Hi Misty,

I am sorry to hear about Jordan's illness.  I hope he will be feeling better soon.  I know everyone will think I'm crazy but I love the continued cold and especially these Saturday snows like today.  The branches of all my trees have that "Christmas card" look to them! 

We do have a lot of handouts from the meeting as well as an audio tape and video tape.  I will probably try to go though the tapes and make them into a summary outline to hand out at the February  meeting.  The program kind of evolved with a shape of it's own due to the specific questions and concerns of thsoe attending.  We did not go through line by line in an IEP which I would like to see us do as a meeting activity as practice for our case conferences.  For that activity, I hope to have blank IEP forms to use at the February meeting in our parent discussion and many examples of poorly and well written goals and objectives.  The actual goal writing was not covered in as much depth as I had hoped yesterday and I would like us to work through that a bit together at our meeting this time.  I want everyone to have prioritized their child's needs in their mind before they walk into their next case conference, so they know what services they must leave with and which other areas might be left to compromise. 

We had said that February would be a  Mock Case Conference but I think we may push that back to March to give time to do more work on goals, related services and supports (many families may need to be requesting specific evaluations for services such as PT, OT, or speech),  measuring progress, and other specific parts of the IEP.  I highly reccommend that parents go into a conference with an idea of their priorities for their child's program fro the coming  year.  The upcoming meeting will give us a chance to continue the IEP discussion as we approach the Spring IEP time, where I suspect many of us will want to ask for specific changes to our child/children's programs.  I will be asking for an almost entirely different set of goals and objective than we have ever had before.  I th ink I will end up with fewer targeted skills overall because for my child the emphasis on communication should be the biggest special education support, while I will also seek a less restirctive environment to have him included more of the day in the general education classroom including an actual report card  in addition to his IEP progress report.  I will need to make it much more clear in the IEP what is required for David to have mastered the general education curriculum as opposed to just be passed on with his same age peers without the recognition of true academic achievement. 

Here are some great websites to explore that have a wealth of great information:

www.fape.org
www.fapesolutions.com
www.ideapractices.org
www.nichcy.org
www.nasdse.org
www.taalliance.org
www.wrightslaw.com
www.ipin.org
www.insource.org


You can review all the PLAYNET meeting dates at the website by clicking on the calendar section link on the left side of the home page. I have entered all the meetings through May.  The February meeting will be Tuesday the 8th. 

I hope eveyone enjoys their weekend! 
Ronda

Misty wrote:

Rhonda and Diane:

    I had originally told Cathy White (I think that was her name) that I was coming to the morning session of the IEP conference.  I wanted to tell you that I will not be able to make it.  Jordan has been home all week with the flu and is not getting any better.  I hate to miss it; I really do; but J comes first.  Were you going to try and tape it or have things discussed on paper?  I'd love to hear what they discuss.

    Also; what about Playnet meetings in the next couple of months? I cannot find the pamphlet that had the dates listed and do not have anything written down on my calendar...Please let me know when they are.

    Thanks; Misty Hollingsworth