A student makes her way down a hallway to go home for the day at Franklin Elementary School on Monday, Sept. 23, 2024, in San Antonio, Texas. Special education advocates recommend families start requesting special education evaluations from their school districts in October to start the process early.
Josie Norris/San Antonio Express-News
Parents of students with disabilities who haven’t gotten an individualized education program, or IEP should get the process started in October, advocates say.
“The experts say (with) early intervention, you’ll be able to help your child more,” said Inga Cotton, a San Antonio-area school choice advocate. “I wish I had done it even sooner.”
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Parents who start asking about their child’s IEP now will have more options to support their student’s specialized learning needs under the state’s new private school voucher program.
Texas launched the new voucher program this school year, setting aside $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to cover private education costs, including private school tuition, uniforms and tutoring. Most students can receive up to $10,500 annually, but students with documented disabilities can get closer to $30,000.
Here’s how families can get evaluated for special education services and an IEP.
Starting the process
Families should start by asking their neighborhood public schools about IEPs — even if they don’t plan to send their students there. Federal disability law requires public schools to find and evaluate any student with a disability who lives within their attendance boundaries.
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To begin, families can submit a written request asking their district to evaluate their child for a learning disability. The district has 15 school days to respond and, if it determines an assessment is necessary, 45 school days to complete the evaluation.
After an evaluation, the district has 30 school days to schedule an Admission, Review and Dismissal or ARD meeting, where a student’s specialized learning plan is created. Plans can include accommodations for students like breaks during testing or extra cues and prompts from a teacher.
The district must file the plan with the Texas Education Agency, and families can keep it on hand for any school they choose.
Families can ask for an evaluation and tailored learning plan at any point in the calendar year. But Cotton said October is the latest families who want to apply to a different school next year or use vouchers should wait because district evaluation deadlines could lengthen the process beyond when voucher applications open.
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“We want to set them up for success,” she said. “So if they go to their neighborhood public school and ask for the evaluation, they’re not locked in to either staying with that neighborhood public school, doing a charter school or a private school.”
Last year, families could apply for vouchers from early February to the end of March, a deadline that was extended nearly two weeks because of a lawsuit. The comptroller’s office, which oversees the program, has not released this year’s application schedule.
If it mirrors last year’s timeline, families starting the IEP process in October may not get their specialized learning plan until close to the voucher application window opens. Having an IEP that lays out a student’s special education needs could factor into how much money a student receives in a voucher award.
Advocates’ advice
Parents seeking a tailored education plan — regardless of where they decide to send their children to school — can also benefit from asking for an evaluation when their child is young, San Antonio activist and parents’ rights advocate Maribel Gardea said.
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Tests, classroom observations and interviews can be used during the evaluation process to see if a student has a learning disability.
“I think you trust your gut as a parent when you’re not seeing that your kid is doing what other kids are doing, especially when they start preschool,” she said.
She also said parents should find support from other families or networks of people who have children with disabilities.
“I would say find the group of people that you can that are closely related to or tied to, depending on the disability,” Gardea said. “They are probably the best resource because they’ve gone through the hoops and loops to get either diagnoses, evaluations or support.”
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Nicole Santiago, an advocate for families of students with disabilities, said complicated jargon and legal terminology on forms and in meetings can be some of the biggest challenges for parents seeking a tailored learning plan. She often sees parents feel hesitant or not realize they can ask for an evaluation.
“I know it can be kind of sometimes overwhelming, but just being armed with education knowledge is still powerful in our society,” Santiago said.
Santiago runs Family ADDventures, a company that helps parents navigate the process of getting their children an IEP. She said learning disabilities that are not always physically visible, such as dyslexia, autism and attention deficit disorder, sometimes aren’t caught during the evaluation process.
Before meeting with the district, families should “have their data ready” to make the best case for why their child needs a learning plan, Santiago said.
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“How many hours it’s taking your child to do their reading homework, or how many hours it’s taking to do math, or how many times they got distracted. Hey, they dropped their pencil 16 times,” she said. “That data — it’s what the school doesn’t see — that you, as the parent, need to get together.”
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