IEP/504 in Elementary School
Parent Q&A
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I’m hoping to tap into the collective wisdom of this group. We’re exploring elementary school options for our rising kindergartener and are especially interested in hearing from families with experience at Madera Elementary (WCCUSD) or in Berkeley Unified, particularly Sylvia Mendez.
If your child has an IEP or 504 plan for ADHD (combined presentation), I’d love to hear about your experience, how the school has supported your child academically, socially, and emotionally.
I’m also curious to hear what the process was like for qualifying for an IEP or 504. I’ve heard from some parents that the threshold can be incredibly high, and that schools sometimes require a child to have a very severe need before services are offered. I’d really appreciate any insight into how that played out for your family.
Feel free to DM me if you’re more comfortable sharing privately. Thanks so much in advance!
Apr 16, 2025IEPs in the classroom
–Sep 3, 2022My child’s IEP is followed in-terms of service hours from specialists. But her classroom experience is not. In a large class, I can hardly expect the teacher to modify her class work. Are Special Ed teachers supposed to actively helps the classroom teacher modify class work?
Sep 3, 2022Obtaining an IEP for Elementary School Age Child
–Aug 2, 2022Hey there - we just moved from Brooklyn and my younger daughter has had some executive functioning issues and i would like to get her an IEP assessment. Being that i just moved here- does anyone know where i begin? She will be starting 4th gr. at Oxford in a few weeks.... any help is amazing! Thank you!
Aug 2, 2022Positive Behavioral Intervention in 2nd grader's IEP
–May 12, 2019Dear parents, Are there any potential concerns associated with including positive behavior or PBIS goal in the IEP? My daughter is in general education class (2nd grade) with some push in services. The RSP teacher asked us to sign an amended IEP that included the following accommodation, "All consequences must be part of a positive reinforcement system or district positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) system" The RSP teacher mentioned that they are adding this to all IEPs in the school. I did not sign this yet as not much information was provided other than she telling that it will be helpful to have that accommodation in her IEP. Her classroom teacher mentioned during the last IEP that my kid was getting distracted a lot and not focusing in the classroom. But she is not disruptive or causing any harm to others. Now with this request, I am trying to understand the motivations of the teacher and/or school. Anyone with such experiences or experience with PBIS could please provide guidance? Also, is it okay to sign IEP without understanding what their intention is? Any suggestions or help is appreciated. Thanks, Concerned parent.
May 12, 2019How to request an Independent Educational Evaluation for a child in Elementary School
–Nov 29, 2017Hi Parents-
My husband and I are feeling at a loss about our son's educational progress and would love to hear from other parents that might have been through the same thing.
Our son is a first grader at a public school in Los Altos, he is happy, friendly, well behaved and generally loves school. We have always known he may have some ADHD or other LDs since they run in both sides of our family. We began noticing some attention and processing issues about mid-way through kinder last year and made a formal request to the district to have him assessed. After a group SST meeting the team had encouraged us to wait until he was 6 to just make sure that this isn't a maturity issue. Although my gut told me it wasn't a maturity issue we did agree to wait until he turned 6 to reconvene.
Long story short, they were not very helpful and actually pushed off his testing to the beginning of first grade. Once they formally assessed him they did note that he presented with ADHD-Combined (we have a formal diagnosis as well) but since he falls in the "low/average range" for state scores (even though he is reading at an emerging kinder level for our district) they determined he did not meet the criteria for an IEP. We left the initial meeting feeling defeated, unheard and concerned that our son will continue to just flounder. We ended up hiring an educational advocate who helped us reconvene our SST team and share our disappointment that they didn't find he qualified. They offered us a 504 plan and we have been trying our best to get the most out of it but at our teacher conference this week his classroom teacher said that he isn't advancing as quickly as he could because he needs more support (not just modifications that come with a 504). The teacher, as well as our pediatrician have concerns about his auditory processing speed and also his lack of fine motor skills (poor pencil grasp, incomplete letter formation, etc). I really feel like because our son doesn't have behavior issues (he is very social, has friends and can keep himself from wiggling too much with the help of his hokkei stool and fidget toys) his needs aren't being addressed very quickly.
It is our understanding that as parents we have the right to request an Independent Educational Evaluation performed by people outside the school psych and resource specialist to better understand his issues and ultimately help him get more support so he can thrive and not struggle so much but I am not sure how to request this. We'd like to do at least some of it on our own to save some money on educational consultants but we honestly aren't even sure where to start.
Any advice, suggestions or experience in this are would be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Concerned and overwhelmed mama
Nov 29, 2017
Hello! I hope you get some good advice on the schools, we're in Albany so I can't speak to that element. What I can speak to is being a parent of an ADHD kid and that I wish I had started my parent coaching in elementary school. The most effective thing you can do is get coaching for yourself. How we parent our neurodivergent kids is different, and all the things I tried are on the laundry list of "what not to do." I have had great success with Jed Purses who has an office on upper Solano in Berkeley. For ADHD school support we didn't get it until middle school, but it didn't seem difficult to qualify for, but again, we're in Albany.
Also keep in mind that all kids have their own journey, and a happy kid is a successful kid. Best of luck!
It was a looong time ago, and my kids are now adults, but the younger one with learning differences—but not adhd—went to Madera while the older one—no diagnosed learning differences, but I suspect some were present—attended BUSD. We had just moved from Berkeley to El Cerrito and my husband had an office in Berkeley, so enrolling in the two different school districts made sense for us, at the time.
We got an IEP for the younger child, who had just repeated first grade at a private school and wasn’t progressing or happy. Madera did a great job providing services. Four tutoring sessions a week plus two OT sessions at another location, after school. At the end of his first year at Madera, our son was in the gifted program as well as receiving services through his IEP. Once he was progressing, I did have to effectively make a case that progress did not mean it was time to remove all the services which supported him. Madera cut back some and we supplemented with increased private learning specialist services, after school. It was totally worth it.
By contrast, the older child got absolutely no individual attention at BUSD, after skipping a year in the transition from private to public school, and problems ensued for her. After two years, we applied for a scholarship and enrolled her in a private school, for high school.
Both kids grew up to become amazing, happy, well-functioning adults. Good luck! I hope this helps, some. Of course, the political climate is different now, which may affect IEP services in California schools.
We're in BUSD and had the school district assess our kid for dyslexia in 3rd grade. It moved fast to do so, I think as required by law, and the person who did the assessment was qualified and credible. However, the threshold for qualifying for an IEP seemed high since they told us our kid had zero issues despite scoring below the 10th percentile in some areas. Their teacher put them in reading intervention anyway (with our agreement and support) and so they got about as much help as the District could provide through elementary school. We also got private tutoring, which made a bigger difference.
In middle school, we had Kaiser assess for ADHD. The school district doesn't do that. Our well behaved, inattentive kid didn't check the right boxes for screening, though, and so Kaiser wouldn't proceed. After getting a private assessment, BUSD accepted the ADHD diagnosis readily and provided the 504 plan with all of the accommodations our neuropsychologist recommended. Overall, teachers and administration have been supportive but our kid also hasn't asked for much or used many of the accommodations. Also, they needed tutoring to fill in big academic gaps, partly related to Covid and partly because they just weren't learning effectively in large class settings and they resisted intervention at that age.
The good news is that medication, age, and maturity have all helped a lot, and so the same kid is now thriving academically. We'll see how that holds up when academics get harder, but remember that these things change over time. Good luck!!