E92: IEP Meeting Excusals
What happens when a school IEP team member can't come to the meeting? It's called an excusal...and although it's *supposed* to happen one way...it does happen that that you are left in the dark or suprised by an excusal! In this episode we discuss: 1. Behind the scenes information about why an excusal may happen.
What happens when a school IEP team member can’t come to the meeting? It’s called an excusal…and although it’s *supposed* to happen one way…it does happen that that you are left in the dark or suprised by an excusal!
In this episode we discuss:
1. Behind the scenes information about why an excusal may happen.
2. What is supposed to happen if an excusal is necessary.
3. What often happens when an excusal happens
4. Your options as a parent to respond to an excusal depending on the situation!
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Beth 0:00
Let’s talk today about IEP meeting excuse walls. And I’m wondering if you have ever shown up to an IEP meeting and realize that a team member was missing, or you got contacted before a meeting and asked if it was okay if a team member was missing the meeting. Today, we’re talking about meeting excuses why they happen, what is supposed to happen if an excusable needs to happen? And what are the pros and cons of having them because there’s a very big pro and advantage to this actually happening. But oftentimes, it doesn’t work out the way it probably should. And we’re also talking about your parent rights and procedural safeguards for what you can do if you are not okay with that person missing the meeting. So stay tuned, we’re talking about meeting excuses. today. 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 Beth Liesenfeld, occupational therapist who started to notice trends and parents who got effective IEP s for their kids without having to fight the school. My mission is to help you turn insight or knowledge from the school side into effective parent advocacy for your child. The parent IEP lab focuses on preparing you for your upcoming meeting, but also talks about commonly missed opportunities for parents to get an effective IEP outside of the IEP meeting itself. 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. Welcome to the lab.
If you have an IEP meeting coming up in the next few months, do not wait to snag my new freebie the IEP process step by step guide, it breaks down the IEP annual review process that includes what and when you should share your parent input so that you can actually feel heard at your meeting. We all know that school staff is super stressed this year. And if you say a couple steps ahead of that IEP team, then you are going to have your input heard and incorporated into that IEP so much easier. Download your Free copy at WWW dot the IUP lab.com/iep or the link is below this podcast in your podcast player as well. I also have a special announcement that we are having a little IEP weekend boot camp so that you can learn how to read your child’s IEP. It’s Friday through Sunday, January 27 to 29th the first 20 registrants are completely free. So you want to be on the waitlist so that you are the first to know when we are officially open for registration. Don’t ever be intimidated by your child’s IEP because you don’t know what you’re looking at, join us in that boot camp, go to the IEP lab.com/boot camp to get on the waitlist and you will be the first to know when registration is open. See you there. Now, I used to pride myself that I would never do an excusal for a meeting, I maybe had like one or two excuses, the first couple of years that I was in schools. And an excusal, if you’re not familiar with that term just means that I couldn’t come to the meetings. So I had to be excused from the meeting from the parent. And then the last year that I was in schools, little bit of a mess. And so I think I had seven or eight excusal that year. And let’s be honest, they happen. And you will likely have a team member not be able to come. And there are some real positives and negatives to this happening. So this is a real thing that even if it hasn’t happened to you yet, it probably will at some point in this process. So in this episode, we’re covering why excuses would happen. And this is really what I love to tell parents, because there’s so much going on scheduling wise, behind the scenes. And so we’re going to touch a little bit on that. But we’re also going to talk about how things should happen if inexcusable is necessary. And also the reality of what often happens. So you know, everything doesn’t happen, picture perfect all the time. And so you can decide, you know, depending on the situation that you’re in, you know, your options, and you know what you can do about an excusable if it’s not really, if you’re not really okay with that person not being at the meeting. So let’s attack this first and just talk about why inexcusable would happen. So I realized as I was starting this episode, that I really haven’t had an episode talking about scheduling in general. And so I really want to encourage you to go into the Facebook group. If you have any questions about scheduling the meeting, or you’re getting the runaround or they’re not able to accommodate your schedule, definitely hop into the Facebook group. I will probably have an episode on that at some point. But we’re focusing on excuses today. So let’s be clear about why excuses would happen. Now, to be clear, these are supposed to happen if any team member needs to leave the meeting at any time or is absent for the whole entire meeting. That means and this is what commonly happens. That means if your general education teacher only has 45 minutes to be at the meeting, but your meeting is scheduled for an hour that are missing that last 15 minutes. And technically, they are supposed to fill on an excusal form, you will also have administrators or principals that come in and out of the meeting. And so again, you can use your discretion on if that’s okay or not, they’re usually not a core team member unless you have some behaviors happening. So you can see why in one situation, it would be really important that certain people are there for the entire meeting. And then for some kids, you know, a certain team member just wouldn’t make a huge difference. And that’s okay, too, right. It’s all about how you feel how involved that team member is in your child’s IEP or how involved you want them to be. And then if you’re okay with them, leaving the meeting or needing an excuse or not, right. So you are also of course, supposed to do an excuse all, if you missed the entire meeting, and you were listed on the notice of meeting. So remember, the notice of meeting is the official paperwork that you get home when the meeting is scheduled. So it should have the date and the time and the location of the meeting. But it also should have who is coming to that meeting. So if you see that an administrator is listed there, but they’re not at the IEP meeting, technically, they’re supposed to have either a person representing them, sometimes the general education teacher can sign to represent the principal. And then sometimes, you know, like an occupational therapist is listed on the notice of meeting, but then they’re not at the meeting. So make sure that those are lining up. And if there’s anybody missing, they really should have an excusal if they are not at the meeting. So here’s the thing about scheduling meetings. So when I was in schools, I served on about 10 different teams per year. Now on a well run district teams have general guidelines sometimes with when they like to hold their meetings. So if you’re noticing that your team is always asking you if you want to do a meeting on Tuesdays year after year, it’s probably because some of the itinerant staff like the OT or the school psychologist works out of that building on Tuesdays. And so they want to make sure that that staff member is able to be there. And if it’s a day that they’re typically in the building, then they tend to set schedule their IEP meetings on a particular day. Now, that does not mean that you can’t ask for a different day. But you might have some conflicts, or some people might need to juggle their schedule on the back end, in order for them to come to the meeting. And so when I served, I would oftentimes have like one elementary school really liked to do it on Wednesdays, because actually, they had extra coverage for paraprofessionals. And for extra help on Wednesdays. And so they were able to step away from their groups and still have their groups served on Wednesdays. So they would try to have all of them on Wednesdays. And also, I think a couple of us like special service providers were there naturally on Wednesdays. So it was really nice. If we could get it on a Wednesday, it was just more kids didn’t get missed because we had an IEP meeting, because of course, like when I had an IEP meeting, that meant that I wasn’t seeing those kids that were scheduled at that time. So then I would have to rearrange my schedule, and figure out a different day or a different time or group them or see them earlier in the day, so that I didn’t miss their minutes. Hopefully that makes more sense. I think a lot of parents don’t think about that, like how tight schedules are, which is just again, making me realize that we probably should have another episode on scheduling in general. And then, you know, for another example, like preschool, we had a four day week preschool program at the district I worked for. And so the first couple of years, they did not have kids attend preschool on Fridays. So what happened was all of the preschool IEP s get scheduled for Friday. And they would let the kids come in with the parents into the classroom, they would play with the toys, we would have the IEP meeting. And so it just worked out really well for both the parents and for the school staff as well. So you can imagine with 10 teams that I covered, and parents schedules in there too, right, that some meetings get scheduled on top of one another. And sometimes meetings get cancelled for one reason or another, or there’s an extension meeting. And those get rescheduled, you know, for the next week, or in two weeks, and I might already have an IEP meeting on my schedule, and it works for everybody else, but me. And so I have to miss the meeting, because I’m already scheduled at one building, and I can’t be in two places at once. Now, pre COVID. Before COVID. I had several instances where I was at one school one day, like let’s say it was a Tuesday and I was scheduled for one elementary school on Tuesday, but they had to schedule an IEP meeting at the second elementary school on that day. Well, what would happen was those elementary schools for 20 minutes apart, so I would have to leave the first elementary school 20 minutes before the IEP meeting happened. I would drive to the school I would have the IEP that was you know, around an hour or so. And then I would have to drive back to the other school for 20 minutes. Now I probably He had at least three or four kids scheduled at that first elementary school that I had to miss to go to the IEP meeting. Now for now, I know that sometimes a little bit more frustrating to not have everybody in person. But I was so thankful when we went to meetings, being able to be either hybrid, like some people in person and some people virtual or everybody was virtual, because then I could actually come, I could actually be at all of those meetings that I wanted to go to. And I didn’t have to, like, be looking at the clock every second saying like, Oh, I gotta go, I gotta go, I gotta go, I have another meeting, or I have another kid or I have another group that I need to see. And so he just decreased my schedule stress. So so much. So I appreciate you guys, when you’re like, oh, yeah, that’s okay. If they’re coming virtually, who you are making somebody very, very much less stressed when you agree to that. So thank you so much for doing that if you’re okay with that. So the other thing that happened is that, you know, maybe the day was like, say, this elementary school that really liked to have them on Wednesdays, they would also try to schedule it so that the general education teacher could come on their planned time. And a lot of times, the way that our district worked was, the teacher would have their plan time when their kids were at specials. So while they were at music, or while they were at PE or computers or art, they would have their planned time. And usually, that tended to be 45 minutes. Well, 45 minutes is long enough to get through President levels, it’s long enough to get through some of the goals maybe. And then we would end up getting to the accommodations, right, as the general education teacher would have to go pick up their kids from specials. And so that was a real big problem in my mind, because what happens is the general education teacher, if your kid is spending any time in the gen ed classroom, they are responsible for implementing those accommodations with the help from a special education teacher, right.
But if they are not there, to discuss the accommodations that are working, what isn’t working, what they propose differently, what they’re doing, that’s not even recorded, because so many teachers are so creative, that they will be doing things and not even realizing that it’s not written on the IEP. And they would be leaving at this time. So really, if they’re leaving early, they should have an excusal. And really, it’s not the best when the general education teacher has to leave before you get to a combination. So if you know that they’re going to have to leave, you can restructure the meeting, right? Like you can do present levels, and then do a combinations right after the present levels. And really, the accommodations and the goals can be flip flopped. If you’re trying to do goals first, and then accommodations, you can pretty easily move those two before goals, and it still makes sense. So consider doing something like that, or requesting something like that, if you know that that is going to be an issue. So let’s talk about this, let’s talk about the advantages to actually having somebody do an excusable. And you might be saying that’s that sound, okay, that’s like, why would it be a good thing to have somebody doing excusal. So let’s talk about that last year, where I had like seven or eight excused roles and what actually happened, what actually is supposed to happen if a person is missing is that you get contacted before the IEP meeting, that this person needs to miss the meeting, what also is supposed to happen either by phone or email, whatever works for you. And of course, the staff member, too, is that they are supposed to go over the areas that they would cover in the IEP. So you know, they’ll give you a reason why they have to miss and then they should be able to give you a summary of how they’re doing in whatever service or whatever area they’re covering, aka the president levels, right. And any goals or services or what they’re proposing for the IEP for the next year. Now, some of these decisions are really supposed to be made as a team. And so you might talk to, you know, the OT or the PT, or whoever that is beforehand. And they kind of propose like, Oh, I really want to work on this. And then in the context of the IEP meeting, something else might come up, or they might say, Oh, actually, that’s not really an issue that we’re seeing in the classroom. And so that might get changed. And that’s okay. It’s supposed to be a team decision. But consider this little conversation that happens between you and the person who’s missing, as I’m sharing, like the portion of the draft IEP with you, and really having a more one to one conversation about how that sounds. And really, it’s, it feels a lot more collaborative, at least it did for me. And it was actually a really cool experience. Because when I’ve done this take into context, like Oh, T is a related service provider, right? So really, I would maybe talk five minutes in an hour. I would just like briefly summarize my things. You know, we talk about my stuff in, you know, the goals and the services really quickly. But a lot of times OT is kind of like an afterthought in the schools and I’m very proud of my profession. Maybe some OTS would feel differently, but I always say felt like I was kind of filling in the gaps at the end. And so it wasn’t really a mean service. But the cool thing that happened when I did excuse lulls was that I got to talk directly to the parent about what I was thinking. And instead of just talking five minutes in a group situation, I actually got to talk to the parent directly for like, 20 or 30 minutes. And so that gave me a lot more information, a lot more context. And I always felt like the parent was more relaxed to talk to me, because it was just a one on one conversation, right? You wouldn’t feel like you have everybody staring at you and saying, you know, expecting you to say, oh, yeah, that sounds good. But it’s easier to advocate when it’s on one on one situation when they’re saying, Okay, well, I was thinking about this goal area, what do you think you can actually tell them what you think, which I thought was actually pretty cool. The other thing that I always did, and I don’t think this is typical for everybody, but you can request that this happens is if you have a conversation like this with somebody who’s going to miss the meeting, I would always pull up their file and their open IEP on our IEP program. And I would be typing into that, and like sometimes during our conversation, and then also right afterwards, so it’s fresh in my mind, okay, we talked about this parents said this, we’re going to change the goal to this and services will look like this. And so that was directly in the IEP system. And so when the case manager brought up and like, sometimes they will project the IEP from, like, whatever draft IEP is in the IEP system, they will like pull that up and project it. So everybody can look at it the same time. Or they will print out a copy of the draft IEP so that everybody has something to look at. And that really should be reflected of what you just talked about with the person who isn’t at the meeting. So I always thought that was actually kind of cool. In a couple of situations, I actually felt like the parent was really, really excited to talk to me on a one on one basis. And I just got to ask the parents more questions without everybody like watching us having an interaction, which I know that you know, is is sometimes awkward at times. So it was really, really cool. I thought there was some advantages to it there. And of course, let’s talk about the drawbacks, right, not having a critical person at that meeting in person means they are a little bit out of the loop, this whole process really works when everybody is there, there might be an administration holdup with doing something the IEP team wants to try. Right. So you know, if the principal isn’t there, and the IEP team really wants to try to do recess with this other grade level, because they really have some friends and some connections in that grade level. That person who’s missing from the IEP team, that’s really a decision maker sometimes might not be there to say, hey, legally, we can’t do that, or, Hey, this is the other thing that you might not think about, or hey, you know, this is kind of where we are staff wise or logistically, not that that would absolutely stop this idea from happening. But if that person isn’t there to share that in the moment, you guys really don’t get to problem solve through that, like, oh, well, can we try it this way? Or can we try it this way. And so all of a sudden, like a decision that was made with by the IEP team in that meeting, gets held up by other things because somebody wasn’t able to be there. Right. The other thing is that naturally, when you talk about the IEP, and you talk about present levels, there’s this natural conversation and flow that happens. And a lot of times people especially not knowing what ot does, a parent might say something or a special education teacher might say something that I didn’t understand was happening with his kid, and I’m like, Oh, I can totally help with that area. And so it’s an opportunity for me to really get to know the child as a whole and know from very high level what’s happening so that I can step in and support when I didn’t really know that that support need was there. Okay, so let’s go ahead and wrap up this conversation by talking about what your parent rights are moving forward, if you have an excusable request, and you don’t exactly know, like, what your options are to respond to this, right. So sometimes, and like I said, previously, you really are supposed to be contacted before the meeting, to let you know that somebody’s not gonna be able to make it or somebody needs to leave early or somebody who’s going to be late. And so from there, that gives you time, right to process, what your response is going to be. And if you’re okay with that, or if you’re not, and then respond appropriately. In reality, though, sometimes you will show up to the IEP meeting, and you’ll be like, okay, and they’ll give you the procedural safeguards, your parent rights, and you’ll sign for those. And then they’ll say, hey, this person can’t make the meeting. You know, this is like their summary of their report and what they were supposed to talk about in this meeting, like, if you’re okay with that, go ahead and sign the form. And really, at that point,
you feel like there’s a lot of pressure to say like, oh, yeah, that’s fine, but they’re not at that they’re not at the meaning, right? I’m kind of putting you on the spot a little bit, which is unfair, but I’m just going to be honest to say that it happens. So of course, when we’re talking about your rights as a parent, and these, again, your parent rights or your procedural safeguards are different for every state. So I’m gonna give you some general guidelines on what your options are. But of course, you need to go back to the procedural safeguards in your state or the parent rights in your state. And of course, you can always consult a legal counsel as well to get like, a more robust and really relevant to your state options for what you can do for as far as excuses go. So your first option is to be okay with the excuse, all right, especially if you’ve talked to that person beforehand, if they’ve contacted you, you feel like their information was communicated to you like you feel good about it, and you knew you’re they were going to be missing, then that’s great, like sign excusal. And then you’re done, you can move on. And then you can always contact that person after the meeting to and be like, hey, this was talked about in the meeting, can we maybe change? You know, I know, we talked about it this way, can we maybe change what you are going to do in this way. And so that’s totally okay, you have like that open line of communication with that staff member now that you talk to them one, so hopefully, it’s not a big deal to go back, if anything needs to be changed. Your second option is to refuse to sign the excusal form, until you get that person in touch with you. So say you show up to the meeting, you didn’t know anybody was going to be missing. And they give this excusal form to you, you can say I don’t want to sign that excusal form because they haven’t contacted me like they were supposed to. And so I would really prefer to be able to talk to them, one on one either on the phone or email before I sign this excusal form. And you can totally do that you can choose to have the meeting still, and just not sign that excusal form if you’re not okay with that. Or if you want to make sure that they actually get in touch with you, that is a good way to do that. And then the third option that you have is to reschedule the meeting. So you can do this mid stride, like say that you’re in the meeting, and you go 45 minutes, and you haven’t gotten to accommodations yet, just like my my earlier example. And the gen ed teacher says, Oh, I have to leave, I have to leave and get my kids right now from specials, okay, like you have the option to say, Okay, well, if you have to leave, I really want you here so that we can all go through the accommodation. So let’s go ahead and reschedule for a continuation meeting. And hopefully we can get through the rest of it, you know, in your next plane time or whatever, you know, situation whenever they want to schedule it right. And so you can also do this before the meeting to if you know that a really imperative person isn’t going to be at that meeting, you can just ask to reschedule it. Of course, it’s easier if you have that time ahead of time. And if they’re telling you that that person isn’t going to be there. But again, if somebody isn’t there, and you show up to the meeting, it is totally up to you. You can say, oh, you know, that’s a really core person. And I had this in this question for them. And I really wanted to have that as a whole group discussion. So let’s go ahead and reschedule and I just had a parent in the prep course office hours that said, this happened to her. So yep, she showed up like somebody was running late. And then somebody wasn’t able to come that day. And so it was just this like hodgepodge like hot mess of a situation. And so they just decided as a team to reschedule. And so yes, she wasted her time by going to the school. And, you know, it wasn’t the best situation ever. But it’s almost better to reschedule if it just feels like everybody’s stressed. And it’s a hot mess. Like, just go ahead and reschedule. Okay, so just to summarize, there are many different reasons why a staff member could miss an IEP meeting. And we didn’t even really talk about them just being sick that day, right. But there’s so many things that can happen behind the scenes between scheduling, and, you know, plan times, and all of this coordination that goes on behind the scenes. So really, it is something that happens, it shouldn’t be happening every time to you, it shouldn’t be happening super frequently, but it does happen. And when it happens, really what they’re supposed to do is they’re supposed to let you know ahead of time so that you can know your options and decide what’s best for your kid moving forward. And what’s going to be the best thing to move things forward. Right? You don’t want to like postpone the meeting like three months, like, obviously, you can’t do that. But then you have some time to like, figure out what your options are. Do you want to have this meeting without the person and then update the person later? Do you already know that you’re probably going to have a couple of meetings and like it’s okay, if they miss this one, because they’re not really going to talk at that one. You know, you might have some contacts like that that’s an individual basis, right? And then you know, you really should be contacted by that person that’s going to miss beforehand. But as in somebody needing to leave early from the meeting, you might not actually know until you show up and you have an excusal form given to you. And again, your options, you definitely need to look at your procedural safeguards, but you do have the option to reschedule the meeting to not sign the excusal form until you get to talk to that person or maybe you’re totally okay with that person not being there. And that’s okay, too. So hopefully that helps. If you have any questions about excusal or scheduling the meeting, as I realized that we need another episode about scheduling meetings. So if you have any questions about that too, go ahead and do In the Facebook group, there’s a link to join right in your podcast player below this episode, or you can go to the IEP lab.com/podcast. And there’s a button right there to click and join. Thank you so much for coming today and really spending time learning about this process. I think it’s really going to help you if you haven’t excusal in the future, know what your options are, know that this kind of thing happens sometimes and really have some context for what might be happening and what your parent rights are. So thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you same time, same place next week. Thanks so much.