KGK celebrates 10 years helping students!!!

The Arizona special education law firm of Kirsch-Goodwin & Kirsch, PLLC, celebrates ten (10) years this summer helping students with special education needs and their families navigate special education in school and obtain the services and supports to which they are entitled.  The firm's attorneys, Lori Kirsch-Goodwin & Hope Kirsch, are seasoned litigators and have been helping families long before they opened up Kirsch-Goodwin & Kirsch ("KGK").  Hope has been involved in special education for 40 years, beginning as a special education teacher and school administrator.  She has attended hundreds of IEPs, as a teacher, as a special education superviser, as an attorney.  Lori is the mother of a young adult on the spectrum, and through Lori's advocacy on behalf of her son, he is living independently and attending college.  Lori has walked in your shoes.  Hope knows how schools operate.  Together, they have forged a special education practice throughout Arizona, and every day they are thankful for the opportunity to work together and to help children of all ages and their parents.  They do what they love and love what they do.
See the news article about the beginning of KGK here:
http://archive.azcentral.com/abgnews/articles/0824abg-sr-smallibz0824.html  

Don't let RTI delay special education evaluation

School districts and charter schools that fail to evaluate or delay evaluating a student because the student is receiving RTI interventions may be violating their Child Find duties.  Recently one court granted parents reimbursement for private placement when the judge determined that the school failed to evaluate a student for Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) because it was providing RTI.  In that case, the school district refused to evaluate a 2md grade student who was reading significantly below grade level.  The school argued that the student could make some progress with classroom interventions. An independent evaluation showed that the child may have had a specific learning disability in reading and so the judge fules that the district should have evaluated the  student for special education.  Although RTI interventions may help students who need additional academic support, schools may not use the RTI process to delay providing comprehensive evaluations for students with suspected disabilities. The court found that the school district had enough information to suspect that the child needed special education, and so becasue the shcool did not evalute the student, the court held that the district denied the child FAPE, and awarded parents reimbursement .

Remember, school districts and charter schools have an on-going affirmative duty under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to locate, identify, and evaluate all students who MAY need special education due to a disability.  Schools can find themselves in hot water if they tell parents that they have no reason to believe that the student ha an IDEA-eligible disability.  Schools that can show progress using RTI may be better able to show that RTI is working, but if the student is not making progress, then the school may be denying the student a FAPE if it does not evaluate the student for special education.

For more information:  KGK Law