SPED PAPERWORK – A QUICK LOOK

I am breaking my own rules on using the SPED acronym, but it just goes with my views on Special Education paperwork.  Necessary to use or do, but not anything I really like.

Last night I did a post on my belief that Special Educators = Paralegals due to the amount of paperwork work that we do that has legal implications.  Today I wanted to take a quick look at the paperwork that we are required to know and prepare. 

Each one of the primary forms deserve their own post will get one later on.

Here is the list of documents that we have to prepare in Maine and each one is a legal document mandated by the State DOE.

  Please click on the above image to go to the Maine Department of Education website to view the forms.

This is just a quick look at the Special Education forms, these 9 forms might not look like much on the above image but completing each one these takes time.

Advance Written Notice:  The form itself does not take very long to complete, but arranging a meeting with times/dates that all can attend is  time consuming.

The Written Notice (which has to be completed within 3 days of the PET).  Depends on the depth and breadth of the meeting – anywhere from half an hour to 3 hours.

IEP (which is 9 pages without any data in it) It is supposed to be developed at the PET, but often the Special Education teacher takes the notes and then prepares the IEP, which typically takes between 2 – 6 hours to complete.  The actual amount of time is dependent upon the complexity of the services to be provided to the student and who is reviewing it. 

Pet peeve, I hate landscape documents and whoever thought up the idea that the State-wide IEP document should be landscape should have to go before a hearing officer every week, to explain their thinking until they change them to portrait, they are just so damn hard to read – especially when copied 2-sided.  My opinion and I will stand by it.

The other documents are ancillary and while legal documents – don’t usually take very long to complete.

I know that most of the information is actually necessary in order to meet legal requirements (I hope it is the absolute minimum necessary), but there does appear to be a lot CYA information for the schools in the Written Notice and IEPs. 

While it appears that the time demands for each document isn’t that bad, multiply it times the number of students on the caseload and add in a Special Educator’s teaching duties – time is an issue. 

We are still required to submit lesson plans for each class, document individualization of instruction where applicable, prepare the lesson, download blocked information at home for the next day’s lesson, manage the classroom when the students don’t want to be there (most of the time), correct papers, provide feedback to the students and put the grades into a database of some sort.

Then you have to communicate with parents, administrators and everyone else.  Time management skills are a must and an understanding family who understand that when school is in session, you are in school mode (nights and weekends are at least partially given over to school work).

This was a quick look at the paperwork requirements.  I guess those who are smarter and more experienced than me in Special Education Law believe that this is the minimum required to protect everyone. But there does seem to be a lot of CYA involved in all this paperwork.