HB 3586 – Response to Intervention and Other Special Education Requirements

On August 23, 2019, Governor Pritzker signed HB 3586 (now PA 101-____), which makes some significant changes to special education procedures. While there is some discussion about a potential legislative change in the future which would mitigate the impact of some of these measures downstate, currently these requirements are effective immediately. Many of these items have been routine practices in many school districts already, so may not constitute as significant a change from your district’s practices as compared to others. Please make sure that your special education personnel and case managers are aware that these requirements are now in effect. The new law does the following:

 Codifies the regulatory requirements that RTI is the mandatory process for determining eligibility for a specific learning disability, and expands RTI to be a permissive process for other categories of eligibility. Requires that parent be a participant in a collaborative team approach to decision-making regarding RTI. 

 Requires that no later than three school days prior to an eligibility meeting or IEP meeting that the school must provide the parents with copies of all written material that will be considered by the IEP team at the meeting so that the parent or guardian may participate in the meeting as a fully-informed team member. The written material must include, but is not limited to, all evaluations and collected data that will be considered at the meeting and, for a child who already has an IEP, a copy of all IEP components that will be discussed by the IEP team, other than the components related to the educational and related service minutes proposed for the child and the child's educational placement.

 Requires related service logs that record the type of related services administered under the child’s IEP and the minutes of each type of related service that has been administered available to the child’s parent or guardian at the annual review of the child’s IEP and must also provide a copy of the related service logs at any time upon request of the child’s parent or guardian. The local education agency must inform the child’s parent or guardian within 20 school days from the beginning of the school year or upon establishment of an IEP of his or her ability to request those related service logs. The school must provide notification to the child’s parent or guardian within 3 school days of the local education agency’s non-compliance with the child’s IEP and must include information on the parent’s or guardian’s ability to request compensatory services.

 School districts may not use any measure which would prevent or delay an IEP team from adding a service to the IEP or create a time restriction in which a service is prohibited from being added to the IEP. The school district may not build functions into its computer software that would remove any services from a student’s IEP without the approval of the IEP team and may not prohibit the IEP team from adding a service to the IEP.