With the chronic understaffing of Special Education in San Diego Unified, many educators are in need of additional resources to sustainably and appropriately support their students. See a list of highlighted resources below.

Have more resources to add to this page? Send them to kennedy_s@sdea.net

Your rights in the SDEA contract

Here are some highlighted Know Your Rights flyers related to recent issues that have come up regarding supporting students with IEPs:

• For Ed Specialists:
  • KYR: Special Education Caseload
• For all educations:
  • KYR: Standing up for Special Education
  • KYR: IEP Meetings & General Meeting Attendance
  • KYR: Student Discipline
  • KYR: Supporting Students with IEPs in the General Education Classroom – NEW

Special Education Resources from CTA

Our state affiliate has a hub of Special Education Resources to support members with a variety of issues related to Special Education:

**You will need to log into your CTA account to access some resources

• A variety of recorded webinars are available, including videos on:
  • Co-Teaching
  • MTSS
  • Class Size and Caseloads
  • IEP Rights and Responsibilities
  • IEP Meetings – 3 part series meant to inform best practices for IEP team meetings for both new and veteran educators
• Answers to Frequently Asked Questions:
  • IEP FAQ
  • 504 Plan FAQ
• Navigating Special Education as a General Education Teacher: Slide Deck – This may be useful for site-based professional learning
• Special Education Resources Guide**  – This extensive guide has a clickable table of contents and provides information on:
  • Special Education issues in the law, including:
  • IEP Rights & Responsibilities
  • Caseloads/Workload information and analysis tools
  • Information about Safety, Social Emotional Learning & Mental Health
  • Social Justice Tools

Additional Resources

• Disability Rights California
  These are high quality resources designed for parents but useful for educators as well, both for providing to parents but also understanding what parents have access to. Includes toolkits like “Behavior & Discipline” and “Disagreements with the District.”
• Special Education Rights & Responsibilities
  This interactive manual from Disability Rights California includes chapters on the left to find answers to some common questions related to specific topics like Due Process, Evaluations, Early Intervention, and lots more.
• Crisis & Trauma Resources Institute
  These resources for critical incident debriefing could be useful for schools navigating threats and how to follow up on the impacts on the community. This includes Indigenous perspectives and not just a Western lens.

Key considerations:

Student Discipline

One of the contractual rights of SDEA members is the right to suspend students from their class for specific reasons, per 11.7.3. However, there are legal considerations when it comes to suspensions and student discipline for students with IEPs. The CTA Special Education Resource Guide breaks down these considerations in Ed Code on pages 52-55. When dealing with discipline issues in your classroom, this may be a good resource to review before meeting with administration, so you are aware of your students’ legal rights to a free, accessible public education and how that relates to discipline.

Injury to Employees

Unfortunately, educators sometimes get injured – especially in chronically understaffed schools. Some things to know:

• Ed Code (44014.) specifies that appropriate law enforcement needs to be notified in the case of an attack, assault, or physical threat against any employee. Failure to make this report can result in a fine. However, a student’s age or cognitive/emotional impairment can be considered when evaluating whether a child actually had intent or ability to cause an injury. See page 55 of the CTA Special Education Resource Guide.
• Even interaction with police at school can negatively impact students and contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline, which is why there has been advocacy in California to change the law to give educators more say in whether or not to involve the police. Read this CalMatters story about AB 2441, which recently failed to pass.
• See SDUSD’s process here for what you should do if injured on the job. If there are issues with denied Workers’ Compensation claims, SDEA members have access to free legal consultations.