What is a complaint?
If a parent believes their child’s school isn’t following special education laws, they can file a complaint with the Indiana Department of Education. Parents can also file complaints as a way to enforce resolutions reached during mediation or orders issued as part of a due process hearing. IDOE will then assign an investigator to the complaint who is responsible for determining whether a violation has occurred and order any necessary corrective action.
What is mediation?
Parents and representatives of a school corporation can voluntarily enter into a mediation process as a way to settle disputes over a child’s special education services. A trained and impartial mediator meets with all parties involved to discuss the issue and create a written agreement between the parents and the school. But there’s no guarantee that everyone will agree on a resolution.
What is a due process request?
A due process hearing is a formal legal proceeding that can resolve special education disputes between families and schools. In a due process hearing, both the school corporation and parents present their sides of a dispute. Each side can call witnesses, make legal arguments and present evidence. The hearing is held before an independent hearing officer.
What is a manifestation determination?
If a school decides to suspend a student with a disability for violating school rules, the case conference committee must meet within 10 instructional days to determine whether the student’s behavior is a manifestation of their disability. The school doesn’t have to
provide services during the first 10 days of their removal.
If the behavior is determined to be a manifestation of their disability, the school must:
If the behavior is NOT determined to be a manifestation of their disability, the school may:
Click on the below image to learn about a family's experience on this issue
After Brandi and Caiden moved back to their first school district, Brandi began researching districts with reputable special education programs and discovered the Carmel Clay School Corporation. She researched the school, toured the middle school and spoke with special education staff.
“And decided I'm just going to get up and move,” Brandi said. “And I was in school full-time [for social work], but I dropped out of school because I couldn’t afford to live [in Carmel] without working full-time. So I put my education on the backburner. I just needed better. He deserved better. He wasn’t getting an education.”
She said Caiden’s eighth grade year in the Carmel Clay School Corporation went well.
“Things weren’t perfect, but they were smoother. I felt like people were listening, and it was going to be OK. Like, for the first time since he entered school, I felt hopeful. And he enjoyed going to school everyday,” Brandi said.
Brandi said she still received calls from the school about Caiden’s behavior. And she placed him in what’s called Applied Behavior Analysis for about 20 hours per week after school. ABA is a treatment that aims to increase helpful behaviors while decreasing harmful behaviors and those that affect someone’s ability to learn. Brandi paid for ABA out of pocket. The school did not provide that service to Caiden.
By the time Caiden reached high school, he had diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder, anxiety disorder, mood dysregulation disorder, ADHD and Celiac disease. He also has a rare chromosomal disorder and a mitochondria disorder.
Brandi said high school staff recommended he be placed in a room for students with emotional disabilities. Prior to that, Caiden had spent the majority of his school days in general education settings. Brandi initially agreed with this placement.
But things took a turn for the worse when Caiden began ninth grade
During a gym class, Caiden fell on the ground on purpose — Brandi said it was something he did to try to get attention from the other students. Another student called him the r-word and pulled his hair, she said. Then Caiden hit him. She said he was arrested and charged with battery.
Brandi filed a due process request. Before it could reach the hearing stage, Brandi and the school came to a resolution, which resulted in a new IEP that placed Caiden in another room designed for students with intense behavioral needs. Instead of helping Caiden, Brandi said this exacerbated his negative behaviors and caused him distress.
“It was restrictive. He's around people with behaviors that he was picking up on. His anxiety started going through the roof,” Brandi said.
Caiden was briefly placed in a private school that provides ABA therapy after Brandi filed another due process request. The school settled, which meant that Caiden could attend the ABA center and the Carmel Clay school was responsible for the cost.
Brandi filed multiple due process requests to find Caiden services that could meet his needs.
Eventually, Carmel schools provided Caiden with homebound instruction. But the school wrote in his IEP that as soon as a bed opened up at a therapeutic residential school in Lafayette, that’s where Caiden would be sent.
“And I either had to let him go to residential school, withdraw him from [Carmel Clay schools] and he would not get a diploma or file a due process. So that's when I filed the third due process,” Brandi said.
The thought of placing Caiden in a residential facility terrified Brandi.
“When you're trying to place people in there that don't belong, you're going to ruin them. And his mental health had already declined. So much so that we did have the suicide attempts. We did have the self-harming behavior on a regular basis. And [residential] would have destroyed him,” she said.
The case made its way to a due process hearing. By then, Caiden was in the 10th grade.
It was a week-long hearing, in which both sides presented testimony and experts. Brandi paid for all of Caiden’s therapists and clinicians to attend and provide testimony.
“It was absolutely the worst experience I've ever been through. And part of that's because you sit there. And you listen, you listen while the other side is asking questions of people and they're listening to the way that they're painting you and your child. And you have to sit and you can't say anything. Several times I got up, I broke down, I got up and I had to walk out,” Brandi said.
Expert clinicians testified that residential placement was not the right place for a child like Caiden. Others said his repeated removals from the classroom at the private school for students with autism reinforced his negative behaviors because he preferred sitting in an office instead. The hearing officer found that these removals from the classroom also interfered with the structured, consistent and stable environment Caiden needed to succeed academically and socially.