PIC/Family Voices Podcast Episode 19: IEP Team Meeting Facilitation: Helping Teams Work Better Together

Emily Woodward PIC (00:02.39)
Today we’ll explore a strategy that both parents and school staff can use when IEP teams, Individualized Education Program, are struggling to communicate effectively. Most of us have experienced moments when it feels like everyone is on a different page and progress seems stalled. To guide us through this topic, we’re joined today by Janel LeBlanc, Education Consultant with the New Hampshire Department of Education.

She will introduce the Individualized Education Program, IEP Team Meeting Facilitation Program, a resource designed to support teams and help having more productive student-focused discussions, especially when communication has become a barrier. Welcome, Janel. Thank you for being here.
 
Janel LeBlanc – NHED (00:49.848)
Thanks Emily for having me.
 
Emily Woodward PIC (00:55.424)
Janel, what is the IEP Team Meeting Facilitation Program and its intent?
 
Janel LeBlanc – NHED (01:02.894)
IEP Team meeting facilitation is the mildest form of dispute resolution offered in the state of New Hampshire. I like to think about dispute resolution in special education almost as like a salsa spiciness analogy. And IEP Team meeting facilitation would definitely be the mildest salsa. It’s a process that IEP teams can use as soon as they start to struggle with that communication at the sort of the first signs of a communication breakdown or when a disagreement just kind of starts to brew and it’s completely voluntary. So both the family and the school district have to agree to participate in a facilitated IEP team meeting. And what happens is an outside facilitator, a facilitator provided by the NH Department of Education joins your IEP team meeting, and they join that familiar environment, that team that is familiar with each other, rather than moving the process outside of the IEP team. And IEP team meeting facilitation is meant to be a process that feels safe and supported and accessible. For parents and school staff to address those barriers before they engage in some of those spicier dispute resolution procedures like a state complaint or due process or even before a family feels like they have to hire an advocate or an attorney or anything like that.
 
Janel LeBlanc – NHED (03:20.352)
It’s an opportunity really at its heart, being the mildest form of dispute resolution, to proactively address challenges when they first appear, rather than letting things stew or get worse.
 
 Emily Woodward PIC (03:46.4)
 Thank you. I like your spicy salsa analogy there too. That’s great. Is there a certain stage of the special education process when families are able to participate in this program?
 

Janel LeBlanc – NHED (03:58.444)
Yeah, what’s great about IEP team meeting facilitation is that it can really be used at any stage in the special education process. It can be used right at the referral stage and if the team is kind of deciding whether or not to evaluate. It can be used at the evaluation stage to discuss if we’re having a disagreement about what evaluations are we going to do.  It could be used at the eligibility stage when you know, maybe the school district is proposing that a student is or is not eligible in the family kind of feels differently. And it can certainly be used once an IEP is in place and you know whether or not you know to discuss what types of services are going to be in the IP, what types of goals if there’s questions about whether or not the student is making progress. It can even be used in cases of like disciplinary removals in having an IEP Team meeting facilitator at a manifestation determination meeting. What a big bonus for IEP Team meeting facilitation is that it’s a process that can be used really at all moments in the special education process and wherever that communication breakdown kind of first starts to happen or the beginnings of a disagreement. And what’s also nice is that it’s available year round. So it can be during the school year. It can be also over the summer if that needs to be the case. So it’s offered year round as well.
 
Emily Woodward PIC (05:52.202)
What makes the IEP team meeting facilitation different from other forms of dispute resolution?
 
 Janel LeBlanc – NHED (05:59.18)
 Yeah, that’s a great question. And I’ll kind of go back to that mildest salsa analogy. And what makes IEP team meeting facilitation the mildest salsa is because it stays within the context of that IEP team meeting. IEP team meeting facilitation keeps the power and the decision making within the IEP team who knows the student the best. So all of the players at the table that are usually part of the child’s IEP team get to be there.  When more formal or more significant forms, spicier forms of dispute resolution begin to come into the picture or when more formal dispute resolution procedures are going to be used, the power moves outside of an IEP team meeting and into settings or with individuals who don’t know the child. I’ll give you a couple of examples. You know, if voluntary mediation, great process, but mediator is not necessarily familiar with the child. And, you know, not every member of the IEP team may join a mediation session.
 
Same with a special education state complaint. An investigator might not talk to all of the members of a child’s IEP team during that process. So it keeps the power in the decision making with the individuals who know the student the best. And we also know that IEP team members have worked together, you know, often for years. And it’s important that that team of people feel that they are valued members of that IEP team and that that IEP team can eventually once this little blip on the radar, you know, whether it’s a communication breakdown or a little disagreement, once this little blip has been resolved, it’s really important that this group of people, this IEP team continue to function professionally and collaboratively moving forward. And so IEP team meeting facilitation’s goal is to improve the relationships within that IEP team and to find ways to work through a disagreement or a communication breakdown collaboratively so that ideally, the team doesn’t need to be facilitated again in the future because they’ve worked on some of those skills. They’ve repaired that communication breakdown and they’ve improved their working relationship and rapport with each other, which is different for some of the other more formal dispute resolution procedures. That’s just like here’s how this disagreement is gonna be resolved. Thank you, next. It’s isolated to that particular disagreement and proposing a solution to that disagreement and less about the collaboration that has to continue once the disagreement has been worked through.
 
Emily Woodward PIC (09:54.07)
Could you tell me about who the facilitators are who work on, work during these meetings to help with the communication?
 
Janel LeBlanc – NHED (10:03.029)
Yeah, so really an IEP Team meeting facilitator, they are contracted vendors with the Department of Education. So right now we have only one, but we’re in the process of contracting with more so that we have some variability and to meet a greater need and to meet more availability when asked. And they’re chosen through a response to proposals process, an RFP process. They come, facilitators can have a variety of backgrounds. They, you know, they may be retired special education directors. They may be former special education litigators. They may be parents of children with disabilities. And it’s really important to know that it is required for IEP team meeting facilitators to have advanced experience in conflict resolution, because that is, know, moderating IEP team discussion is their function, while still having an understanding of the special education process. But they can come from a variety of backgrounds and really their expertise and their contribution to the process is going to be on moderating that discussion and working to reestablish the rapport within these IEP teams.
 
 Emily Woodward PIC (11:45.526)
 Could you tell us a little bit about the role of the facilitators in the process?
 
 Janel LeBlanc – NHED (11:51.338)
Yeah, so the role of a facilitator is first and foremost to be neutral. So it’s really important that our facilitators are not there to represent or advocate for one side or the other. They’re there to moderate the discussion within the IEP team meeting and to promote participation from all of the IEP team members. Again, going back to that idea that every member of the IEP team is a valuable and contributing member. And so how do we make sure that everyone feels supported with contributing to the discussion? To prepare for a facilitated IEP team meeting, facilitators will prepare an agenda, a meeting agenda that’s based on the meeting topics that are indicated in a request form that’s submitted to the Department of Education. We’ll see what topics the team is looking to discuss. And the facilitator will prepare an agenda to make sure that we can hit all of those topics or perhaps set up a second meeting if we can’t fit everything into one. And then when the meeting starts, the facilitator is going to display the agenda, make sure it’s agreed upon, help with introductions, introduce themselves and their role. They’ll go over some meeting norms. Meeting norms are a big deal for this process because we do want everybody to feel supported in this meeting. So we’ll go over, the facilitator will go over meeting norms and make sure we’re all set to proceed with the meeting agenda.
 
From there, the IEP team kind of starts with the first topic and the facilitator moderates the discussion from there. That may look like asking clarification questions, because we know sometimes we like to, special education involves a lot of acronyms, a lot of alphabet soup. So making sure facilitators may ask clarification questions if the parent is looking a little lost or overwhelmed with that nuanced and technical information. It may look like asking someone who has been, we’ll say sharing a lot to just to pause in order for other members of the IEP team to speak. Again, encouraging the participation of all of the members.
 
It may look like kind of some asking kind of open-ended questions to promote some collaborative problem solving. You know, it’s not the role of the facilitator to say, you know, well, here’s what I would do in that situation. Let me come in and propose some solutions here. It’s to pose questions so that the IEP team can exercise its own self-determination to solve the problem. So asking questions to promote collaborative problem solving might look like, and what has been some data that the IEP team has looked at or reviewed or collected? Are there any other resources that the team feels like it could try to solve this problem?
 
So really kind of some open-ended problem solving questions. And again, I go back to those norms. Sometimes a facilitator may need to remind a member to sort of adhere to those meeting norms so that we can have that positive, collaborative, creative problem solving discussion that needs to needs to happen in the meeting.
 
 Emily Woodward PIC (16:23.804)
Janel, since we’ve been talking about these norms a little bit, can you tell us exactly what the norms are?
 
 Janel LeBlanc – NHED (16:30.219)
Yeah, yeah, sure. So we have five standardized norms that we ask all IEP teams to abide by. They are first, acknowledging the valuable expertise and contribution of every meeting participant. Secondly, is communicating respectfully and listening attentively. And with that is avoiding profanities, please and thank you.
 
Third is remaining focused on the meeting agenda and respecting those time limits. You know, we acknowledge that everybody can work collaboratively and still respect that time, those time frames that we have to work within. Fourth is being willing to collaboratively and creatively problem solve issues that arise. That’s a big one.
 
Because when we stop being willing to collaborate or we’re no longer willing to creatively problem solve, maybe we do need to take that decision making out of the IEP team and into one of those other formal dispute resolution settings. So that willingness to continue to work through a problem collaborate and exercise some creativity there. That’s a big norm for us. And then lastly, it’s just rooting our discussion in the needs of the student. We acknowledge that IEP teams have a big task ahead of them. And when all is said and done, we still have a student at the center of this and the adults have to be able to keep their cool, calm and collected heads about them to be able to focus on the needs of the student. So those are our five norms. And we feel like those are the norms that allow an IEP team meeting facilitation to be successful and authentic and genuine and help restore the trust within this team.
 
Emily Woodward PIC (19:16.564)
Are there things that a IEP team meeting facilitator just strictly cannot do within their role?
 
Janel LeBlanc – NHED (19:25.279)
Yeah, yeah, That’s a great question. you know, it’s just as important as understanding what a facilitator will do. It’s equally important to understand what a facilitator won’t do or is not responsible for because we don’t want families and school districts to feel disappointed after engaging in the process. For example, facilitators in order to be neutral, they will not weigh in on proposals raised by the IEP team. So you’re not going to hear them say things like, well, that’s not good enough, or, you know, I don’t think that’s appropriate for the students’ needs. You know, those are statements that indicate a personal opinion, and that is not neutral.
 
So our facilitators will not be weighing in on the sufficiency of proposals in that way. Sometimes I think participants in the process, whether it’s a school district or a family, want the facilitator to say on their behalf, like, yeah, that’s great. Or, you know, I think we need a little bit more, you know, or are you sure that’s all that’s available here? And I just don’t want people to be disappointed by the fact that in remaining neutral, a facilitator isn’t going to act as an advocate for any particular side.
 
So big thing is facilitators have to be neutral. And so they’re not going to weigh in on those things. The second thing is that, you know, facilitators are, they are not employees of the school district. They are not employees of the, we call it in special ed world, the Local Education Agency, the LEA, that is responsible for all of those timelines and paperwork and the follow through and all of those things. So since facilitators are not employees of the school district, they’re not members of the IEP team, they do not maintain any official IEP team meeting paperwork, like a written prior notice or team meeting notes or even, or IEP drafts. So it’s still the responsibility of the school district to meet their obligation and provide those things after a facilitated IEP team meeting. And facilitators will not contribute to the writing of those documents in any way. That’s the responsibility of the LEA. So that’s definitely something that they will not do is the completion of any IEP Team paperwork per se. And sort of in the same vein, facilitators have no enforcement authority. If in the event after a facilitated IEP Team meeting, you know, there is still some unaddressed issue or ongoing issue, parents are always free to use those, you know, quote unquote spicier, more, more significant forms of dispute resolution. If the IEP team is for whatever reason, either unable to address those issues within the facilitated IEP team meeting, or if those issues continue following facilitated IEP Team meeting. It’s a facilitator. I’ll give you a concrete example. Let’s say the result of a facilitated IEP Team meeting was that the district was going to propose some evaluations, like a speech and language evaluation. But following the meeting, the parents waiting for you know, the consent form to do the testing and the district isn’t sending it facilitators don’t have the authority to sort of knocking on the school district’s door going, hey, remember we said we were going to do, you know, the district said they were going to do some speech testing, you know, where is that paperwork for the family? You know, you need to get it to them in two weeks or with, you know, you need to get it to them by Friday. And they have no enforcement authority. They’re just there to help moderate that discussion and help create the problem-solving environment within the context of the IEP Team meeting. So again, I don’t want parents to feel frustrated at the facilitator or frustrated at the process if after a facilitated IEP Team meeting, there are still issues. There’s a whole continuum of dispute resolution procedures that are still available for families to use even after a facilitated IEP.
 
 Emily Woodward PIC (25:43.638)
 Are parents or school staff able to ever communicate with the facilitators prior to a meeting?
 
Janel LeBlanc – NHED (25:49.942)
Yeah, that’s a really good question because again, it goes back to that issue that’s really important to us, which is neutrality. We want our facilitators to be neutral. And sometimes that’s just, we want our facilitators to appear neutral and be neutral. So it’s crucial that facilitators really not have much, if any, communication with either party prior to a facilitated IEP Team meeting. Typically what happens in our process is I will send an email introducing the parent and the district to the facilitator. They have an affiliate email address with the Department of Education.
 
And in my email, my little introductory email, I asked both the parent and the district to complete something that’s called the participant input form. And it allows everyone, both parent and district, to provide the facilitator with their perspective, with their, you know, with their view of the disagreement or view of the communication breakdown. But in a controlled fashion.
 
This way, doing it this way allows for facilitators to hear from the parties, process that information, but still allow the facilitator to show up in a way that is neutral and not leaning one way or the other. And simultaneously, it allows the participants to kind of get their experience, get that sort of off their chest almost without it having to take place within the IEP team meeting so that we can use that time to solve the problem rather than get a facilitator caught up on how we got here. So it’s the most controlled way of allowing parents and school staff to share their experience while still allowing the facilitator a way to show up in a way that is neutral and balanced and not leaning one way or the other.
 
 Emily Woodward PIC (28:44.534)
 So who requests the meeting to happen? Is it the parent or is it the school system?
 
Janel LeBlanc – NHED (28:52.651)
What’s great is both families and school staff can request IEP team meeting facilitation if they feel like, you know, the team needs it. From the school district perspective, if a school district wants to be the one to initiate that request, they do so through the MyNHDOE portal.
 
Parents also can initiate that request. If you go to the New Hampshire Department of Education’s website and type in the search feature IEP meeting facilitation, it’s going to bring you to our web page for the program. And on that web page, there is a fillable PDF.
 
My contact information is also on that webpage. It tells you a little bit about the program and some more useful information. It’ll ask for things like, you know, contact information, you know, if there is already a date scheduled or if it’s kind of at the discretion of the facilitator’s availability. It’ll ask questions like, is the facilitator going to be joining in person or virtual? Who are some other members of the IEP team that we could expect at this meeting? So that’s the kind of information that the request form asks for. And again, my contact information is available both on the webpage and on the fillable form. So if anybody encounters any questions or issues, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I will reiterate that anyone who is considering IEP team meeting facilitation should make sure that the other party is also willing to engage. So if the parent is initiating, they want to make sure that the school district is also willing to participate and vice versa. I’ll also note that facilitators in order to be in order to be prepared for facilitating an IEP team meeting. Sometimes they will ask that the school district share, you know, maybe a most recent IEP or maybe, you know, a WP written prior notice. See, there I go again with my alphabet soup. Or maybe even some evaluation results.
 
 And the school district’s not allowed to share that information without parent consent. So there will be sort of an additional step for a school district and parent to make sure that there is consent to share that information if the facilitator asks for it. But that information is also explained in detailed on the fillable forms. 
 
What is nice is that anyone can request it anytime. So that’s the benefit to this program.
 
Emily Woodward PIC (32:25.814)
My understanding is that the program was recently revived. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
 
Janel LeBlanc – NHED (32:34.753)
When we think about dispute resolution procedures as a, you know, I’ll call it my salsa spiciness analogy, but really at the heart of it, it’s a continuum of severity and IEP team meeting facilitation is our mildest form. It’s our entry point. And what we were finding is that it was the least utilized dispute resolution procedure.
 
And so that really got the Department of Ed thinking, well, how can we allow this to be a tool in the toolbox of IEP teams to help mitigate some of the immediate use of those more significant forms of dispute resolution? So we kind of went back to the drawing board and when our contracts had expired with previous vendors, we really wanted to take the time to examine the program and gather input from districts, from families, from the Parent Information Center, so that we could design a program that was meeting the needs of the field. And so, you know, we’re we put into place some steps to monitor the effectiveness of our program. So for example, we following every IEP Team meeting facilitation, we send a post facilitation participant survey to parents and districts so that they can give us honest feedback and we review that both at the state level and also with our facilitator on a monthly basis. And our goal is over time to see that the data for dispute resolution in New Hampshire to be more IEP teams using IEP team meeting facilitation than they are using those really significant forms of dispute resolution, like state complaint or due process hearing. 
 
You know, those procedures have their place. That’s for sure. But we want this to be a tool in the toolbox that IEP teams feel like they can use. And that is helpful for them. And, you know, we’re, we’ve just started this data collection and, and really, advertising and marketing this, this program in a new way, you know, starting with this, with this podcast. So, we’re not there yet.
 
But I’m hopeful that our skilled facilitators and sharing the benefits of this program will lead to more IEP teams using this as a tool and using this more readily instead of being hesitant about it. We’re here to support New Hampshire families and school districts. And at the heart of that is improving outcomes for students with disabilities. And I think IEP team meeting facilitation is a great resource to keeping the power in the decision making within the IEP team that knows that student the best so that they can improve the outcomes of the students at the heart of these meetings.
 
Emily Woodward PIC (36:19.094)
You just explained a lot about the program and the benefits. But at the end of the day, why would a family want to use a facilitator? Is there anything else, any other reasons that you have?
 
Janel LeBlanc – NHED (36:31.294)
Yeah, you know, I think the foundational benefit for families that it that it feels like someone neutral is joining their meeting to help them feel supported and comfortable. You know, it’s it may not solve every situation or every dispute around the state. But at the end of the day, I think parents often feel that they’re joining an IEP team with a lot more school employees, school staff, than there are parents. And so having a facilitator there is just one step to help mitigate that us versus them feeling, that us versus them dynamic.
 
And at the end of the day, any dispute resolution procedure wants to put the student at the center and help the adults of the IEP team sort of achieve that positive momentum IEP team meeting facilitation is a great start, a great tool, a great entry point for accomplishing that.
 
 Emily Woodward PIC (38:03.22)
 It does sound like a really great tool to have in your toolbox. How can we help address families’ concerns when they’re thinking about using this process as a next step?
 
Janel LeBlanc – NHED (38:13.972)
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think a helpful way to ease family’s concerns is to just start by acknowledging that hesitation is completely understandable. know, Choosing to bring a facilitator into an IEP Team meeting can feel like a big step, especially if they’ve had, you know, some challenging experiences in the past, or if there’s uncertainty about if it will actually bring any change.
 
But it’s important for families to know that this is the mildest form of dispute resolution. It’s someone showing up to a familiar environment. And it’s intended to resolve communication hurdles so that disagreements don’t snowball and become big and long lasting, that it really is.
 
You know, it’s a, it’s a tool to, to nip things in the bud. And at the end of the day, I think that is.
 
Families feel better about being proactive than having to feel reactive. So I hope that helps mitigate some of that, helps solve some of that concern.
 
Emily Woodward PIC (39:44.512)
So the first steps would be to head over to the New Hampshire Department of Education website, which we can link in the podcast resources. And at that website, you will also find the form Janel was just speaking about to request the IEP Team meeting facilitation. On this website too, Janel, its contact information is listed who can also help you walk, kind of walk parents through the process if there are any struggles along the way.
 
Janel, is that everything or did I miss anything else as final points?
 
Janel LeBlanc – NHED (40:14.088)
Yeah, I think that really hits on a great overview of the program and certainly all families, anybody’s willing to go to that web page and certainly reach out to me with any more specific questions or concerns that they have. Always happy to look at those on a case by case basis.
 
 Emily Woodward PIC (40:42.154)
 Super. Thank you, Janel, so much for spending time with us today on the podcast.
 
Janel LeBlanc – NHED (40:47.176)
No, thank you. this has been thank you so much, Emily, for having me on the podcast. And I also just want to acknowledge and thank the Parent Information Center for their work in supporting New Hampshire families navigating the special education process. I mean, you guys are an invaluable resource. And I’m certainly grateful for PIC’s partnership and improving not only the IEP team meeting facilitation program, but also just improving outcomes for students with disabilities. So thanks for having me and inviting me to do this. It’s been fun.
 
 Emily Woodward PIC (41:26.408)
 Awesome. Thank you, Janel.
 
 Janel LeBlanc – NHED (41:29.238)
 Thanks, Emily. You take care.
 
 Emily Woodward PIC (41:31.754)
 Take care.