Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Child Complaint Continued

In February, I filed two child complaints with the state department of education. I was pretty sure nothing would come of them, but thought the issues to be serious and valid enough to take the time to fill out the paperwork. My complaints are moving through the process, and I was contacted by a state official. She made it sound like FERPA didn't cover the 'informal' language service records (which I got last week - 1 year after requesting them and contained the data used to calculate the percentages of progress [or lack of] of Bubba's language goals [that doesn't sound 'informal' to me.]) She's going to check on it as she says that is a 'grey area' of the law. And she's telling me although she feels the school was noncompliant, since they are now taking corrective actions (giving me the records and reevaluating him in language [again, over a year later]), that they may not officially be found noncompliant.

So it doesn't matter that they broke the law over a year ago since NOW after I filed the complaint, they are doing the minimum to cover their butts? So if I go steal a car, get caught by the owners, and hurry up and put it back in their driveway before the police come, I can get off the hook for the actual illegal act? Cool.

Anyhow, the person understood that it was about the school's noncompliance [and sneakiness] with procedure than what my child wasn't getting. I'm not sure if this was all a waste of time, but it's pretty much what I was expecting [though I was still hopeful to a point.]

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