In order to keep the team strong, it's very important for parents, teachers, administrators, specialists and others who have insight on a particular student to communicate regularly. There are a plethora of reasons why various team members may need to meet, and in public school, we have different kinds of meetings for different reasons. All of the meetings focus on information sharing that will result in the best educational support for the student, but depending on the type of meeting, different paperwork will be written by the teacher as mandated by the state.
Below I have listed a few of the different kinds of meetings you may either request or be invited to throughout the school year. |
ARDARD stands for Admission, Review & Dismissal. These meetings are held annually, and the purpose is to discuss:
New IEP Goals A Change in Setting New Schedule Related Services (speech, OT, etc.) transitionTransition ARDs are no longer being held, but there are several ways to get information about your student's transition to high school that do not require having an ARD meeting. Your student's future high school teachers have full access to your student's IEP goals and ARD paperwork. Additionally, we send over an ample amount of paperwork including but not limited to information about critical skills, functional skills, academic progress, strategies that work for your student, personal likes and dislikes, assistive technology, adaptive equipment, behavior need-to-knows and needed visuals.
You may visit the tab on this website that discusses transition to high school. We also highly encourage you to go to the Reagan A.L.E. school tour in the spring prepared with your questions and concerns. If your questions or concerns are not at ease by viewing my site or taking the tour, you can schedule a conference. The people who can best answer high school questions are high school staff, so please do not wait until the last two weeks of school to speak with someone about your concerns. Brenda Garza is the Special Education clerk at Reagan High School, and she can be reached at 210-356-1833. |
REEDREED stands for Review of Existing Evaluation Data. NEISD holds a REED once every 3 years for a student in special education. The REED may be held at the same time as the ARD, or separately, depending on the due dates for each meeting.
An LSSP (licensed specialist in school psychology) or educational diagnostician will attend this meeting. The purpose of the REED is to review the existing evaluation data and determine whether or not the data is up to date or needs to be updated. Evaluation data does NOT need to be updated every 3 years for every student. For most students, particularly by middle school, the existing evaluation data holds more than enough information about a student to do future planning. For a small population of students, though, it may be necessary to retest. Although retesting involves pulling a student from instruction to be tested, it's sometimes beneficial if there is data to show that a student's progress is inconsistent and/or unpredictable. This may occur, for example, when the student's health factors change in the 3 years between REEDs or if the student is showing unexplainable regression. IF it is determined that additional testing is needed, the team will meet back a second time, once testing is complete, to review the results. |
ConferenceFor something as small as a transportation form being changed, all you need to do is notify your teacher by phone or email and provide the new information. It's not even necessary to have a conference for a transportation form change.
Conferences are held in the fall and spring at Lopez for students who are failing. Because we in A.L.E. would not wait until a scheduled fall or spring conference to speak with you about a student who was not making progress, we do not schedule "failing student" conferences in the fall and spring. If you would like to schedule a conference to discuss progress, participation, behavior or anything else, please email me directly. A.L.E. conference times are from 1:45-2:35. ReviewReviews can be held for a variety of reasons. Sometimes a change or adjustment must be made, for example, in a personal care supplement. Sometimes a review is done because there's an error in paperwork, or because requirements change from one year to the next that necessitates us to update a detail, for example, when we changed from TAKS to STAAR testing.
It's called a Review because, unlike a conference, it is being done because changes are being made to paperwork in our system. These are minor changes though, not affecting the student's placement, setting or goals. Because of this, a parent can choose to be present, but usually a review is done because a parent and teacher have already discussed the minor details ahead of time and the teacher is making the change to reflect the conversation made between parent and teacher. Most review meetings do not require a face-to-face meeting. The exception to this would be if there were serious new behaviors that required a Behavior Intervention Plan to be written and implemented. Most behaviors do not require a Behavior Intervention Plan, and can be discussed through an ordinary parent/teacher conference. |