School Started. Is the IEP Actually Happening?

In July I wrote about getting the IEP ready before school started. If you did that, good. Now comes the part nobody warns you about: the gap between what the IEP says and what actually happens in a building with 800 students and a speech therapist who covers three schools.

The first month of school is when that gap opens. Here is how to find out whether it's opening for your child, and what to do if it is.

Ask the question nobody asks

Sometime in the next week, send the case manager one short email: "Can you confirm the date my child's services began and the weekly schedule for each service in the IEP?"

That's it. One sentence. You are not accusing anyone of anything. You are asking for a schedule, which is a perfectly boring request.

The answer tells you everything. If services started the first week, you'll get a quick reply with days and times. If they didn't, you'll get something vague about "still finalizing schedules," and now you know, in writing, three weeks in instead of at the November progress report.

Missed sessions don't just evaporate

Here is the thing schools rarely volunteer: when a school fails to deliver services the IEP requires, your child may be owed compensatory services. Make-up minutes. The speech session that didn't happen because the therapist wasn't hired yet doesn't get written off like a canceled dentist appointment. It's a debt.

You don't need to open with that word. Start by asking for the service logs, which providers keep and you're entitled to see. If sessions are missing, ask in writing how and when they'll be made up. Most schools will quietly schedule make-ups once they know a parent is counting. The word "compensatory" is for when they don't.

Ask your child, but ask sideways

"Did you have speech today?" gets you a shrug. Try "Who did you leave class with today?" or "What did you do with Ms. Rivera?" Children are unreliable witnesses about schedules and excellent witnesses about people. If your child has never heard of the person who is supposedly pulling them twice a week, that's data.

For children who don't communicate that way, watch the backpack and the folder. Service providers tend to leave fingerprints: worksheets, sticker charts, communication logs. Three weeks of nothing is also data.

The honeymoon report

Around week two or three, some parents get a version of this call: "He's doing so well, we're wondering if he really needs all these supports."

Be polite and be unmoved. The first weeks of school are structured, novel, and heavily supervised. Difficulties tend to surface when the routines get old and the academic demands ramp up, right around late September. Supports don't come out of an IEP because of a good first fortnight, and any change requires an IEP meeting and your participation. "Let's revisit that conversation in October with data" is a complete sentence.

The other direction: when it falls apart immediately

Maybe the opposite is happening. Daily calls from the front office. A child who melted down every afternoon this week. A teacher who seems surprised by needs that are spelled out on page four.

Two moves. First, confirm the teacher actually has the IEP and knows what's in it; ask kindly, because sometimes the answer is genuinely no, and that's fixable in a day. Second, if the placement or supports clearly aren't working, request an IEP meeting in writing now. You do not have to wait for the annual review, and you do not have to wait for things to get worse to prove a point. A meeting in early September beats a crisis in October.

Start the file you hope you'll never need

If you do nothing else this month, start a running log. One note per incident or conversation: date, who, what was said. Email follow-ups after phone calls ("Just confirming what we discussed today...") turn conversations into records. It takes ninety seconds each time.

Most families never need the file. But every difficult case I've worked started with a parent who wished they'd been writing things down since August. This year especially, with federal oversight in flux, the family record is the record.

The short version

Email for the service schedule. Check the logs if anything smells off. Ask your child sideways. Don't let a good first week talk supports out of the IEP, and don't let a bad first week go undocumented. Write everything down.

And if you asked the boring one-sentence question and the answer made your stomach drop, that's what I'm for. I offer a free consultation, and yes, this is the season my phone rings.