Michelle Becker: Welcome to a Peaceful Path Special education legal advocacy for families with children that have special needs.
Kevin Rosenquist: Welcome back to A Peaceful Path Special education legal advocacy for families with children that have special needs with Michelle Becker. Michelle is a special education attorney who helps parents navigate the school system with clarity and confidence. I'm Kevin Rosenquist and today we're talking about what happens when a child's behavior becomes a barrier to, to learning. These situations can feel confusing and of course, emotional. But Michelle's here to explain what parents can expect and how to protect their child's right to a supportive education. Michelle, it's great to see you.
Michelle Becker: Good to be here. Good to be back.
Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, for sure. So when, parents call you because their child is being sent home or facing suspension, what usually what's happening at that point? What emotions are they bringing into the first conversation?
Michelle Becker: It depends on whether or not the kid has been in trouble a lot before. Right, right. School districts are approach discipline in an unusual way and every school district, every grade, every level of grades approaches it differently because I mean, bigger kids, bigger problems. Right. So if I get a kid like a parent who's calling me when their kid is in kindergarten and getting suspended, which I have experienced, they're surprised because first of all, they don't think a kindergartner could do anything worthy of suspension. And at the same time, you know, I could have a first time high schooler whose parent is calling me and their kid is getting suspended for something wildly unexpected. So I think that, most parents actually when they call me are in disbelief. But there's some, who probably saw this coming. So, it's kind of like once you get to the point where the kid has been suspended, it's almost like the initial conversation is more of a heart to heart about what's been going on with the kid. Right. Because it takes, it takes some doing to get suspended. And you know, it's, it's not being truant and it's not cheating. It's definitely usually violating some school policy. That is where the kid is hurting himself or hurt a kid or doing some crazy stuff like climbing up a fence onto the roof. Right. So it, there's lots of stuff that happens and by the time the parents call you, they kind of know, except for those really young kids, that something has been going on that hasn't been totally managed the right way and that now it's time for the suspension conversation.
Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. In a special education setting for parents who haven't encountered it before, what kind of behaviors Cause disciplinary action. You mentioned some extreme ones of climbing up on the roof and stuff like that. Are there other things that maybe are a little, a little less obvious that can cause this?
Michelle Becker: So I think that, it usually is, you know, kids who have behavioral issues, especially kids with disabilities. It really is a function of the disability in some form or fashion. So the, typical things are physical aggression. Right. or, you know, hitting, biting, kicking. I mean, they're pretty extreme. And you know, they, they won't necessarily be suspended for eloping or kind of running out of class. They won't really be suspended, you know, for yelling in class. Suspension comes when they've done something that has, has really violated a, an ed code suspension worthy issue. So, you know, kids don't come out of the gate biting. Right. They're leading up to that. And schools know about it. And I do think that schools try to manage it. Kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade. Small kids, small problems. But hitting and biting and kicking still causes injury to the kids. It could be the teachers and it could be themselves. So parents are coming to me at that stage. a lot of times what happens is there'll be lots of, afternoon, you know, pick up when, when parents are coming for pickup.
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Michelle Becker: they'll have conversations with the teachers and the teachers will tell them about what happened today. They cut in line, they pushed Johnny, they, they, they. So a lot of that happens and that could actually go on for months. And the parents don't realize that these behaviors are actually more extreme than are even really being described by the teacher. It's not until they get suspended and you're like, what? We've been having this conversation. Jimmy's been hitting or, you know, pushing or butting in line, and now all of a sudden he's suspended. So they're surprised. But stuff, has been happening all along.
Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, I mean, I have, I have a preschooler and there are times when, like, I feel like they won't tell us certain things. And we have a pretty good kid, but he, you know, he gets in trouble sometimes. They all do. Every preschool does. You know, and, and sometimes we find out about it later and, and my wife is the first one to say, like, I want them to tell me this stuff because we can handle it. You know, we'll talk to him, we'll make sure he understands the importance of this. He'll have it at home and at school. is there a reason that you think that the parents are kind of left in the dark about this stuff?
Michelle Becker: Yeah. I don't even think it's left in the dark. I think that there is, there's a gray, gray hazy line between what's a problem and what's not a problem.
Kevin Rosenquist: It's just a preschooler being a preschooler in my scenario.
Michelle Becker: Exactly. You know, and then all of a sudden it's like there's a bright line. Okay, this was over the line and now we have to do something about it. I do think it's less. I think that teachers and administrators, could tattle on kids probably every day.
Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, you're probably right. Especially younger ones.
Michelle Becker: Yes. Yeah. And so I really do believe that the intent, and this isn't to say that I'm on the school district side with any of this, but at the same time, kids do, Kids are naughty a lot. And, and some kids are really good, but they're missing everything because they're just in lava land. Right. So, so I do think that it's, it's, it's fine. It's manageable. It's fine. It's manageable. Until it's not.
Kevin Rosenquist: Until it's not.
Michelle Becker: And then the kid gets suspended and the parent is like, surprised. Like using your preschool son, you hear about these things. You hear about these things and then all of a sudden he comes home with the suspension notice. You're like, what? How did that, like really? My kid did this? Well, your kid's been doing all these things all along. Nobody's been telling you because it's like in that gray area of being a problem.
Kevin Rosenquist: Right.
Michelle Becker: And there isn't so much classroom management that goes on with a bunch of squirrely elementary school kids.
Michelle Becker: Right. It's not until middle school and high school that real damage can be done.
Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, that's very true. How do laws like the Individuals with Disabilities Education act, idea affect, the way schools handle discipline for students with IEPs or 504 plans. So.
Michelle Becker: Basically the way the law is structured, you know, kids with IEPs and 504 plans can get in trouble and suspended for the same things as other kids. There isn't some rule that says you can't be suspended for this stuff. Where this matters is after. And it's funny because the language is precise, but when you've been suspended 10 or more days there, that's when the legal process starts. And the legal process for kids with IEPs, not 504 plans, but kids with IEPs, basically what happens is you start, you have to hold what's called a manifestation, determination, meeting. Ah. And it's still an iep, but it's a whole different packet of paperwork. And basically at the point in time when you're out of school for 10 or more days, you need to meet as a team and identify whether or not the 10th day behavior or if there's been a cumulative 10 days of the same behavior was a manifestation of the child's disability. And if it was a manifestation of the child's disability, you have to go back and basically do more work or shore up the IEP or do a functional behavioral analysis to determine how better to support the kid once that 10 or more days
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Michelle Becker: hits. there's two questions that are asked in the manifestation determination. One is, you know, is this, a function of the kid's disability? The second one is, did this kid's iep? Was this kid's IEP being implemented correctly? And if either one of those is no, you have to go back to the drawing board and start working on a plan to help this kid. So, you know, 10 or more days of suspension or what do you do with the kid? Put them back in school. You know, do a 45 day emergency placement. There's a lot of different steps and it's, you know, too short of a podcast to go into the detail, but manifestation determination is how kids are protected from being suspended or expelled because of their, the, their acts. Right. There's the due process measure of, of did this kid do this because this is part of his disability. You don't want to penalize a kid for their disability. You just need to do better. Yeah. And you know, I could give you, there's so many different types of, scenarios that come up with this, where yeah, you just do the fba, you've solved the problem, you're off to the races. Sometimes you have to, do a 45 day emergency placement because the kid actually may be a danger to himself or to other kids. And so you put them someplace else. And now since COVID and virtual learning is so, prevalent among, the school districts here In California, the 45 day alternative placement has now kind of become a home hospital or independent study at home rather than finding them another school location for 45 days, which I think is actually better.
Michelle Becker: Because it's not like getting adjusted to another school and then coming back to the old school. So there are protections in place. It's not great because when you're there, the kid is, the kid has been experiencing a lot of emotional or behavioral stuff and now here you are having to solve a bigger problem. So it's, it's, I would say behavioral issues. Suspension, expulsion. That is probably some of the hardest and more tangly stuff to deal with because it's it's not that easy to figure out.
Kevin Rosenquist: Right. Do you find that, that a lot of times the school treats the behavior as defiance instead of a symptom of a disability.
Michelle Becker: So I think a lot of that has to do with how dialed in the school district is with the kid, the family and the iep, right? Because you may have a kid who is, you know, behaving naughty and then they end up having to do the psychoeducational assessment or a functional behavioral analysis. And you find out, well, this kid has autism. And we, you know, based on psychoeducational evaluation and we're noticing these things and these things, or they go to their doctor and find out the kid has, you know, oppositional defiant disorder. Now all of a sudden you know more about this kid. And it's not just him being naughty. There's emotional dysregulation issues, there's coping skills issues. And once you can kind of identify those, then clearly it's not a kid being a bad kid. It's the disability impacting his ability to cope and re regulate and manage maybe what might be an overwhelming and overstimulating environment that nobody had an idea about until you get to this point.
Kevin Rosenquist: You mentioned the fba, the functional behavior Assessment. When should a parent ask for one of those? And what is the end goal with these FBAs?
Michelle Becker: So the FBA I. When an FDA is done. Well, they're amazing, right? Because what the goal is, the goal could be to find out the function of the behavior, which, you know, there's basically four functions. escape, sensory, access to, you know, tangible items or attention. Right.
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Michelle Becker: So there's four key functions and you might figure out exactly what that is. You will, you likely will. sometimes FBAs are done to determine the need of a one to one aid. Right? So they could be done to identify the function of a behavior. Often school districts will use it for the one to one aid assessments. So basically the beauty of a functional behavioral analysis is you have somebody observing the kid over, let's just say 10 hours in a variety of environments like you know, in the classroom, during carpet time, during recess, you know, different types, different times of the day, doing non preferred activities, doing preferred activities. And then they basically take two minute by two minute data. And ultimately this is what he did. This is what happened. it comes out to be a, ah, report that says, these are the things that happened. This is what happened just before called the antecedent. This is the behavior that occurred, and this is the consequence or what happened as a result of the behavior. Did they get the attention they needed? Did they get the item they were looking for? For. So, so basically you get an ABC chart. What was the antecedent? Maybe the antecedent is non, preferred activities. The kid doesn't like writing. It's time to write. So the kid got up and ran out the door. Every time there was a writing assignment, okay, the behavior was escape. The consequence was obviously he escaped and he didn't have to do the assignment. Right. So it's an analytical model to really narrow in on, what the kid's behaviors are and why the kid is doing it. And you're watching him across a variety of settings to see if you find a lot of consistencies in general. You do, right? And then once you do, you're able to say, okay, this kid doesn't like writing. Awesome. Now we need to figure out why he doesn't like writing. Right? Is it hand fatigue? Is it, you know, he. He doesn't know how to form his letters. What is it? Now? Let's drill down and identify what's going on. And from there, you just, you build a behavior intervention plan and you write a goal, and then that becomes behavior intervention support might become part of the service model, it might become part of the accommodations, and it'll certainly become a goal. and all of that ties together for the team to use this behavior intervention plan to ultimately, help this kid develop the skills necessary to overcome that behavior.
Kevin Rosenquist: That sounds like a great program, honestly.
Michelle Becker: Yeah, it is. And, you know, the, the better written the program is, the better the results, I believe. Right. Because you figure a kid has, you know, all service providers participating in that. Everyone needs to understand it. Everyone needs to. One of the key elements of, a behavior intervention plan, it's called the ferb, Functionally Equivalent replacement behavior. So, for example, instead of escaping, which is what the kid is doing now, I don't want to ride. I'm going to run out the door. You get your task that says it's time to write, and your behavior may be using your words to say, I, don't want to write right now, or can I type? Or can I take a break? Or can I say the words and you write, you know, just whatever functionally equivalent to escaping. Like, if I If you don't want the kid to escape, what do you want them to do instead of.
Kevin Rosenquist: Right. What is the. What is the best option that we can do here?
Michelle Becker: Yeah, exactly. So, so you teach the kid that. That becomes the goal, the behavior goal. And everybody who works with this kid knows what to expect and what to ask for. In this case, if you don't want to write, what do you do? Oh, I'm supposed to say, I, don't want to do that. Now, can I type or can you scribe? It's all tied in together.
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Michelle Becker: If it's done right, everyone reinforces it. And over time, the kid learns the functionally equivalent replacement behavior rather than the target behavior, which in this case is eloping outside the room because he doesn't want to do this thing.
Kevin Rosenquist: Wow. well, that's cool. I mean, it's cool, though, to have those programs in place to help help kids who need it and. Yeah, interesting stuff as always. Well, thanks for joining us on a peaceful path. If your child is facing disciplinary action or you're unsure whether the school is following special education rules, Michelle Becker can help you understand your options and create a plan forward. Visit michellebeckerlaw.com to learn more. And don't forget to subscribe to our channel and leave us a review. We very much appreciate it. Michelle, I love chatting with you. Thanks so much for your time.
Michelle Becker: Thanks for having me. Thanks for watching. Be sure to hit that like and subscribe button and leave us a review in the comments.
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