Managing Documents Under IDEA, Part II
Learn how to organize the legal papers associated with the education of your special needs student.
In this article, you will find:
For discovery (the formal kind)
Documents in the hearing process: formal discovery. If your quest for services leads to a formal due process proceeding, you will have whatever "discovery" rights are available to parties under the rules in your state's due process system. (Some states' hearing procedures do not provide for any such formal discovery process at all.) Typically, those rules allow parties to have the opposing parties produce documents that are either relevant in their own right to the issues the hearing officer must decide or could lead to relevant evidence. Here are some of the kinds of documents we would typically ask school systems to produce in formal discovery:- descriptions of proposed programs;
- copies of the child's proposed daily/weekly schedule under the proposed IEP;
- copies of the daily/weekly schedules of proposed service providers;
- copies of curricula, materials, behavioral plans, etc. that are used the classroom(s) where the child would be placed;
- resumes and information about certification, training and experience of proposed service providers;
- profiles of other students with whom the school system has proposed to place the student;
- IEPs, with names blacked out, of those other students;
- reports of any program or fiscal audits of the school system and of the particular program in which the school system proposes to place the child;
- annual or other periodic reports the school system files with the state education agency concerning special education programs;
- minutes taken by school system personnel at any key meetings about the child (particularly TEAM meetings).