Michelle She Her (00:00.462)

Like be the one to like, oh wait, hold on. You just did it again. Cat, I can't. Hi, everybody. We're laughing because we are joined as usual by one of our pets. You may have noticed or you're maybe noticing right now that we are together today. We typically podcast from different locations, but today we are podcasting from the same location with the two of us in probably at least one guest appearance from a cat.

So welcome, everybody. Welcome. So today's episode is a timely one. We have been talking a lot to parents and caregivers and school teams about sort of the end of the year, the urgency, the rush to the end of the year. People are feeling, and rightfully so, a little bit overwhelmed, a little bit stressed out. It is that time of the school year for sure. And if you are a parent or caregiver listening right now and you're feeling like...

Maybe you didn't get everything accomplished that you wanted to get this year, or maybe there are still some loose ends that you haven't tied up. This is definitely the episode for you. We are going to give you just a few quick, fairly easy things that you can do to get yourself set up for the summer and even next school year, and to hopefully make the transition to next school year a little bit easier. So we're gonna jump right in. The first thing that we really recommend now is a great time to do is to take a look at your files, take a look at your records, and go ahead and send an email to whoever your point person is at school and any files or records that you don't have electronically. Progress reports, the current IEP, if any evaluations or assessments were done in the last year. Now is a good time to go ahead, email, and just ask for copies of them. That's something that's pretty easy. The person on the other end can just forward you the digital copies of

Like I said, the IEP, the progress reports, the evaluations. It's great to do it now because if those are things that you're looking for at the end of August, beginning of September, or as you're preparing for an IEP meeting in the fall, you'll have everyone or everything really easily accessible to you. If you've listened to, especially at the beginning of the school year, we talk a lot about getting organized and getting those digital copies of things, putting them in maybe a Google Drive or printing them and putting them in a binder or a folder or whatever the case may be. If you go ahead and request those now, it might make it a little bit smoother as we go into next school year. I think one of the big things here is to make note that there really isn't too much that can't be done in the beginning of the school year, in the first couple of weeks of the school year when things maybe don't feel so urgent, right? So coming from a place of less urgency where a team is, everybody on the team is feeling a little bit more fresh and ready to work together and as much as we're like, we need to have everything ready for next year, kind of taking this time, taking a pulse, taking a breath and just like, let me collect all of the things that I need, get myself organized over the summer. If you need support with like a record review type of support or service from either us or from somebody else that you're working with or yourself to be able to go through records. The summer is a really good time to do that. And then in the fall, request that meeting with the team to kick off the school year. That also allows you to meet the new team and they get to meet you and you get to be familiar with them. I almost feel like it's more calm to have meetings at the beginning, even though the beginning of the school year is super, super busy too.

This time of the school year, everybody's running in a million different directions. People have personal days, people are out sick, there's field trips. It can be really challenging to schedule things. So just taking that deep breath, knowing that there are very few things that need to happen now that can't happen first thing in the fall. In September. I actually was having a conversation with two different families this week when we were talking about...

pushing things off to September. And I said, I have to be honest with you. I actually don't think that's inherently a bad thing. We were talking specifically about evaluations. And I said, everyone will go in with fresh eyes in the fall, right? Everyone will have a little bit more time in the fall than they have in May and June. And the process actually might feel calmer. It might feel less rushed and it might actually feel more comprehensive to complete those evaluations in the fall, have a meeting in the fall to go over them. So I totally agree.

Yeah, so using this time, like Dana-Marie said, to request any of those, when you're going through things and kind of looking at like, what do I have here? What do I not have? I have some paper copies. I have some electronic copies. This is a good opportunity to ask your point person for copies of any of the kinds of evaluations, active IEP, if you need another copy of a proposed IEP, like maybe you're waiting to decide on that proposed IEP, asking for a copy of that. And the other thing that tends to get forgotten about or lost are progress reports. So making sure you have a copy of, you should get progress reports. It's motorcycle season. You wanna make sure that you have copies of progress reports for every time your child gets a report card, like all other students in the school. So you should also be getting some sort of report that marks their progress on their IEP goals. So make sure, so some schools I know do trimesters, some schools do quarters. Make sure you have a copy of progress reports for all of your child's goals for each of those quarters or trimesters or however.

your child's school works, including this last quarter or trimester, this last grading period. And I know that some schools down south and I think like out in like Midwest, you might already, your kid might already be out of school. So making sure you have a copy of all of those things and making note of the ones that you don't have so you can re-request them in the fall or even sometimes at the special education office, like at central office, there's typically people working over the summer that you can reach out to.

and go and pick up a copy of things too. This is both of these, the evaluations and IEPs, but also the progress reports are also good to request now if you are going through some sort of outside evaluation over the summer. Comedy of errors.

So these things are also great to request now. If your child is being evaluated over the summer, I know a lot of outside evaluations are happening this summer in July and August, ones that couldn't get done during the school year. And oftentimes the outside team that's evaluating your child will ask for these things, will ask for records. So if you have everything set for them, that will just be a little bit easier to get when that time comes, like I said, either in July or August.

So the third thing that you actually can be planning for now and you can be doing now is thinking about extended school year. So if your child has qualified for extended school year, it is written in their IEP that they receive extended school year services. Now is a good time if you don't know the details to ask, just ask the school team to remind you what services they will actually be getting over the summer by whom, when it starts, when it ends. days, times, all that kind of things generally here in the Northeast extended school years look similar. They're about five or six weeks. They're usually about two thirds of a day, not a full school day. And they run right after the 4th of July until August. But finding those details now, making sure that the team sends you, you usually have to sign a permission slip, consent for the summer. So making sure you get that in the next couple of weeks at the latest and that you know.

and are set up for the summer and for extended school year. Especially if your child receives transportation services, that might look a little different. Pickup times might look a little different over the summer. So just asking somebody for a little bit of clarification around the location, remind me of the hours, remind me of the services, your child might have a little bit of a only reading services. So they might be giving you the point person who's going to be reaching out to you to schedule those services. So, and just a reminder that extended school year is a service that is discussed at an IEP meeting. It's not something that like all just because a child is on an IEP receives. The purpose of extended school year is to help minimize substantial regression during the summer months. All kids have some sort of, it's called summer slide.

We'll have some sort of summer slide over the summer. However, for students where the data indicates that during breaks, they slide back significantly, substantially, and then it takes a long time to recoup the skills, that would be how we're having a conversation about qualifying for extended school year. So your child, you might be listening and you might be like, but my kid doesn't have extended school year. If you feel like your child should have extended school year.

Definitely reach out to your team and get some clarification. But just to make note that not every child with an IEP has extended school year, just like not every child with an IEP has transportation. So the fourth thing is that if there are some things that are feeling very time sensitive, it is your right to request a team meeting and the team has to meet within the next 10 school days.

of that request. So if you are feeling like there are things that have not been addressed that absolutely need to be in place for the following year that cannot wait, you can request that meeting to have that conversation. The other thing you could do is to put a reminder in your phone, on your calendar, wherever to remind yourself to make that request first couple of weeks of the school year.

Like maybe give everybody a chance to settle in, email the new team, say, I wanted to introduce myself and I would love to schedule a meeting in the next 10 school days to meet everybody so you can meet me and have that conversation. Now, if there is a conversation about placement or something like that that's happening right now, it's a little different. And if you have specific questions about that, please reach out to us so we can try to help.

walk you through that, but you might be feeling a little unsettled by not knowing if your child is going to a new placement, but a new placement hasn't been found yet. Like if your child's going out of district, know that the district is going to continue to seek that and they might be reaching out to you over the summer to have conversations or going to visit the programs and things like that. So reach out to your point person if that's your case and let them know the best way to get in touch with you.

because this sometimes happens too during the summer, you might be going on vacation and a potential new school might reach out to you to go tour it and you might be- Not be here, yeah. Not be, you might be camping and have no cell service. That's true. So kind of giving your point person an idea of like what your availability is over the summer and just trying to be as coordinated as possible to make sure things feel as fluid as possible and just know that everybody is trying their best at this time of year. So.

Yeah, and I would say, you know, if it doesn't feel super urgent like that, but there are still some things that feel like Michelle said, unsettled and things that you want to make sure are in place at the beginning of the school year. Um, I find anecdotally that school teams in September are more rested, right? They're more, um, able to set aside quality time to have conversations with you. And everyone sort of had that time to regroup a little bit.

and plan for the school year. And so it's actually really a nice time the end of September, even beginning of October, tend to be a really good time for parents and caregivers to meet with, like Michelle said, the new school team, whoever that involves to get set up for the next school year. All of that said, if you're feeling like I don't even know where I am, I don't know what to do, please, please, please reach out in the coming months.

Over the summer, you will hear from us. We have some things planned for August to kind of get you back into the swing of the school year and to help you prepare for September. If that's when, when your child starts school. But in the meantime, if there's any questions or if you need any support in, and figuring out any of these pieces, please do not hesitate to reach out. We have a few more episodes of the podcast in this season before we do go on a little bit of a summer hiatus, we will be traveling a little bit too and doing some things as well. But if you have questions in the meantime, we are here. Please feel free to get in touch and we will talk to you here from you next week. Have a nice rest of the week, everybody. Bye everybody.