1. Special Education & Section 504
Utilizing the principles of support to ensure program compliance

2. Guiding Principles: Support Matrix
Collaboration
Quality Instruction
Compliance Monitoring
Professional Development
Student Achievement

3. Compliance Monitoring: “Inspect What We Expect”
Compliance is threefold: Federal, State, & Local Mandates
Proactively address potential areas of non-compliance
Multi-faceted process that involves multiple stakeholders
Trust, but verify to promote staff accountability
Focus on compliance as a result of multiple factors, including: litigation – mediation/due process/OCR, inaccurate reporting to the state/feds, and all-too-frequent occurrences of an IEP not being implemented with fidelity.

4. Compliance Monitoring: Focus Areas (Sped)
Prior Written Notice
Progress Reports
Duly Constituted Committees
Documentation of Accommodations, Modifications, and Supports
State Assessment Decisions
Prior Notice of/invitation to ARD meeting
Importance of the prior written notice
Timeliness of the prior written notice of ARD
Occasional need to schedule ARDs outside of routine day and time in order to provide parent opportunity to participate
The notices are created in eSped and each one should be archived and also filed in the eligibility folder
Prior Written Notice of Decision
This is the summary of considerations and decisions of the ARD committee, and is a critical document. (We have found that many principals are less familiar with the PWN.)
Progress reports
The ARD committee should review the progress report at the annual ARD (in the context of the PLAAFPS), and a copy should be attached to ARD/IEP
Duly constituted ARD committee
All ARD meetings (initial, review, revision, REED) require a duly constituted committee
Administrator or designee needs to be present for full meeting
There are procedures and forms for excusing other members of the committee
A clerical amendment is very narrow in focus, and although it does not require a committee meeting, clerical amendments do require agreement of parent and administrator. Copies of the revised document are provided to the parent and placed in the student’s file
Documentation of accommodations, modifications, and provided supports
Choose purposefully and based on student data
Teachers need to document provision. Examples:
Lesson plans
On the actual assignment
Gradebook
EasySped Tracker for in-class supports and co-teaching
ReThink
Decisions about state assessments
Participation requirements
Online testing has natural supports and accommodations that are not available with paper tests

5. Compliance Monitoring: Focus Areas (504)
Duly Constituted Committees
Documentation of Meeting Notice and Parental Response
Documentation of Initial Referral with a Data
Documentation of Accommodations and Required Supports
Documentation of the Health Plans

6. Compliance Monitoring: Improvement Processes
Revise current Special Education & 504 operating guidelines
Target specific IDEA Mandates, PBMAS, and SPP indicators
Develop program evaluation process
Special Education personnel is in the process of implementing district-wide compliance monitoring processes and procedures by:

7. Questions & Comments Gerard G. Cortez
Executive Director of Special Education
North East Independent School District
8961 Tesoro Drive, Suite 500
San Antonio, Texas 78217