Thought Leadership

New OCR and OSERS Guidance Highlights Positive Behavior Supports, Safety, and Nondiscrimination

On July 19, 2022, the U.S. Department of Education announced the release of new guidance from its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) discussing public elementary and secondary schools’ responsibilities in meeting the needs of students with disabilities and avoiding discriminatory use of student discipline under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The Department’s press release notes that these guidance documents are “the most comprehensive guidance on the civil rights of students with disabilities concerning student discipline and build on the Department’s continued efforts to support students and schools through pandemic recovery.”

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Don’t Let a Request for an Independent Educational Evaluation Trip You Up!

To start, what is an independent educational evaluation (IEE)? An IEE is an evaluation conducted by a qualified evaluator who is not employed by the school district responsible for the education of the child. A parent or legal guardian has the right to request an IEE at public expense when the parent disagrees with an already completed evaluation done by the school.  

If your school receives a request for an IEE, you have only 2 options: 1) file a due process complaint to defend the appropriateness of the school’s evaluation, or 2) fund the requested IEE. But before you make that decision, you do want to check to make sure you are dealing with a proper request.

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A Tale of Two Football Fields

Why Kennedy v. Bremerton School District was Not the Case that Some Judges Thought It Was.

The post A Tale of Two Football Fields appeared first on The Oldest Blog.

Special Education Operating Procedures: The Hard Work Isn’t Over

By Dianna D. Bowen and Taylor M. Montgomery 

Thought your LEA’s Special Education Operating Procedures were good to go? You likely need to think again! As required by the Texas Education Agency (“TEA”), LEAs across the state worked hard to finalize and upload Special Education Operating Procedures for the Child Find, Evaluation, and ARD Committee sections of the Legal Framework by October 2020. At the time, most LEAs drafted separate procedures for each of the subsections under the Child Find, Evaluation, and ARD Committee sections in the Legal Framework. Since then, special education administrators have been actively working to review and revise these procedures to ensure accuracy and compliance with state and federal requirements while awaiting further guidance from TEA on drafting operating procedures for the remaining sections of the Legal Framework.  

But instead of guidance on the remaining sections, TEA has released a series of templates (the “Legal Framework templates”) relating to the first three sections of the Legal Framework. By August 31, 2022, LEAs must re-upload Special Education Operating Procedures in accordance with the information in the Legal Framework templates. This includes new naming nomenclatures, certain content/topics, and answers to specific questions for each upload. 

The Special Education Team at Thompson & Horton has been working with clients to ensure their Special Education Operating Procedures comply with the new requirements. Below are common questions and answers that we have been answering for LEAs during this process.

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Nine Things to Know About the 2022 Proposed Title IX Rules 

By Jackie Gharapour Wernz

On the Fiftieth anniversary of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the U.S. Department of Education released proposed amendments to the Title IX regulations. The rules are just a proposal—don’t go throwing out your current copy of the 2020 regs just yet! The earliest they will become effective would be in time for the 2023–2024 school year. When they do, they likely will include some changes from the proposed version.   

However, because the final rules that become effective likely will be similar to those proposed, it makes sense to familiarize yourself with them now. If you haven’t already, watch the Thompson & Horton free on-demand webinar, Title IX Double Take: A Side-by-Side Comparison of the Current and Proposed Title IX Rules, which provides a fast-paced and thorough side-by-side comparison between the current and proposed rules.

Keep reading here for a quick rundown of the nine top changes in the proposed rules!  

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