IEP Team Determination of Itinerant Service Obligations
Development Date: 5/1/14
Situation:
Related services of an itinerant special education provider are written into a student’s IEP
resulting in a schedule of direct service tied to student goals, or supplementary services, such as
teacher consultation designed to be on-going throughout the IEP implementation period. The
problem occurs when the itinerant staff member is not consulted as a result of not being part of
the IEP team (not in attendance) when the service is specified in the IEP, or description of the
service significantly differs from the prior consultation of the provider as indicated in a shared,
written draft prepared for the IEP team meeting.
Necessary Consideration in Provision of Best Practice Services:
Itinerant special education service providers have training and qualifications that allow them to
assess student functioning from a unique professional perspective and to intervene in a skilled
manner according to the requirements of their professional specialty. As a result, their services
are written in to IEPs in order to provide particular value to the service that would not be present
without their involvement. They are uniquely qualified to understand the benefits and limitations
of their own specialty services. For these reasons, decisions by IEP team members without this
specialty training as to why, how, when, and for what length of time to provide which particular
services of these specialists are subject to a significant amount of error in attempting to calculate
true student benefit. It is not benevolent or value neutral to provide services to a student when
they are not needed, or a different service would better meet the need.
In general, raising concerns in a question/answer format with the specialist under consideration
can help to fine tune decisions and clear up misconceptions. Questions that need to be addressed
to specialists include:
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Is there evidence to indicate whether the student needs a particular service in order to
access or make progress in the general curriculum? If not, how could this evidence be
obtained?
What is the relative benefit of this service in comparison to other options that are
available or could be made available?
Is this something that requires provision by the specialist in order to add the necessary
value for the intervention to succeed?
Does expertise already exist within the competencies of available, on site staff, or can
these staff be trained to competently provide the necessary service in a reasonable
amount of time?
Is further assessment necessary to answer essential service provision questions?
Guidance on Best Practice:
When attending an IEP team meeting, a situation may arise in which a suggestion comes up to
provide an itinerant specialist service, but that specialist is not present at the meeting for
discussion. Even if there had been prior consultation with a specialist, other service ideas might
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IEP Team Determination of Itinerant Service Obligations
Development Date: 5/1/14
be considered based on IEP team meeting discussion. If provision of an itinerant service is
contemplated under these circumstances, do the following.
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Table the IEP team meeting so that the specialist can be present to complete the
discussion.
OR
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Complete the IEP with the recognition that this single issue needs to be explored further
before a decision can be made that adds this service.
o On the meeting notice of district intent to implement page, state the
recommendation that was raised and that it was decided not to accept this
recommendation until it could be evaluated further.
o Begin a REED with this question in mind for further assessment by the specialist.
o Finish the REED with involvement of the specialist.
o If consulting with the specialist results in a consensus decision that additional
information, such as could be gathered by carrying out an evaluation, but service
seems appropriate, consider an IEP Amendment. Otherwise, carry out an
evaluation to address the question of service need, and schedule an IEP to resolve
this issue at an IEP team meeting.
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