Children are our priority. Ensuring their needs are met is our goal.
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.Â
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.
The focus of part V is FCPS’s failure to provide the related service of transportation.
The focus of part V is FCPS’s practice of equating provision of a computer with provision of a Free Appropriate Public Education—and then denying compensatory education.
~United States Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs
United States Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs has found the state of Montana in noncompliance with Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
The focus of part IV is FCPS’s refusal to provide access to educational records, specifically “information recorded by the Division regarding the amount of special education, related aids or services provided during the Pandemic Period, including the option to review IEP or Section 504 service logs.”
November 30, 2022, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) publicly released its letter of findings about, and resolution agreement with, Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS). One OCR finding focused on FCPS’s failure to track the provision of “recovery services” during the “COVID period” (April 2020–June 2022) investigated by OCR. We’d be splitting hairs if we tried to determine enormous differences between “recovery” and “compensatory” services, so for the purposes of this introduction, I’m lumping them together since there was no credible or reliable tracking system for either prior to COVID. OCR just took its time nailing FCPS for this issue.
OCR cited the following appalling anecdote about recovery services tracking in its 2022 findings:
“She also urged teachers “to be just really careful when” recording those services on students’ IEPs. As she went on to explain, after running “a SEA-STARS report,” the Division had found that for “60% of the students who ha recovery services on the services grid of their IEP, it was just a clerical error.”
What follows in this article provides an appalling example related to compensatory services tracking failures. In addition, it provides more proof that the problems for which OCR found FCPS in noncompliance had been years in the making. They weren’t unique to COVID.