District coordinator says state review found 19 student-level corrective actions in IEP audit

At a public meeting of the Grant Public School District, Mr. Aiken, the district's special education coordinator, said a state monitoring team reviewed 20 individualized education plans (IEPs) last week and identified 19 student-level corrective actions.

"We had five monitors show up last Wednesday," Mr. Aiken said, adding that the team interviewed seven staff members and was onsite roughly from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. He said the audit report is available for review at the district office but "we are not gonna release that to the public" because it contains student names.

The district's representative said the corrective actions are student-level items the case manager — typically the teacher of record — must address. "For us to only have 19 student level corrective actions out of the 20 IEPs, I felt was very good," Mr. Aiken said, characterizing many findings as paperwork or procedural issues rather than systemic program failure.

Mr. Aiken told questioners the audit focused on whether IEPs match the services provided — for example, behavioral supports, supplemental aids and services and whether contact hours in the IEP were delivered — and that the state review did not examine funding or payments.

On whether the district faces legal exposure, Mr. Aiken said the district expects some compensatory-education obligations. "This report, we're gonna have six instances of compensatory ed off the MDE report that just occurred Wednesday," he said, and added that a separate internal investigation into a case involving Jordan Bollinger is distinct from the state audit.

When asked why the board spent money on legal review before discrepancies were publicly flagged, a questioner raised the $26,000 figure; Mr. Aiken said the board engaged counsel to evaluate potential compensatory-education liability and to determine appropriate remedies for families, noting that such legal work typically precedes decisions about payouts or settlements.

To reduce future violations, Mr. Aiken described operational steps the district plans to take: move the special-education secretary from the middle school to the administration building so she can meet weekly with teachers, track IEPs, run reviews and add an extra layer of monitoring; work with NCRISA (the regional special-education cooperative) on student-level corrective action plans; and upload corrective actions into the Catamaran system for documentation.

He acknowledged staffing challenges in special education and explained the district sometimes relies on sub permits or extended substitutes while teachers complete required endorsements: "Not all of them have the proper certification," he said, citing statewide shortages as a factor.

Several questioners raised concerns about day-to-day implementation: whether paraprofessionals are trained, who has access to IEPs, and how transferred students with expired IEPs are handled. Mr. Aiken said teachers and paraprofessionals have access to IEPs but that implementation can vary depending on who is in the classroom; he added that when a student transfers in with an expired IEP, the receiving district becomes responsible for bringing the IEP current.

Mr. Aiken emphasized that many of the audit flags involved small documentation items — for example, accommodation logs kept on Google Sheets where entries are marked accepted or declined — and that the district will follow the corrective-action process with NCRISA and administrators to close the gaps.

The meeting ended with Mr. Aiken inviting attendees to schedule follow-up appointments for questions the session did not fully address.