My experience with Section 504s...

Well, after creating this blog a year ago, I’m being forced to actually use it thanks to Dr. Lashley, my Special Ed:  Policy and Law professor.  So, without further ado, here is my first posting in my first blog!  

Over the weekend, I began reading the 3^rd edition of “The Law and Special Education” by Mitchell L. Yell, one of the required textbooks for my class.  I was especially interested in Chapter 5 since it covered Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.    In my previous life as a Deaf/Hard of Hearing Support Itinerant Teacher who taught in many different school districts in Pennsylvania, I often ran into problems when it came to the Section 504 versus the Individualized Education Plan (IEP).  

Many of my districts thought that writing the 504 plan was one of my responsibilities as the itinerant teacher who provided special education services to the student in question.  They seemed to think of the 504 as a watered down IEP.  I can see why this confusion would occur because the districts tended to write 504s for the students who were dismissed from the Deaf/Hard of Hearing Support Program.  Rather than just dismiss the student from receiving special education services altogether, the districts wanted to set up a 504 to keep some of the same supports in place for the student.  However, the school would be responsible for providing the special education support rather than the hearing itinerant since the itinerant was employed by an outside educational agency from the district.  

Ideally, what should have happened, as Yell states in his book, the 504 coordinator should have been the one to write/implement the 504.  Yell also discusses the importance of having a general education administrator be assigned the role of 504 coordinator rather than the special education director.  In the districts where I worked, there was a shift, over a period of the seven years that I worked there, from the guidance counselors being in charge of writing and carrying out the 504s to the assistant principals and principals doing it to the newly hired 504 coordinator being assigned the task.  

Personally, I liked having the 504 coordinator be in charge of the meetings/paperwork/carrying out the 504 but they still expected me to write it even though I should not have.  Another experience that I had, in a different district, was when an assistant principal point blank told me that he knew nothing of the new student with hearing loss who had moved in from out of state, that he had no idea what supports worked for him or her, and that he was not going to write the 504.  He basically let me know that the 504 was not going to be written unless I took it upon myself to do it by doing some digging and going through old files simply because I was the hearing itinerant teahcer.  I was able to compose a draft of the 504 using the expired IEP and after talking with the members of the team.  I then left the draft of the 504 with the assistant principal who proceeded to hold the meeting without me, since I technically was not a part of the 504 team.  

I have also been expected to add the students who received 504s to my roster of students to teach or consult with even though I was only to see the students who were accepted into the Deaf/Hard of Hearing Support Program and had an IEP.  Even after explaining this difference to various administrators and counselors I worked with, many of them would take me aside and ask me to do them a "favor" and help them by writing it anyway.  When I read the statement from Yell that said that Section 504 is a general education law, not a special education law, I thought how I wish the administrators and counselors I worked with in the past would have realized that.  It would have saved all of us a lot of confusion and extra work.

I am thankful now that more and more of my former districts are making use of a 504 coordinator so that there is more consistency in the paperwork and the administrators realize there is a difference between what itinerants do with an IEP and what 504 teams do with their paperwork.  Reading Chapter 5 made me understand more clearly the differences between the two forms of paperwork but one question was also raised.  Why are there no specific timelines for conducting an evaluation when working on a 504?    Since there are no timelines, my worry is that the student who needs the 504 may not get the services he or she needs in a timely manner since there is no deadline that needs to be met.  Are districts able to impose their own deadlines (i.e., require a referral for a 504 to be completed within 45 school days)?

Yell, M.L.  (2012).  The law and special education.  (3^rd Ed.).  

        Merrill Prentice-Hall:  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Pearson 

        Education.