I am attending a transitional iep meeting this week.My son has multiple disabilities that the school does not acknowledge formally. We have asked on numerous occasions that he be sent to an alternative placement and have been ignored with not even an official statement as to why.So this week is the turning point,either they grant my request(which by the way is backed up with lots of documentation)or we go to mediation. I am so over this school system that I might even hire a lawyer! Any advice would be appreciated.

We just went through this this year. The school did several tricky things to watch for:
1) They claimed that since this IEP meeting was to discuss something else, they wouldn’t consider other topics (make sure you have this added to the agenda).
2) In the past, they demanded documentation from medical health professionals, ON THE SCHOOL’S FORMS, stating she needed this service (which of course the pdocs and others had difficulty providing, because they weren’t familiar with the options provided by the school – like the special school for emotionally disturbed kids we were trying to get her in). The first time we requested this, with a prescription, they insisted it had to be on their own form, and since they weren’t willing to let us call the doc and fax the form during the meeting, they put it off until school ended for the year). The next time we were prepared – and they chose to ignore it! They disagreed with both our medical professionals.
3) They said if we didn’t sign the IEP then the other accommodations they did give us couldn’t be started. So if we didn’t agree, then this would be dragged out until we did, and our daughter would suffer.
4) They did testing to see if they could see what we saw, and of course it took months for the testing to get done, and when it was finally done they’d skewed the results to match what they wanted. (My daughter hides most of her issues – would literally rather die, than let the school see them. Then she takes the stress out on us at home. She had been hospitalized 8 times in 9 months and was on the waiting list for residential treatment – and the school insisted there was nothing wrong with her. They were ignoring the few signs my daughter let them see – which were still very significant. When the school psychologist called me, she asked me what MY biggest concerns were. I told her, the constant meltdowns, suicidal threats and self-harming behaviors. BUT I told them those weren’t my concerns for my daughter at [i]school[/i], because she didn’t show most of those behaviors at school, so I told the psychologist what we were concerned about at school. They proceeded to “test” for the meltdowns! Which of course she didn’t show at school.
5) They ignored and/or intimidated every advocate we brought in, and I’m a really strong advocate myself too, even the special education advocate.

The good news was, the special education advocate was so irate about how we/she was treated, that they took on our case pro bono! They filed due process, and within days, our case which had drug out for 2 school years was resolved. The school still insists she doesn’t need it, but we were granted the special school. I wish we’d brought in the professional advocate MONTHS sooner, but I couldn’t believe how blatantly the school was denying our daughter this service.