Friends:

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The State Board of Education is scheduled to hold a first hearing on new Oregon Administrative Rules on complaints and appeals

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The board’s rules only require that dockets be posted one day before the board meeting which will take place on Thursday.? However, the staff to the Department shared their draft some time ago and made it public. The current version seems to be the same as the one they shared previously.? You can find it here:

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The rules for complaints and appeals include the rules for appeals related to the Division 22 Standards for education which include the three TAG Administrative Rules covering identification, services, and the rights of students and parents.? When districts violate these rules, families must follow the complaint and appeal process which gives the district a maximum of 90 days to respond and then permits an appeal to the Department of Education if the district does not resolve the complaint.? The proposal sets a limitation of one year for initiating appeals and gives the Department 270 days to “resolve” an appeal after it is submitted.

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It seems that when the State Board revised the identification rule, it unintentionally removed the right of families to appeal to the Department of Education when a district did not identify a student.? That’s because the new rule removed the absolute score cutoff from the criteria for identification and left identification procedures up to district policies and practices.?

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Unless a rule says that district policies and practices must be applied, or implemented, they can’t be appealed. ?I flagged this at the time, but no one paid attention. ?I don’t know whether it is reasonable to keep appeals over identification within districts or to allow people to appeal to the state, but I have not received a lot of mail from families about this problem. Given the extremely long delays at the state level, it might make more sense for a family to renominate their student the following year than to wait for the state to rule.? I have included a general comment about this in my own comments, but I haven’t applied it to TAG issues.

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There is a public hearing on the revisions on TUESDAY (tomorrow) at 3:00 PM.? The public hearing is usually informal.? You can find more information and a link if you wish to listen in or comment here:

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This link will take you to the welcome page of the State Board of Education with more information on how to participate

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If you wish to participate, please sign up for either the public hearing or the Board meeting or submit testimony in writing.? You have to sign up to give oral testimony to the Board.

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Margaret

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