Identification Activity

Child find refers to activities undertaken by public education agencies to identify, locate, and evaluate children residing within the School’s geographic boundaries, who are suspected of having disabilities, regardless of the severity of their disability, and determine the child’s need for special education and related services. The purpose is to locate these children so that free appropriate public education can be made available. The types of disabilities that, if found, cause a child to need services are a cognitive disability (mental retardation), a hearing impairment including deafness, speech or language impairment, visual impairment including blindness, emotional disturbance, orthopedic impairment, autism, traumatic brain injury, other health impairment, specific learning disability, deaf-blindness, or multiple disabilities, by reason thereof, the disabled child needs special education and related services.

The School is required to annually provide a notice describing the identification activities and the procedures followed to ensure the confidentiality of personally identifiable information. This notice is intended to meet this requirement.

Identification activities are performed to find a child who is suspected of having a disability that would interfere with his or her learning unless special education programs and services are made available. The activities include a review of group data, conducting hearing and vision screening, assessment of the student’s academic functioning, and observation of the student displaying difficulty in behavior. Input from parents/guardians is also an information source for identification. After a child is identified as a suspected child with a disability, he or she is evaluated but is not evaluated before parents/guardians give permission for their child to be evaluated.

Confidentiality

If after screening a disability is identified, upon parent/guardian permission the child will be evaluated. A written record of the results is called an education record, which is directly related to the child and is maintained by the School. These records are considered personally identifiable to the child.

The School will gather information regarding the child’s physical, mental, emotional, and health functioning through testing and assessment, observation of the child, as well as through review of any records made available to the School through the child’s physician or other providers of services.

The School protects the confidentiality of personally identifiable information. The School will inform the parent/ guardian when this information is no longer needed to provide educational services to the child and will destroy the information at the request of the parent/guardian.

The parent/guardian of the child has a number of rights regarding the confidentiality of the child’s records. The parent/guardian has the right to inspect and review any education records related to the child that are collected, maintained, or used by the School. The School will comply with a request to review the records without unnecessary delay before any meeting regarding planning for the child’s special education program (IEP meeting), and before a hearing should there be a disagreement about how to educate the child who needs special education. In no case, may the school take more than 45 days to furnish the opportunity to inspect and review the child’s records.

The parent/guardian has the right to an explanation and interpretation of the records, to be provided copies of the records if failure to provide the copies would effectively prevent exercising the right to inspect and review the records, and the right to have a representative inspect and review the records.

Upon request, the School will provide a list of the types and the location of education records collected, maintained, or used by the agency.

The parent/guardian has the right to request amendments to their child’s education records that they believe are inaccurate or misleading, or violate the privacy or other rights of the child. The School will decide whether to amend the records within a reasonable time of receipt of the request. If the School refuses to amend the records, the parent/guardian will be notified of the refusal and right to a hearing.

Parent/guardian consent is required before personally identifiable information contained in a child’s education records is disclosed to anyone other than officials of the School collecting or using the information for purposes of identification of the child, locating the child, and evaluating the child or for any other purpose of making available a free appropriate public education to the child. A school official has a legitimate educational interest if the official needs to review an education record in order to fulfill his or her professional responsibility. Additionally, the School, upon request, discloses records without consent, to officials of another School in which the child seeks or intends to enroll.

When a child reaches age 18, the rights of the parent/guardian with regard to the confidentiality of personally identifiable information are transferred to the student.

Complaints alleging failures of the School with regard to confidentiality of personally identifiable information may be filed with:

Family Policy Compliance Office
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, D.C. 20202-4605

The School will be providing ongoing screening services. If you wish to learn more, have questions, or believe your child may need to be identified, please contact Principal – Walter Thompson at (330) 753-1000