IEP Meeting

I attended an IEP meeting on Friday for a student who has fairly serious behavior problems and is having difficulty attending school and passing his classes. He has already been held back from graduation and receives modifications in most classes so he can get through them. However, the meeting was called to address a needed schedule change: the student had not been scheduled to take a required class for graduation;therefore, some of his classes were being taken out (during 2nd nine weeks) or redistributed. This required the student to be put in different levels of classes (ie. MI, LD, and on-level) even within the same subject area. Special and general educators in the meeting debated whether a student could be put in, for example, one 11th grade MI science class and another LD 12th grade science class. One teacher bluntly said, "You can't be MI and LD, it's impossible. You're one or the other." And another replied that his current class schedule was the only way to ensure his graduation. A lot of issues came down to following what is legal protocol, but it seemed like a difficult situation in which the student's needs were being compromised by previous teacher oversights. Additionally, tension had developed between the teachers who are responsible for this student and it seemed (to me) like their personal opinions had taken precedence over what should have been done according to the school, which further complicated the situation. I left the meeting seeing that rule bending may seem beneficial to accomplish short term goals, but it causes a lot of complications further down the road.