Dress For a Business Meeting
There are many things you can do to prepare for your IEP meeting to ensure a successful outcome. The tips I am going to share with you are things you won’t learn in an IEP Workshop or in an IEP informational book.
I am sharing with you some of my own insider information that I have learned over many years of attending thousands of IEP meetings to assist parents in the development of their child’s IEP.
These tools and knowledge will put you on the fast track in becoming a savvy and well-versed parent advocate for your child at your next IEP meeting!
This weeks tip is: Dress for a business meeting.
When parents come to the IEP meeting well dressed in professional attire, parents will present themselves as a parent who means business and prepared to negotiate and advocate for your parent rights.
You would be shocked to hear that I actually need to ask parents to dress professionally for their IEP meeting, because they came to their meeting dressed like they just finished cleaning the house or on their way to the beach. Dressing appropriately elicits respect that will set a productive tone for your IEP meeting.
During your IEP meeting, you are basically negotiating… sometimes many thousands of dollars in district special education funding. This is why it will behoove you to dress accordingly. I just assume parents know the cost of their program, but I am always proven wrong. When I share with a parent, “Are you aware that the service we just got approved today will cost the district $65,000 a year?” The parent is shocked, every time!
You can look at your local school district’s special education annual review and see what they pay out every year for each related service. This is public record anyone can access on the web.
This is not to make you feel guilty, but only to be aware of the seriousness of the IEP meeting. The law says that the district must serve your child, and that means that if your child has a deficit, a goal must be written to address it. Services are driven by the goals. If the district cannot provide the appropriate services, they must fund a private program and private programs are very expensive.
My perspective on this is; if the district hired enough service providers to meet the needs of the child, and trained them to offer the appropriate level of duration and frequency for each service, they would not be faced with the need to fund private programs.
I hope this tip has opened your eyes to the importance of presenting yourself professionally and ready to negotiate at your next IEP meeting!
There are many more tips I will be sharing with you, so be sure to be on the lookout for our next newsletter.
Are you ready to embark on your journey of advocacy? Are you willing to become an expert regarding your child’s disability and how it impedes their ability to learn and be successful in school? Don’t wait another day to take action to learn how to drive the development of your child’s special education program at your next IEP meeting!
Warmly,
