Failing to follow the IEP

In a case involving an incredible breakdown of organization within a school, the school failed to place a girl with disabilities in the kind of small class her individualized education program (IEP) called for.

She was supposed to be in a class with a teacher, an assistant and no more than eight students, what’s known as an 8:1:1 setting. But she ended up in a larger and different class altogether.

How?

Early in the school year she wandered into the wrong class and the teaching staff just let her stay.

The committee on special education (CSE) overseeing her instructional plan didn’t even know she was going to the wrong class.

The school simply wasn’t carrying out her IEP.

Cuddy Law Firm stepped in to help.

The result: A hearing officer ordered the school district to place her in an eight-student setting, ordered 60 hours of makeup occupational therapy she was supposed to be receiving, ordered a new behavioral assessment of the girl and ordered the district to develop a new IEP for her.

And a stunning oversight was corrected.