Regardless of your research and team construction of well-written goals, without proper services, a student will regress and cannot receive an appropriate education. The service grid lists all the services your school must provide in order for your student to reach his or her goals. The Service Delivery Grid has three sections: A, B, C, referred to as “the A Grid”, “the B Grid”, and “the C Grid.”
IEP meetings are confusing, but the service delivery grid can cause some parents panic. What does A mean? Why are there so many numbers? Who is “Staff”? When we think about services in special education, we specify whether the student receives service in the classroom with general and special education students combined, or whether the student receives service in a setting outside of the general education setting.
The A Grid: The A grid corresponds to teacher/provider/parent support, training, or consultations. It can be as simple as two teachers having a 1X20 consult a week, or a parent’s consult with the teacher/provider.
The B Grid: This describes your student’s services IN the GENERAL education setting. If your child has a provider in the general education class, or has “push in” service, you will find the information here (academic support in the class, SLP “push in” service, Math support via the Math teacher).
The C Grid: This describes services OUTSIDE of the general education setting. Typically, school will refer to this as “pull out” services, or services spent with providers in their various other settings (OT room, SLP service 1 on 1, resource room, Reading specialist, etc).
Under A, B, and C, you will find 6 columns: focus on goal, type of service, frequency and duration/per cycle, start date, and end date. The first column, Focus on Goal #, corresponds to your child’s measurable goal # in the IEP. Some services will correspond to one goal, whereas some services may correlate to several goals. Regardless, if a service is on the grid, it must relate to a goal. The second column is Type of Service. This is the service or subject area of your child’s IEP. This can be academics, counseling, speech, OT, or ANY area of need that is identified and has a correlating goal. The third column is Type of Personnel. This will be a separate blog topic, but for now, you must pay attention to this column to see which member is responsible for the service. Does it say Staff? Does it say SPED Staff? Does it say Aide? Does it say Math Staff? ASK who is providing the service and what are the qualifications of this provider? If your child's service grid has SPED as the provider, this could be done by an assistant or any person on the special education staff. There is no obligation to provide a certified or highly qualified staff to provide services unless it is written in the service delivery grid or IEP. The fourth column is Frequency/Duration (Per cycle). This is an important section to review, as well, because it is very easy to miss the fact that duration or frequency of services could be an inadequate amount of time to cover material per class time (think Middle School transition and time blocks). You may have a laundry list of services on your grid, but if the time is minimal and infrequent, your child will not progress as you hope. The fifth / sixth column refer to start and end date of services. Typically, this corresponds with your IEP meeting, signifying the beginning of new goals, and the end of the IEP period. As with anything you discuss regarding your IEP - concerns, edits, additions - make sure you do so in writing, AND it is written in your IEP! As always…written, or it didn’t happen!