Category: News (page 6)

This is part VII in a series about Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) ignoring Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR) November 30, 2022, letter of findings and resolution agreement with FCPS. The series discusses noncompliance that occurred before OCR’s findings, OCR’s findings, noncompliance that continues to occur, FCPS’s open defiance of OCR’s findings, FCPS modeling continued noncompliance to staff, and what FCPS is supposed to be doing pursuant to its own resolution agreement with OCR.

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. 

This is part VI in a series about Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) ignoring Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR) November 30, 2022, letter of findings and resolution agreement with FCPS. The series discusses noncompliance that occurred before OCR’s findings, OCR’s findings, noncompliance that continues to occur, FCPS’s open defiance of OCR’s findings, FCPS modeling continued noncompliance to staff, and what FCPS is supposed to be doing pursuant to its own resolution agreement with OCR.

The focus of part V is FCPS’s failure to provide the related service of transportation.

This is part V in a series about Fairfax County Public Schools ignoring Office for Civil Rights’ November 30, 2022, letter of findings and resolution agreement with FCPS. The series discusses noncompliance that occurred before OCR’s findings, OCR’s findings, noncompliance that continues to occur, FCPS’s open defiance of OCR’s findings, FCPS modeling continued noncompliance to staff, and what FCPS is supposed to be doing pursuant to its own resolution agreement with OCR.

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.

This is part IV in a series about Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) ignoring Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR) November 30, 2022, letter of findings and resolution agreement with FCPS. The series discusses noncompliance that occurred before OCR’s findings, OCR’s findings, noncompliance that continues to occur, FCPS’s open defiance of OCR’s findings, FCPS modeling continued noncompliance to staff, and what FCPS is supposed to be doing pursuant to its own resolution agreement with OCR.

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.”

September 17, 2020: Article first published. February 20, 2023, article updated to include the introduction below in italics.

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.

This is part III in a series about Fairfax County Public Schools ignoring Office for Civil Rights’ November 30, 2022, letter of findings and resolution agreement with FCPS. The series discusses noncompliance that occurred before OCR’s findings, OCR’s findings, noncompliance that continues to occur, FCPS’s open defiance of OCR’s findings, FCPS modeling continued noncompliance to staff, and what FCPS is supposed to be doing pursuant to its own resolution agreement with OCR.

The focus of part III is FCPS’s refusal to convene teams of knowledgeable committee members, its refusal to use and document data in compliance with IDEA and Section 504, and its refusal to ensure individuals with credentials to interpret data are in attendance at IEP or 504 Plan meetings.