Thirty-Two and a Half Hours, Four Requests

Sort by role, not by who asked.

May do:

• Offer input on access: tell the teacher that Marcus does better with fewer items per page and a word bank, and describe what she has observed. Implementing adaptations the teacher or IEP team designed is squarely in her role; redesigning curriculum is not.
• Give the parent a factual update through whatever channel the team has approved.

Must not do:

• Supervise two classes alone for 20 minutes. She is not the teacher of record; supervision ratios and liability belong to an administrator, and in an emergency she has no backup. She should say no and offer the constructive alternative: call the office for coverage.
• Initial the speech-language log. The SLP was absent; initialing records a service that was not delivered. That is falsifying a record, and it can delay compensatory services Marcus is owed.
• Text the parent from a personal phone or keep anything "between us." Student information goes through school channels.

Escalate: the coverage request to the teacher, and to an administrator if repeated; the log question to the special education teacher or SLP immediately, in writing; the parent contact to the teacher and case manager.

Document facts, not conclusions. Same day, write down: date, scheduled service time, who was present, that the SLP was absent, the request to initial the log, and the fact that Marcus's speech block overlaps her assigned reading group. Tell the special education teacher in writing that she was asked to sign for a service not delivered and that she did not.

Route it correctly. The obligation to make up missed service minutes belongs to the school and the IEP team, not to the paraeducator. Her job is to make the gap visible and refuse to paper over it. Ask the case manager to review the master schedule: if the speech block and the reading group genuinely conflict, one of them has been mis-scheduled, and Marcus may have been missing services for longer than a single day.

Do not: discuss the missed service with the parent as though it were her decision to make; sign anything she did not observe; or let the schedule conflict go unreported because it feels like it is not her place. It is her place to report; it is the team's place to fix - and a pattern of documented, unsigned gaps is what supports a compensatory-services determination later.

Respond warmly, briefly, and without a secret: "I'm glad to hear from you. I can't keep things from Marcus's team - that's not how I can do this job well - but I can make sure you get a regular update. The teacher and case manager set up the home-school log, so let's use that."

Then do three things:

• Tell the teacher and case manager that the parent contacted her personal phone and asked for daily updates, so the team can decide what daily communication looks like and who sends it.
• Ask her supervisor for a school-approved channel (communication notebook, school app, or school email) and a clear written statement of what she is authorized to share. Paras are often left to invent this; asking is not overstepping.
• Keep all student information off her personal device and out of personal messages.

Why it matters beyond this week: a private back channel with one family reads as favoritism to others, puts her in the position of explaining decisions she does not make, and creates a record on a device the school cannot protect if the relationship ever breaks down. The goal is not to push the mother away - it is to give her a reliable channel that does not depend on one person's phone.