Spring is a great time to address your child’s needs at school. Unless you are deliriously happy with your child’s progress, it’s probably important to have a school meeting before the end of the year. Why? Well, if there are things you want in your child’s plan for his next school year, now is the time to get them addressed. What if you don’t really need them until the next school year? It’s still best to settle them now.
Here is my thinking on this subject. If you wait until fall, you may be told we don’t want to do anything too early in the school year. You may hear that the teacher can’t be at an IEP meeting until she has a few weeks to get her class settled and see how your child is doing in the classroom. You KNOW that there are things you want to do differently next year. How do you accomplish this? Add them to the IEP or 504 plan now. In my years of advocating for my son and for others, this is a huge piece of securing services that make a difference. The spring meeting allows new things to be set from the first day of school in the fall. If you wait to get these items in the IEP/504, here is a typical chronology. The fall meeting usually can’t be set until the end of September. If there are any new assessments that are needed, it may take several weeks to get baseline data and do the assessments. I usually find that the “new program” isn’t in place until Thanksgiving.
This makes a spring meeting look more attractive? There may need to be new tweaks in the fall. Instead of the first changes being in November/December, this is the second set for the school year. Staying on top of advocating is hard hard work. There will be huge benefits in the long run.
Again I want to encourage you. KEEP ON KEEPING ON!
