation process, then you may find it better not to rock that boat. But if the school is not providing adequate special education because it believes your student does not qualify, then get our help. We may be able to arrange a reevaluation at school expense by an evaluator better qualified to diagnose your student's qualifying disability.
Other Federal Disability Laws Alaska Recognizes
Your student's school must also comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Both the ADA's Title II and Section 504 prohibit schools from discriminating based on disability. The ADA may especially help students with building modifications, equipment purchases, and the use of assistive devices for things like wheelchair access. The school may alternatively offer a 504 plan providing your student with aides, services, or adjustments ensuring access to school activities. Let us help advocate your student's ADA and Section 504 rights.
Alaska Special Education Laws
Alaska's legislature has adopted state laws carrying out the IDEA law's requirements to obtain federal funding for special education. Alaska Statutes Sections 14.30.180 et seq. codifies those state special education laws. Those Alaska state laws include the IEP definitions and IEP child find, referral, evaluation, team meeting, and other procedures. Those laws also authorize the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development to adopt regulations further carrying those laws into effect. We can advocate the enforcement of these Alaska state laws, in addition to the federal IDEA law and other federal laws, to get your student needed special education services.
Alaska Department of Education Administrative Rules
Alaska's Department of Education and Early Development has exercised its statutory authority to adopt state IEP rules and regulations. Those administrative rules appear in 4 Alaska Administrative Code Chapter 52. The administrative rules provide significantly more detail than the state statutes. Our attorneys would also invoke these administrative rules for your student's benefit when advocating with school officials or seeking administrative review.
Alaska Administrative Rules for IEP Dispute Resolution
The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development's IEP administrative rules include detailed dispute-resolution procedures that the state adopts under the federal IDEA law's requirement that the state offer procedural safeguards. The state codifies those procedural rules at 4 Alaska Administrative Code Rule 52.500. These are the administrative rules that our attorneys would invoke if your student's case requires a formal hearing or appeal to resolve.
Premier IEP Representation Across Alaska
The Lento Law Firm's premier Education Law Team is available in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, Badger, Knik-Fairview, College, Tanaina, and other Alaska cities and towns to represent your student in effectively advocating for IEP rights and disability services. Call 888.535.3686 now to tell us about your student's case, or complete this contact form.
