Coronavirus and Schools: Pandemic IEPs (Follow Up Question II)
CORONAVIRUS UPDATE
In conversation, this seems confusing to many of the Special Education directors. If we are to write the IEPs as if we are in the physical plant of our school buildings, why would we not use the next day after the IEP is written for implementation as we typically would do? Without implementation, we would be working from an expired IEP with a gap in services offered. I am unsure if it makes a difference whether or not Planned Instruction is being delivered as opposed to following a Review and Enrichment path.
If the changes proposed in the IEP will at all change what you are doing for the student in your “continuity of education” plan, your point is well taken. Many LEAs, however, are not implementing specific SDIs in the virtual learning programs they are currently implementing, and the question we answered earlier concerns the projected start dates for SDI and Program Modifications. If you are able to progress monitor specific goals as part of your “continuity of education” plan (many are not), we would recommend using the new goals, of course, but goals do not have “projected beginning dates” tied to them as do items of SDI. In the end, as we noted earlier, it really does not matter. The IEP should be written to be implemented in a brick-and-mortar school—an environment that does not currently exist. Thus, whether the start date is tomorrow or next September is not of much account. The only advantage to using the start of next school term as the beginning date is that it better corresponds to what we now know is the likely reality.
You express concern that using the later SDI start date will create a gap between the current, now-expired IEP and the one that will succeed it in September. You refer to the current IEP as “outdated.” That IEP is not, in fact, “outdated” because it has been timely reviewed and revised. The IDEA requires only that the IEP be reviewed and revised at least once annually. You have satisfied that requirement by conducting a timely annual review of the existing IEP. The new IEP will not and cannot be implemented until school reopens, but that does not create a “gap” any more than would conducting an annual review on the last day of the school term and drafting SDI with projected beginning dates in September. The projected SDI beginning dates are not intended to document the date of IEP review. The date of the IEP review should appear on the IEP cover page.
We recognize that the date appearing on the IEP cover page in many of your IEP writing programs often auto-populates the projected beginning dates for each item of SDI. Some software developers, we’re sure, thought that feature would be very helpful. It is not, however, legally required that the review date and the SDI beginning dates match. Individual items of SDI will often have variable beginning dates depending on when those particular SDI will be needed. (In a high school teaching on an intensive schedule, for example, a student might not have math until the third quarter, and it would make sense that math-related SDI would start then).