E106: What is an IEP "Season?"
So...what is an IEP Season? It's a naturally grouped clump of IEPs due all at once. Why does this matter? Because there are distinct advantages and disadvantages to having your child's IEP at a certain time of the year, and today we are talking about what you can do to capatalize on the advantages, and counteract some disadvantages, too!
So…what is an IEP Season? It’s a naturally grouped clump of IEPs due all at once. Why does this matter? Because there are distinct advantages and disadvantages to having your child’s IEP at a certain time of the year, and today we are talking about what you can do to capitalize on the advantages, and counteract some disadvantages, too!
E105: What is an IEP Season?
[00:00:00] Why is there a flurry of activity during the fall it’s quieter and winter, and then another IEP flurry in the spring? Well, it actually has to do with how the system works and their advantages and disadvantages to your child’s meeting,
falling into one of these IEP seasons.
Stay tuned because today you might want to listen out for the season that your child’s IEP is in and what to look for to take advantage of the system. During that time stay tuned.
You are listening to the parent IEP lab, the podcast that helps you get an effective IEP plan for your child so that you can get them supported and learning in school. I’m definitely Hassenfeld occupational therapist, who started to notice trends in parents who got effective IEP for their kids without having to fight the school.
My mission is to help you learn the pillars of knowledge that I saw these effective parents use in their advocacy, and also to provide insight or knowledge from the school side, so that you have context to turn that into effective parent advocacy for your child. The business part of the podcast, the IUP lab focuses on the biggest parent advocacy opportunity. You [00:01:00] have preparing yourself for the IEP meeting, the ultimate parent IEP prep course prepares you for the next meeting, by helping you understand the system and your role in it.
Guiding you to determining your priorities. And lastly, preparing you for common questions the IEP team may have that would put you on the spot by making your own customized parent input plan for your next meeting so let’s dive into today’s topic and think about what we can change and tweak to get the right formula for success for your child to learn and grow at school and break down some of the barriers that you’re having to advocating effectively for your child welcome to the lab
First of all. Thank you so much for everybody who came out to the IEP bootcamp this past weekend, it was so much fun. We had a nice little small group and then a smaller group that could make it live, which I knew it was going to happen, but it was so fun to have examples. That you guys shared in the live session so that we could actually use real goals and real accommodations as examples. When we went through how to understand the IEP itself.
Um, so thank you [00:02:00] again for supporting that. If you miss the IUP bootcamp and you’re like, oh wait, I really need help understanding my child’s IEP. It’s like Greek to me. Then you can still go and purchase that for $19 and all the recordings are uploaded in the portal as well. The link to purchase that if in case you are interested is below this podcast in your podcast player. So today we are getting into the spring IAP season soon when it’s pretty darn busy in the schools. So.
I really don’t want you to get lost in this process of your team completing so many IEP. At once and be prepared for what’s coming next so that they don’t miss a key piece of information gathering from you as well. So I do have that IEP process step-by-step guide. It’s a freebie that’s available in a link below this podcast and [email protected] slash IEP. And you can grab your free copy if you’re looking forward to having your IEP coming up in the next couple months.
So. Here’s the thing. It shouldn’t matter. IEP is shouldn’t matter when the school staff is busy or not [00:03:00] really shouldn’t matter, right. Your child really should get the same amount of attention in their IEP and you and the IEP meeting. As everybody else throughout the year, but we all know that the system is broken and we all know that humans run the system. Right. And so there are really clear, distinct advantages and disadvantages to having your child’s IEP fall at one part of the year. And we can absolutely talk about ways to kind of counterbalance those disadvantages and really take advantage of those advantages.
If you want to happen to the Facebook group, and again, that link is below this podcast in your podcast player too, but really right now, we’re going to break down the four different seasons. There’s like three main ones and then there’s like a bonus one in the summer, but
We’ll talk about why that happens as well. Like why is spring such a busy IEP meeting? Kind of thing. And so we’ll talk about that as well. Just like how this system works as they go up the ladder and, and kind of go up in grades as well. So we’ll talk about [00:04:00] that too. So before we jump in, though, it’s been really interesting to work with parents across the country and also meet I’ve just met a lot of teachers and special education teachers from across the country to.
And so some schools really only have like five weeks off over the summer. And some of those have like extended breaks in different part of the year. And then other ones like in Colorado here, it’s pretty standard that we have eight weeks in the summer. But we have a lot of construction going on right now. So districts in my area are growing so exponentially that they’re having to lengthen the summers.
So that they have time for construction. So they would go like really long summer one year and then have really short summers for the next two years to make up that time. So it’s been really interesting. Um, but as I talk about IEP seasons, just keep that in mind that if you are somewhere like in the south, I’m hearing this more commonly in the south where.
You guys might have like really short summers and then longer breaks at different parts of the year.
So just keep that in mind when you’re [00:05:00] looking at your child’s school calendar and like where your child’s IEP falls in the year as well. So let’s go ahead and jump in. So the first one we’re going to talk about in the IEP season is the fall. And this is a really, really busy IEP season. Um, teachers are organizing their classrooms, getting to know their students and generally like setting the tone for the year. So having an IEP in this season is really helpful because you have this great opportunity to get to know new staff, like a general education teacher, that’s new to your kid, and really get to know their style and like how approachable they are, what their kind of style of philosophy is.
And really put a face to a name. Sometimes we would get to IEP season in. The spring and that teacher hadn’t really seen
That parent. Face-to-face until the spring. So it was a really long, you know, they had maybe emailed with each other, but they hadn’t ever met in person, especially over the COVID years.
And so it’s really nice to have one upfront because [00:06:00] then you actually get to, to know the teacher, they have seen your face, they have met you, which makes, makes a big difference. Right. Another advantage is that you get to go over and adjust any combination straight off the bat. So you get to review those accommodations with that new teacher.
You get to really kind of set them up with like, how does your classroom run or is this accommodation pretty easy for you to implement or not? Or do we need to change how this challenge is approached in this accommodation, right? So like you get to review all of that. They get a heads up,
they get a longer time looking over your child’s accommodation. So it just bodes well, right. It’s setting that tone.
And then you get to set the tone for the year unapproachable you are to. So if you’re using that. Trial and error approach for accommodations like I had. Oh gosh, I don’t know. I don’t know the number off the top of my head, but I did have a podcast that talked about the trial and error approach to accommodations.
And the really cool thing is that you can set that tone in this meeting, right? You can say, Hey. I know not everything is going to work. Great. And so [00:07:00] what I would like to do is just check in with you over several times. Just see how they’re going. If any of the ones aren’t getting implemented, let’s kick them out of the IEP. Let’s figure out a different way to accommodate. And so you get to kind of set that tone, which is really cool. And then the last advantage of having it in the fall is any vision statement that you have.
And you share with a team really falls in line with a fresh start of the school year. So it’s really like.
And going into this next school year with some definite goals in mind. And so it just aligns better with the way that the school season runs right in the beginning of the year. And then it’s also tough. Let’s talk about the disadvantages of having one in the fall. It’s also tough because the teachers might not know your child yet.
Especially if it’s a new school and you transitioned from elementary to middle. Um, but especially like. You know, teachers might not be super helpful in knowing your kid well enough to suggest different things or different ways to problem solve or support your child. So that can kind of feel a little bit empty where you’re [00:08:00] sharing all the information to them, but it’s not yet collaborative. Right.
And then the second disadvantage is that if you moved buildings without a transition meeting the spring before. This can feel like you’re trying to give all of the information to them at once. And you’re also trying to figure out how this new level of instruction works. So like, if you’re going from elementary to middle school, you’re all of a sudden like, okay, I had one teacher for my kid or maybe two teachers.
And now I have. Six or eight. And so that can be a transition for your kid and you and just everything together. So make sure if you do have an IEP in the fall, they are advocating this spring to have a transition meeting in which, um, you know, the middle school teachers or the high school teachers are 18 and 21 teachers come to.
To an extra meeting in the spring to talk about this transition and how it’s going to work best for your kid.
Okay. So let’s jump into this second IEP season, which is winter. And so this is generally a [00:09:00] slow earner time for IEP. And this can be like, um, you know, there’s a little bit of a lag time, you know, fall can be busy because if. Kids get in IPS in the beginning of the year, or like they were scheduled to get an evaluation at the end of last year and they pick it up in the beginning of the year. That’s what happens, but in the winter,
Sometimes your child has gone through the MTSS or the RTI process. And I do have another podcast. About that. If you’re wondering what that is. But they can go through this process, which takes, you know, eight weeks or sometimes longer. And so sometimes if they’ve gone through that process, it’s like, they tend to have an IEP that repeats every winter, right. Because it’s every calendar year. So some advantages are that most case managers do not have a ton of IDPs over the winter.
And so it means that they don’t have like 10 or 15 piling up on their desk at once. So sometimes it can feel like they’re giving more attention or more time to it [00:10:00] in general. Right? This just depends on the case manager, but this is a pattern that I’ve seen. Um, and then the other really cool thing about having an IEP in the middle of the year is that it’s halfway through the year. So that teacher, that your child is with, especially if it’s elementary school, they know your child well enough that they can really contribute at midyear with what’s working, what isn’t, and then you still have time to work with that same team, same person.
As you move into the spring semester too. So you can really get this problem solving thing going where you actually have a pretty good IEP by the end of the year, because anything you problem solve in the latter half, you can do an amendment for at the end of the year. And then it’s like all set up for the next person in the next year.
Now does that mean it’s going to be perfect. After that year of problem-solving. No, probably not every teacher’s classroom has a different culture in a different way. They do things so will combinations might have to change regardless. Um, but it’s really nice to have, you know, if you have a good teacher and you’re like, yeah, we jive. [00:11:00] We’re like communicating. Well, they are brainstorming with us.
This is great. You can take advantage of that because they know your kid because they’ve been with them long enough. But then also you have the whole rest of the school year to kind of problem solve through that and kind of get the most out of your. And get the most out of that teacher. It’s amazing.
And then let’s talk about some disadvantages to having a winter IEP. So obviously the one is that holidays sometimes break up the meetings. So if you’re having more than one meeting, then it feels like a super long process and people can forget those details between meetings, because if you had one close to.
Thanksgiving. And then, you know, the next one is right before Christmas and then it’s finalized after Christmas that can just kind of like draw it out a little bit longer than you want it to be. Right. And then the other one is that you kind of feel like you’re planning for two half years. You’re like, okay. My child is in third grade.
But also we’re planning for this time next year, which is fourth grade. So it can [00:12:00] be a little bit tricky for like standards and goals, to be able to word it in a way where you’re going to know where they should be. Midway through the next year. It’s just a little bit tricky to think about. So let’s go ahead and move on to the, the last big one and that’s spring. And so that’s what we’re getting into right now, as we publish this podcast.
And spring is busy, busy, busy. So here’s another thing, if you think about that MTSS and RTI process, right? So the teachers are kind of bringing these kids to the problem-solving team and saying, Hey, this kid, I’ve tried a couple of things, but they’re still not. Getting the content. Like we really want them to understand the content. So I need a couple more strategies. And so they go through that process for about eight weeks.
And so what ends up happening is they either end up just because of the timing of things, having that IEP in, in the winter. But a lot of them end up going into the spring. Also, if you had a fall. IEP at one point, or if you have a fall IEP [00:13:00] right now, Sometimes, if it falls too early in the year. So say you have like this crazy early, like August deadline for your IEP.
Well, it’s in general, many really good districts will say, Hey, be nice. Let’s go ahead and move it to the spring. Instead of waiting until the fall, we’ll move it up. Before the school year is out so that we can really have a solid IEP in place with the teachers that know them the best. And then we’re not trying to like rush us IEP at the beginning of the year. So sometimes they might change it on you. So also be aware that it might change from season to season.
If you start getting like super early in the fall. Cause everything has to be due by the calendar year. Right. So things naturally creep earlier in the year because all of a sudden you’re like, well it’s due by April six. So let’s have the meeting on April 1st and then if we need to change, then we still have a couple of days to at least start the meeting. So we’re not out of compliance. Hopefully that makes [00:14:00] sense. Let me know if it doesn’t in the Facebook group.
Um, so let’s talk about some advantages. So many, many, many team members know your child really well by this point. So they should be able to say, yes, this works for them. No, this doesn’t work for them. This is their rate of progress throughout the year. You know, they just know your child really well.
Um, and can have in-depth knowledge about that. And then the next one is that if you are transitioning to the next building, it’s pretty easy to make that IEP meeting into a natural transition meeting. So you have an IEP meeting in April. Well, cool. Let’s invite some of the middle school teachers to come to your meeting. That’s already happening and
we will already get to fill them in on your child before we even get close to the next fall. Right. And then the next thing is that teachers can sometimes get into groove or be into a, learning more about IDPs and trying to improve on their own processes within IDPs. Right? So they might have some extra time or some extra focus. And I really don’t like the way I write these goals, [00:15:00] I’m going to like figure out and, you know, look for some resources on how to write these goals better.
And so you might benefit from that because they are really IEP focused at that time. And then the last thing is that decisions for ESY or extended school year. And yes, I have another podcast on that. Um, they don’t have to be pushed off until the spring because it is the spring. So if traditionally your team has been like, I don’t know if they qualify for extended school year or not.
You know, if you already have that in the spring, the decision is probably going to be made within that IEP. And you don’t have to like, worry about circling back and knowing, or not knowing for a while and just waiting for them to say yes or no. So that’s really nice. Here are some disadvantages to having an IEP in the spring. So it has to be said the countdown, the summer is on and there can definitely be some burnout happening inside the school walls. Okay. So just know that that some people are just like done with the year. And so you’re, you might encounter some of that burnout now, sometimes an L.
Now [00:16:00] a lot of times districts will have IEP is due by a certain date. So it’s not at the very, very end of the year. Like you should not be having an IEP meeting like the last year that school is in. In session that just, it shouldn’t happen. It tends to not happen, but I know that all school systems don’t work like the school systems that I’ve been in too. Right. So you really should have some time before the end of the year. So hopefully that burnout isn’t hitting you at the IEP.
And then another one is that you don’t have much time to problem solve with the team that you have. If you haven’t been doing this problem solving approach all year,
which I definitely recommend. So, you know, don’t wait until the end of the year. And you’re like, I’ve never seen this teacher in person before. I’ve never seen their face before. Don’t wait, go into the parent teacher conferences. If you can, if you can’t make it to those, then make your own meeting with them.
Just to touch base because you really can benefit from having a good relationship with your teachers, general education and special education as well. And then the, the last thing here is just the [00:17:00] volume of the IDPs that are going across the case manager’s desk right now. So some districts I’ve even heard do all of their IEP.
And like one month they truly call it an IEP season and they get a classroom. And they get a sub for their classrooms to cover like the two weeks that they have all of their IEP. And like two weeks and then they get them all done. So the cool thing about that is that your child isn’t having interruptions to their services throughout the year. Because if you think about it, like.
You know, in my situation, I had 80 meetings per year. Well, of course, like because of everybody else’s schedules and the parents’ schedules. I would have to miss treatment sessions with kids in order to go to IEP meetings, because most of them in my district, at least for during the day, So there’s all these kinds of like interruptions and shifting. And it was super hard for me to like, keep my schedule and be like, oh, I need to make up this kid on this date because I missed him on this day because of this IEP meeting. So.
You [00:18:00] know, just think about that way. Like, it can be an advantage and a disadvantage, but, um, you know, in this case it’s like, okay, so case managers are doing 20 to 30 all at once. Maybe. Um, or even like 10 or 15 and it’s a lot of paperwork. So, um, they could all learn together and without good systems in place, they can all blur together. Now.
Here’s the thing that I know that you might think is super rude. But I always had my computer open and that IEP open during that meeting, because if we talked about something in that meeting and I, and we talked about, okay, like you have this new concern, that’s coming to the table and. I knew that I wanted to pick up that need because nobody else on the team was really skilled at doing that.
So I am going to have that IEP open on my computer and I am going to put that in my service delivery statement and my goals and my services right then and there. Because of this reason, right. I would have 80 of them. So sometimes I would have 10 in a [00:19:00] week. Um, that that would be a pretty heavy week, but it was pretty typical that I had like four or five in a week. And so I would go to the meeting and have that open in front of me so that I could make changes as we were talking about it. So.
Just to kind of put it out there. That it made me super efficient and it reminded me why we were doing that because I had enough detail on that IEP because I wrote it exactly when we were in that meeting. So I never wanted to be rude, but that’s how I got things to be so accurate is that I did things at the time that we were talking about it.
So. Let’s talk about the fourth consideration. The four season, which is really rare that your child would have an IEP in the summer. Now in our kind of area of the country the most often time, the most often reason why your child might have an IEP in the summer would be if your child was coming from the zero to three program. So if they had a birthday over the summer,
Then they would have their initial IEP over the summer. And then that next year, like I was talking about, if [00:20:00] you have a, a really early fall IEP, they would kick that to the spring and they would have it early. Right. So, um, many districts won’t be in session when that IEP is due the next summer.
So you’ll actually end up having yours move. So just a heads up, if this is your first, like. Renewal and you’ve come from that zero to three program that you might actually have it coming up soon and you might not realize that as well so i am so curious if you have any more advantages or disadvantages that you’ve seen as a parent when your child iep falls in a certain time of the year and a certain season so if you have anything to share i would absolutely love to have this discussion in the facebook group so the link to join that as well as this podcast in your podcast player And just a quick reminder that if you want to snag that iep process step-by-step guide that is waiting for you below this podcast in your podcast player as well in the link so thank you so much for listening and i will see you same time same place next week thanks so much