Children are our priority. Ensuring their needs are met is our goal.
If something is accessible, it is often an alternative method of access.
For example, a student might need a ramp and an elevator as alternatives to the stairs used by his peers.
Another student might need Braille or large text as an alternative to the text provided to her peers.
Just weeks before Jillian Balow announced her resignation as Virginia Superintendent of Public Education, United States Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs put Virginia Department of Education on Notice: Get into compliance or face sanctions.
In a January 17, 2023, letter from USDOE OSEP to Balow (obtained today via a FOIA request), USDOE OSEP warned VDOE:
“If VDOE is unable to demonstrate full compliance with the IDEA requirements identified in OSEP’s monitoring report, this could result in the imposition of Specific Conditions on VDOE’s IDEA Part B grant award and could affect VDOE’s determination under section 616(d) of IDEA.”
How do you access what’s behind the redactions?
Often, the answer is: You can’t. The redactions aren’t reversible. But, sometimes . . .
This time, it released unredacted records for the 2022-23 math and reading SOL records for 74 students and the reading records for 36 students.
The focus of part VII is FCPS’s failure to ensure that placement decisions are made by a group of persons knowledgeable about the students and the meaning of the evaluation data.
Young students might not know their accommodations, while high school-aged students might be embarrassed to request accommodations in class, where their peers can hear them make the request.
In all age groups, the students might struggle with advocacy skills, which result in the student being afraid to ask for accommodations—or in a student feeling it is useless to ask for accommodations, because the school will still do whatever it wants to do.
Past really is precedent. Two years ago, I wrote the article below, yet the headline could be used today. One would just need to add compensatory education to the headline and article below to bring it up to date. In Spring 2022, when Office for Civil Rights released its findings on Los Angeles Unified School District, it was clear Fairfax County Public Schools would face the same findings, given it had engaged in many of the same noncompliant actions. Instead of preparing for OCR to release its findings on it, to include having training programs and plans to address the noncompliance underway, before OCR’s findings were released, FCPS waited. After OCR’s 11.30.22 release of its findings on FCPS, it was clear FCPS wasn’t prepared. Its staff trainings paint a picture of a county caught unprepared again, with thousands of students waiting, again, to have their unique needs addressed. Some of the videos below were later provided to OCR for its investigation into FCPS. The theme: FCPS caught unprepared again.
Fairfax County Public Schools did not have a finalized recovery services in place at the start of the 2020-21 school year.
FCPS stated that it needed to collect nine weeks of data on students in advance of recovery services.
When compensatory education is proposed, you might face a school district that wants to provide it within a set period of time. Consider, instead, asking that it be provided until each minute owed has been provided in full.
Why?