lawprofessors

By Michelle Ball, California Education Attorney for Students since 1995 Recently, the suspension and expulsion codes of California were altered to take "willfully defied" and "disrupted" out of the mix as bases for expulsion (any grade) and for suspension through third grade.  Per the pre-2015 codes, these could be suspendable or expellable offenses.  Does this change really matter? Since starting as an attorney in the education law field, I have addressed many school expulsions.  Almost all expulsions I have seen have included California Education Code  � 48900(k) [disruption/defiance] which I call the "catch-all" section. This section has "applied" (per school authorities only) to personnel having to call a kid out of class and talk to the child on a situation they caused, watching a fight, or any "waste" of school staff time.  Although frequently used, and very upsetting to parents looking at this section on an expulsion form, I hav...

By Michelle Ball, California Education Attorney for Students since 1995 With special education, the magic document is the Individualized Education Program document, simply called the "IEP."  [The IEP document is different from the IEP meeting, which is also often called the "IEP."]  This is a multi-page document which outlines many important items for the child, including his or her placement and services.  As such, this is a very key item!  Often parents and schools disagree on some services and agree on others, but the IEP is presented as an all or nothing document.  How do parents partially consent to an IEP?   So many interesting things happen at IEP meetings to parents.  One of these is the far-too-common situation where the IEP coordinator tells the parents that they must sign the IEP that day, period.  The parents, despite disagreement with some services in the IEP, sign under duress, agreeing to things they don't want for their child. ...