After reading the proposed special education regulations, I am disappointed in the Virginia Department of Education. I do not view VDOE as "advocates" for children with disabilities, but many of these proposed regulations will harm children and must not be adopted.

When you read the Purposes of IDEA, you know IDEA is intended to benefit children with disabilities and their families:

"to ensure that all children with disabilities have available to them a free appropriate public education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment and independent living" and "to ensure that the rights of children with disabilities and parents of such children are protected ..." (20 U.S.C. Sec. 1400(d))

When you read the proposed regulations, you might assume that VDOE's mandate is protecting local school districts from children with disabilities and their families. For example, the regulations proposed by VDOE would:

* allow schools to reduce or terminate special education services without the parent's consent
* remove the parent as a member of the child's Functional Behavioral Assessment team
* allow schools to eliminate Child Study Committees and exclude parents for these teams.
* allow schools to refuse a parent's request for an IEP meeting if the school deems it "unreasonable"
* allow schools to provide IEP Progress Reports less frequently than they provide progress reports to parents of children who are not disabled.
* deny parents the right to receive timely evaluations of their children
* add new, arbitrary and unnecessary criteria for eligibility, thereby creating additional obstacles for children and families
* eliminate the requirement to include short-term objectives and benchmarks in IEPs, depriving parents and teachers of essential information about a child's progress
* allow schools to delay providing parents with a copy of their child's IEP for 10 days after an IEP meeting
* change the process for selecting hearing officers so they are no longer selected by the Virginia Supreme Court but would be under the control of the VDOE
* be able to revise the decisions of hearing officers

Before revisiting these regulations, we urge the staff of the Virginia Department of Education to familiarize themselves with the Findings and Purposes of IDEA 2004. In deciding if a regulation should be changed, VDOE needs to ask these questions:

"Who does this regulation benefit? Does a proposed change to a regulation help children with disabilities and their families who are the intended beneficiaries of the law? How does it help them?"

"If this proposed change to a regulation does not help children with disabilities and their families, why are we proposing to change the regulation? Who will benefit from this change?"
 

Eliminating Parental Consent

The current regulations require parental consent before the school can make any change in the IEP. The proposed regulations do not require parental consent before schools can partially or completely terminate services in the IEP.

Proposed regulation 8 VAC 20-81-90 entitled "Termination of special education and related services" in subsection (B)(3) explains that, in the termination of special education services "parental consent is not required."

Does this proposed regulation benefit children with disabilities and their families? No.

This proposed regulation will undermine trust and reduce participation by parents in educational decision-making for their children.

The Virginia Department of Education disregarded the intent of Congress when IDEA was reauthorized. Congress sought to increase and strengthen parental participation and involvement as the Findings in IDEA 2004 state:

"the education of children with disabilities can be made more effective by ... strengthening the role and responsibility of parents and ensuring that families of such children have meaningful opportunities to participate in the education of their children at school and at home ..." (20 U.S.C. 1400(c)(5)(B))

Conclusion: This proposed regulation does not benefit children with disabilities and their parents. It  should be eliminated.