'You have to educate yourself.' Special education parents have rights. Here's what to know
Shaun McMichael and Kelly McCallum have spent years fighting with their home school district, Boone County Schools, trying to get the resources they believe their daughter, Ryanne McMichael, needs to learn.
While their daughter’s needs are unique, their struggle isn’t. More than 1 in 7 public school students receive special education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Schools assemble teams to assess these students' abilities and determine their needs, which are outlined in individualized education programs, known as IEPs. Parents are part of those teams and have a say in determining their kid's learning goals and the services they need to meet those goals.
But it's not uncommon for educators and parents to disagree during those meetings. Under federal law, states and schools have to provide avenues for parents to dispute a school's individualized education program proposal. Parents can do this through mediation, a written complaint to their state or a due process complaint. The latter is considered the most severe.
There were nearly 30,000 due process complaints filed nationwide in the 2021-22 school year, according to The Center for Appropriate Dispute Resolution in Special Education. Just 24 of those came from Kentucky.
A lot of parents don't know about these processes or that they have a say in IEP meetings, said Shannon Masterson, an occupational therapist. She founded KY IEP Advocate, a Louisville-based nonprofit dedicated to empowering parents who have children in special education. She said she realized quickly while working in schools that parents with information about their rights "had a remarkably different experience than parents who just assumed that the district was doing their job.”
5 things parents should know about special education, from a local advocate
Ryanne's parents learned the hard way.
McMichael said their other two daughters, who are older, didn't need special accommodations at school. While he and McCallum wanted to trust the school system that had served their other girls well, eventually, McMichael said he started to feel taken advantage of for his lack of knowledge in the world of special education.
“We didn’t know everything that we were allowed to ask for or to have," he said.
Masterson has tips for parents who are navigating the special education system:
- Keep all communication in writing, so you have timestamped records of all of your requests and all of your district's responses.
- Use the phrase, "This is my formal written request for..." in writing requests for data and other information from your district. You can ask for records and data that will be discussed at upcoming IEP meetings, so that you can review them beforehand.
- If you disagree with an assessment of your child that the school provides, you are entitled to an independent educational evaluation done by someone outside of the school district, at the district's expense.
- Ask for videos. If your district says your child can or can't perform a task, and you're not convinced, ask them to record it. "If a video is really hard to get, then I think that tells you what you need to know," Masterson said.
- At the end of meetings with your district, ask for the conference summary report to be read out loud. This ensures accuracy of the written record of the meeting. Any disagreements or requests for information should be noted in that report.
Other rights and protections for students and families are outlined in the procedural safeguards notice, which schools are required to give parents at least once each year. The Kentucky Department of Education has additional resources available on their website.
“Hopefully the system changes,” McMichael said. “Until you actually have your own child that has disabilities, it’s a whole new world. And you don’t know that, really, until you live it.
"And you have to educate yourself.”