Dear Dawg: We’ve been looking over the data from last year with regard to student suspensions. It turns out that we have a number of students in our special education program who did not use up their “FAPE-Free Zone.” We attended one of your Toolbox workshops and we now talk about special ed discipline using the Toolbox terminology. Tool #7 is the FAPE-Free Zone—those ten days when students might be suspended from school, without services. Looking at the data, we noticed that some kids never used up the full ten days. In fact, most of them were never suspended. On the other hand, we have a few “frequent fliers” who seem to need more than ten days. So we are thinking of establishing a FAPE-Free Zone bank, kind of like our sick leave bank.

Let’s say we have Student A, who never gets suspended, and Student B who gets suspended a lot. If Student B goes past ten, we would tap into the bank, withdraw a few days from Student A’s account, and add them to Student B’s. Voila! We never go past the FAPE-Free Zone! Waddyathink? THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX OUT HERE.

DEAR THINKING OUTSIDE: We think you ought to get back in the box. FAPE Free days cannot be transferred from one student to another. The FAPE Free Zone is like your birthday. When it’s over for the year, it’s over. Of course administrators do have disciplinary options beyond the FAPE-Free Zone as we discussed in the Toolbox training, but creating a FFZ Bank is not one of them. Thanks for attending the Toolbox training, but we’re not sure you were paying adequate attention when we reviewed Tool #7. If you want a refresher on the Toolbox, get in touch.

DAWG BONE: FAPE FREE DAYS ARE NOT TRANSFERRABLE!

File this one under SPECIAL EDUCATION DISCIPLINE

TOMORROW: A FERPA CHALLENGE TO STAAR.