HB3586 101ST GENERAL ASSEMBLY

LRB101 09750 AXK 54851 b

101ST GENERAL ASSEMBLY
State of Illinois
2019 and 2020
HB3586

Introduced , by Rep. Fred Crespo

SYNOPSIS AS INTRODUCED:

105 ILCS 5/14-6.01	from Ch. 122, par. 14-6.01
105 ILCS 5/14-8.02f

Amends the Children with Disabilities Article of the School Code. Provides that, for the Chicago School District only, beginning with the 2019-2020 school year, the school district shall, in collaboration with its primary office overseeing special education policies, publish on the school district's publicly available website any proposed changes to its special education policies, which must be available at least 45 days before the adoption of that policy change. Provides that the school district must make the entirety of its special education Procedural Manual and any other guidance documents pertaining to special education publicly available, in print and on the school district's website, in both English and Spanish. With regard to individualized education program meetings, provides that no later than 5 school days before a child's individualized education program eligibility meeting or meeting to review a child's individualized education program, a school board or school personnel must provide the child's parent or guardian with copies of all relevant information collected about the child so that the parent or guardian may participate as a fully-informed team member of the meeting. Provides that the State Board of Education must (rather than may) create a telephone hotline to address concerns regarding the provision of special education services in a school district. Makes other changes. Effective July 1, 2019.

FISCAL NOTE ACT MAY APPLY

STATE MANDATES ACT MAY REQUIRE REIMBURSEMENT

A BILL FOR

AN ACT concerning education.

Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly:

Section 5. The School Code is amended by changing Sections 14-6.01 and 14-8.02f as follows:

(105 ILCS 5/14-6.01) (from Ch. 122, par. 14-6.01)

Sec. 14-6.01. Powers and duties of school boards. School boards of one or more school districts establishing and maintaining any of the educational facilities described in this Article shall, in connection therewith, exercise similar powers and duties as are prescribed by law for the establishment, maintenance, and management of other recognized educational facilities. Such school boards shall include only eligible children in the program and shall comply with all the requirements of this Article and all rules and regulations established by the State Board of Education. Such school boards shall accept in part-time attendance children with disabilities of the types described in Sections 14-1.02 through 14-1.07 who are enrolled in nonpublic schools. A request for part-time attendance must be submitted by a parent or guardian of the child with a disability and may be made only to those public schools located in the district where the child attending the nonpublic school resides; however, nothing in this Section shall be construed as prohibiting an agreement between the district where the child resides and another public school district to provide special educational services if such an arrangement is deemed more convenient and economical. Special education and related services must be provided in accordance with the student's IEP no later than 10 school attendance days after notice is provided to the parents pursuant to Section 300.503 of Title 34 of the Code of Federal Regulations and implementing rules adopted by the State Board of Education. Transportation for students in part time attendance shall be provided only if required in the child's individualized educational program on the basis of the child's disabling condition or as the special education program location may require.

Beginning with the 2019-2020 school year, a school board shall post on its Internet website, if any, and incorporate into its student handbook or newsletter notice that students with disabilities who do not qualify for an individualized education program, as required by the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and implementing provisions of this Code, may qualify for services under Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973 if the child (i) has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, (ii) has a record of a physical or mental impairment, or (iii) is regarded as having a physical or mental impairment. Such notice shall identify the location and phone number of the office or agent of the school district to whom inquiries should be directed regarding the identification, assessment and placement of such children.

For a school district organized under Article 34 only, beginning with the 2019-2020 school year, the school district shall, in collaboration with its primary office overseeing special education policies, publish on the school district's publicly available website any proposed changes to its special education policies, which must include any proposed policy changes made by the school district or school board. Any policy changes authorized by the school district's primary office overseeing special education policies or any other administrative office of the school district must be published on the school district's publicly available website no later than 45 days before the adoption of that policy change. Any policy changes authorized by the school board must be published on the school district's publicly available website no later than 30 days before the date of presentation to the school board for adoption. The school district's website must allow for virtual public comments on proposed special education policy changes that must be available from the date of the notification of the proposed policy change on the website until the date the policy change is adopted by the school district or until the date the policy change is presented to the school board for adoption. After the period for public comment is closed, the school district must maintain all public comments for a period of not less than 2 years from the date the special education policy change is adopted. The school district must make those public comments available to the public upon request. The school board shall, at a minimum, advertise the notice of the policy change and availability for public comment on its website.

School boards shall immediately provide upon request by any person written materials and other information that indicates the specific policies, procedures, rules and regulations regarding the identification, evaluation or educational placement of children with disabilities under Section 14-8.02 of the School Code. Such information shall include information regarding all rights and entitlements of such children under this Code, and of the opportunity to present complaints with respect to any matter relating to educational placement of the student, or the provision of a free appropriate public education and to have an impartial due process hearing on the complaint. The notice shall inform the parents or guardian in the parents' or guardian's native language, unless it is clearly not feasible to do so, of their rights and all procedures available pursuant to this Act and federal Public Law 94-142; it shall be the responsibility of the State Superintendent to develop uniform notices setting forth the procedures available under this Act and federal Public Law 94-142, as amended, to be used by all school boards. The notice shall also inform the parents or guardian of the availability upon request of a list of free or low-cost legal and other relevant services available locally to assist parents or guardians in exercising rights or entitlements under this Code. For a school district organized under Article 34 only, the school district must make the entirety of its special education Procedural Manual and any other guidance documents pertaining to special education publicly available, in print and on the school district's website, in both English and Spanish. Upon request, the school district must make the Procedural Manual and other guidance documents available in print in any other language.

Any parent or guardian who is deaf, or does not normally communicate using spoken English, who participates in a meeting with a representative of a local educational agency for the purposes of developing an individualized educational program shall be entitled to the services of an interpreter.

No student with a disability or, in a school district organized under Article 34 of this Code, child with a learning disability may be denied promotion, graduation or a general diploma on the basis of failing a minimal competency test when such failure can be directly related to the disabling condition of the student. For the purpose of this Act, "minimal competency testing" is defined as tests which are constructed to measure the acquisition of skills to or beyond a certain defined standard.

Effective July 1, 1966, high school districts are financially responsible for the education of pupils with disabilities who are residents in their districts when such pupils have reached age 15 but may admit children with disabilities into special educational facilities without regard to graduation from the eighth grade after such pupils have reached the age of 14 1/2 years. Upon a pupil with a disability attaining the age of 14 1/2 years, it shall be the duty of the elementary school district in which the pupil resides to notify the high school district in which the pupil resides of the pupil's current eligibility for special education services, of the pupil's current program, and of all evaluation data upon which the current program is based. After an examination of that information the high school district may accept the current placement and all subsequent timelines shall be governed by the current individualized educational program; or the high school district may elect to conduct its own evaluation and multidisciplinary staff conference and formulate its own individualized educational program, in which case the procedures and timelines contained in Section 14-8.02 shall apply.

(Source: P.A. 99-143, eff. 7-27-15; 99-592, eff. 7-22-16; 100-201, eff. 8-18-17; 100-1112, eff. 8-28-18.)

(105 ILCS 5/14-8.02f)

Sec. 14-8.02f. Individualized education program meeting protections ; municipality with 1,000,000 or more inhabitants.

(a) (Blank). This Section only applies to school districts organized under Article 34 of this Code.

(b) This subsection applies only to a school district organized under Article 34. No later than 10 calendar days prior to a child's individualized education program meeting or as soon as possible if a meeting is scheduled within 10 calendar days with written parental consent, the school board or school personnel must provide the child's parent or guardian with a written notification of the services that require a specific data collection procedure from the school district for services related to the child's individualized education program. The notification must indicate, with a checkbox, whether specific data has been collected for the child's individualized education program services. For purposes of this subsection (b), individualized education program services must include, but are not limited to, paraprofessional support, an extended school year, transportation, therapeutic day school, and services for specific learning disabilities.

(c) No later than 5 school days prior to a child's individualized education program eligibility meeting or meeting to review a child's individualized education program, or as soon as possible if an individualized education program meeting is scheduled within 5 school days with written parental or guardian consent, the school board or school personnel must provide the child's parent or guardian with copies of all relevant information collected about the child so that the parent or guardian may participate as a fully-informed team member of the meeting. The relevant documentation must include, but is not limited to, all evaluations and collected data that will be considered at the meeting and, for a child who is already found to be eligible for an individualized education program, a draft copy of all individualized education program components that will be discussed by the individualized education program team, other than placement or services minutes. as soon as possible if a meeting is scheduled within 5 school days with written parental consent, the school board or school personnel must provide the child's parent or guardian with a draft individualized education program. The draft must contain all relevant information collected about the child and must include, but is not limited to, the program's goals, draft accommodations and modifications, copies of all conducted evaluations, and any collected data.

(d) This subsection applies only to a school district organized under Article 34. The school district must make service logs that detail the type of services administered under a child's individualized education program and that minutes each type of service that has been administered available to the child's parent or guardian upon request. The school district must inform the child's parent or guardian of his or her ability to request those service logs at least once per school year. If a child's individualized education program team determines that certain services are required in order for the child to receive a free, appropriate public education and those services are not implemented within 10 school days after the team's determination, then the school board shall provide the child's parent or guardian with written notification that those services have not yet been administered to the child. The notification must be provided to the child's parent or guardian within 5 school days of the individualized program team's determination and must include information on the parent's or guardian's ability to request compensatory services. In this subsection, "school days" does not include days where a child is absent from school for reasons unrelated to a lack of individualized education program services.

(e) The State Board of Education must may create a telephone hotline to address concerns complaints regarding the provision of special education services in a school district or lack of special education services of a school district subject to this Section. The hotline If a hotline is created, it must be available to all children students enrolled or previously enrolled in a public school the school district, parents or guardians of those children students, and school personnel. Calls to the hotline may be made anonymously and no child If a hotline is created, any complaints received through the hotline must be registered and recorded with the State Board's monitor of special education policies. No student, parent or guardian, or member of school personnel may be retaliated against for submitting a concern complaint through a telephone hotline created by the State Board under this subsection (e). The State Board shall maintain records of the concerns submitted under this subsection for no less than 2 years following the submission of a concern. Any concerns received through the hotline from a child enrolled or previously enrolled in a school district organized under Article 34, the parent or guardian of that child, or school personnel associated with that district must be registered and recorded with the State Board's monitor of special education policies during the period of time in which the monitor is in effect.

(f) A school district subject to this Section may not use any measure that would prevent or delay an individualized education program team from adding a service to the program or create a time restriction in which a service is prohibited from being added to the program. The school district may not build functions into its computer software that would remove any services from a student's individualized education program without the approval of the program team and may not prohibit the program team from adding a service to the program.

(Source: P.A. 100-993, eff. 8-20-18.)

Section 99. Effective date. This Act takes effect July 1, 2019.