An IMPORTANT Message for our Established Advocacy Clients:

Dear Members of Our Families,

We are writing to remind you of two important policies that help us advocate for your children. These policies pertain to annual review appointments and continuation of services in a new school year.

First Policy: Annual Review Appointments

As we are a small not-for-profit, we only have one unpaid volunteer advocate. Unfortunately, the demands for her time are formidable. This is why we are urging our existing clients to recognize that, in order to ensure that the advocate will be available to attend your IEP meeting, you must make every effort to schedule it several months in advance.

As a result of the advocate’s significant time limitations, we ask that parents make every effort to have the date of their child’s annual review meetings pre-scheduled as soon as possible. Sadly, last school year many of our clients waited until the school contacted them to arrange their meeting dates. Typically, this occurred two weeks prior to the projected date of review. When they attempted to secure advocacy services for their meeting, they found that the advocate was unavailable. Because clients have been inadvertently waiting for the school to contact them to schedule their annual review meetings, our advocate has been unable to attend meetings with existing clients meetings because she was already booked by new clients who had scheduled their meetings long in advance.

To make sure that our existing clients are not left to attend IEP meetings unrepresented, we have developed the following suggested guidelines to follow.

In order to help ensure that our advocate can attend your meeting, please take the following actions:

• Please check the upper right hand corner of your child’s most recently developed IEP for the Projected Annual Review Date. This date represents the expiration date of the IEP—meaning that your child’s annual review meeting must take place on or before that date.
• Following the suggested time frame presented below, please contact your teacher and ask to schedule your annual review in advance.
  • If your child’s projected date of annual review is on or before December 24, 2014 of this school year, please contact your school in the first week of September 2014 to request a date for your meeting.
  • If the projected date of annual review is between January 2, 2015 and February 28, 2015, please contact your school no later than the first week of October 2014 to request a date for your meeting.
  • If the projected date of annual review is between March 1, 2015 and April 30, 2015, please contact your school no later than the last week of December 2014 to request a date for your meeting
  • If your child’s projected date of annual review is between May 1, 2015 and June 26, 2015, please contact your school in the first week of February 2015 to request a date for your meeting.
  • In addition to the above time frame, there are two deadlines which take precedence.
    • If you are seeking modified promotional criteria for the current school year, your letter must go in by the first two weeks October. The deadline for adding these criteria to your IEP is January 31^st. Therefore, you must contact your school to request a date for your annual review meeting by October.
    • If your child requires new testing accommodations for state tests, your letter must go in by December. The deadline for adding these accommodations to your IEP is February. Therefore, you must contact your school to request a date for your annul review meeting by December.
    • If your child requires new testing accommodations for Regents Examinations, your letter must go in by the first two weeks of September 2014. Regents are given in January, June and August.

• In your letter to the school, please be sure to request the date of the meeting immediately so that the advocate has at least 12-16 weeks’ notice.
• Ensure that you have submitted a new packet, contract, and packet review fee to FHF prior to the new school year.

Second Policy: Continuation of FHF Advocacy Services

As you are already aware, FHF requires a new packet, signed contract, and packet review fee from all families every school year before any advocacy services can begin. NO NEW APPOINTMENTS (such as Annual Review Meetings) or services can be provided without these materials

A new contract must be signed and entered into during the school year or if there was an IEP developed after the signing of the last contract that the advocate was not a participant in. The only exceptions to this is when the advocate is unavailable and she instructs you to attend the meeting on your own and then to bring the IEP to her for review prior to accepting it.

The new school year begins in September for most NYC DOE students and in July for District 75 students and/or students with twelve month programs.

In order to ensure that your services from FHF are continued, please take the following actions.

• Visit our website at http://fhfnyc.org/advocacy-contract-documents/ to view the required documents.
• Download and completely read the FHF Advocacy Contract, FHF Parent Responsibilities for Advocacy Services, and FHF Mandatory Fee Schedule. Please note that all of these documents have changed since you last read them.
• Return a printed, signed, original copy of the Advocacy Contact, a complete packet, and the packet review fee* as specified in the fee schedule.
• Do this just prior to the start of the new school year.

* Please note: a sliding fee scale and/or fee waivers are available for all families who are experiencing financial hardship. Those fees will be determined upon submission of proof of income and/or proof of need.

Thank you very much for taking the time to heed this important notice.

Thank you,

Families Helping Families Resource and Recreation Center
112B Petrus Ave,
Staten Island, NY 10312
718 227 2171
www.fhfnyc.org
fhf@fhfnyc.org

By Gregory in Important FHF, Important News on August 14, 2014