Prospective Parent FAQ

Eanes ISD serves children with a wide range of disabilities including learning, behavioral, developmental, medical and emotional disabilities. We offer a full continuum of special education and related services to children with qualifying disabilities. The services provided to individual students depend upon each child’s unique needs as determined by his/her ARD/IEP committee.

The EISD focus in special education is not as much on programs as it is on individualized instructional planning. As a result, not all students with the same diagnosis or disability receive the same special education supports, nor are students assigned to a campus or class merely because they have been identified as having the same disability. Our goal is to meet the individual educational needs of each child receiving special education support in as inclusive an environment as possible, taking into account the student’s needs and goals.

We are committed to serving children in inclusive, natural and “real-world” settings to the greatest extent possible, given each student’s unique needs. Because of this commitment, Eanes ISD has a strong preference for keeping children on their home campus. In most cases, the mix of children receiving special education support on a given campus is comprised of the children who live within the school’s geographical boundary area. At any point in time, the individual campuses may have different distributions of children with varying disabilities and needs. Similarly, the size of the special education population at each school varies. We staff the campuses to meet the needs of their population, both in size and composition. Over time, the campus special needs populations shift somewhat as students move up to the next school level and as families move in and out of the area.

Occasionally, a student needs a service that can only be provided on a campus that is not his/her home campus or there is some other factor which makes placing a student off their home campus a necessity. In these cases, the District might need to assign a child to a different campus. District administration will work with families in these situations, but ultimately this is a decision made by District administration.

Specific special education planning for your child begins after enrollment. At that point, your child’s ARD committee/IEP team will begin planning for your child based on the current information available which could include data and perspectives from home, reports from outside specialists and/or current and past school information. Sometimes EISD determines that updated or further evaluation is necessary in order to plan for your child in his/her new educational setting. If this is the case, new evaluation will be an ARD/IEP committee decision and subject to your consent. The emphasis in Eanes is on planning services for your child based on his/her unique needs and not on one-size-fits-all programs.

Usually not. In most cases, after enrollment, your new ARD/IEP committee will use the IEP from your former District as a starting place for planning. The ARD/IEP committee may decide to carry over some or all of the evaluation, goals, accommodations, modifications or services from the old IEP, or the committee may recommend or require new or different ones. This is a case-by-case determination, and as parents and members of the ARD/IEP committee, you will be an important part of this process. If you are moving to Texas from another state, be aware that state laws govern certain elements of the IEP (i.e. some things that are required in Texas are not necessarily required elsewhere, and vice-versa). Because of this, your child’s Eanes IEP may contain elements that are somewhat different from the one you are bringing from out-of-state.

Each EISD school has its own system for allowing prospective families to meet campus staff and see the building. To find out if the campus you are interested in offers tours or other information for prospective parents, please call the campus itself. Phone numbers for the campuses can be found at: http://www.eanesisd.net/district/schools.

Although we recognize parents’ desire to see special education services in action before choosing to enroll their child, we are unable to offer tours to prospective parents of special education classes or locations on campus where students receiving services would be identified as students with a disability. Federal law mandates that the District protect the privacy of identified students with a disability and the information pertaining to them; because of this, we cannot offer special education-specific tours or observations.

Please note that once your child is enrolled and receiving services as an EISD special education student, you will have the right to visit your child in his/her educational setting, subject to campus and special education visitor guidelines.