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Unfortunately it is greatly dependent on your local situation. I could give you some excellent advice for my home town, some passable advice for the small Northern European country I live in. Nothing at all outside of it.
Are there any local advocacy groups you can get in touch with?
(I'm the spouse of a special ed teacher, but not in Michigan. I've just been around this stuff for over a decade hearing it from the grad student/teacher side)
Getting a diagnosis should make it much easier for you to get appropriate IEPs, 504 plans, and services. I'm surprised they got IEPs without a diagnosis, since there are legal thresholds for a school/states to get federal funding related to IDEA (more on that later)
It sounds like your local schools and community services are a mixed bag of how well they provide special education services. The positive things to notice are that they have
The extremely worrying thing is that they refused to let your youngest stay a full day last year for his first year of school. If this was because it was a kindergarten/pre-school year and the normal school day is a half day I would be less concerned about getting services in the future.
There's two main federal laws that guarantee your kids get an education:
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act addresses providing accommodations to students with disabilities, and guarantees they get a free and appropriate public education, and prohibits discrimination based on disabilities.
IDEA is 3-pronged. It restates a requirement for a free and appropriate public education, requires individualized special education and services for certain disabilities (IEPs), and requires that students receiving special education services do so in the least restrictive environment.
Your locale seems to be addressing some of these, but not others.
For a student to be eligible for special education under IDEA they have to qualify under one of 13 categories, one of which is autism spectrum disorder. To qualify under autism spectrum disorder requires a diagnosis, usually an outside medical diagnosis, but occasionally, if a school really cares and tries they can provide (at least here) a school-specific diagnosis based on how it is affecting education. Eligibility for special education is required for an IEP. Since your kids have IEPs the school presumably somehow found a way to qualify them even without a diagnosis. Eligibility for special education has to be reviewed once every 3 years. IEPs have to be updated annually, and they require parental participation, and parental assent (at least initially, they may not for renewals, I'm not sure).
Special education services and education for students under IDEA have to be provided in the "least restrictive environment". This means that a student receiving special education must be getting education along with their peers as much as possible. This is supposed to provide a number of benefits like socialization with peers, exposure to grade-level curriculum, and preventing schools from sending all the students to a special ed room and ignoring them all, which is historically how many students with disabilities were treated even after many updates to IDEA. The positive interpretation of CMH saying your youngest son no longer needs their services and should stay in his normal classroom is that they are trying to make sure he gets services in the least restrictive environment.
If your school is not letting your youngest son stay for a full day they are not providing a free and appropriate education and are discriminating on the basis of disability. You are going to need to advocate for him or dispute with the school district, and are probably going to need help from an advocacy group, mediation, or lawyer. In some states the state will provide a mediator to make sure school districts comply with the special education rules, but that does not seem to be the case for Michigan.
Section 504 is the easier of the two for a school to use to provide accommodations. For a 504 plan they only need to document two things:
(the second of those might not even be required)
There are many accommodations that a school can provide for autism besides individualized education, and these can be called out in a 504 plan instead of an IEP if for some reason you can't get an IEP modified in a timely manner. Example accommodations include:
Individualized education plans require eligibility under one of 13 disability categories. This requires 3 things:
The major difference between a 504 plan and an IEP is specially designed instruction. If the student's getting specially designed instruction, it needs to be an IEP (from the school's point of view). This means school districts might only provide speech and language services/sensory therapy/social skills/study skills/etc. under an IEP and not under a 504 plan. An IEP can include any of the services that could also be provided under a 504 plan.
An IEP is where you are going to get help with any academic area your kid is struggling with due to a disability. For autism spectrum disorder this varies greatly between students, but that's the point of an IEP, that it be individually designed for the student.
IEPs require an annual review and parents are entitled to participate in that process. The annual review involves updating goals and progress and what services are appropriate/need to be provided and in general modifying the plan. This means you should get to participate in what services your kids are getting in no more than a year, but there should be nothing that prevents a school from updating these at some other time if it's appropriate and they include you/their IEP team (see the parts of the pages I linked below about "Prior Written Notice") and learn who should be on your student's IEP team)
Eligibility for an IEP must be re-evaluated once every 3 years. With a diagnosis for autism your kids will only need to show an adverse effect on their education and a need for specially designed instruction to remain eligible.
I'd check out Michigan Alliance for Families for information that's more specific to Michigan. In particular their pages on Parental Advocacy and Dispute Resolution
If your school district simply won't provide appropriate special education services, many parents will seek out a different source of education than the school district. This can be a local charter school, an online charter school, or some other school of choice system. Beware that not every charter/school of choice system is required to provide special education services at all. Online charter schools with good special education programs get a lot of students enrolling in the school, getting evaluation, eligibility, and IEP plans, and 504 plans, and then transferring back to a brick and mortar school with documents in hand. A 504 plan from an online school will not address many in-classroom accommodations because there isn't a physical classroom, but might still include accommodations that can be adapted to a physical classroom like being allowed to use stress relief toys during class.
Oh, I should clarify. My son and daughter were classified as "developmental delay" and officially diagnosed with ADHD. When my youngest started school, it was preschool, but they had full days like other grades. 8 to 2:30. They refused to let him stay past 11:00, and refused to put our wishes for him to get full days on it. We pushed for a school diagnosis because we always suspected he had autism but all the school said was "development delay". That's likely why we got his IEP. I appreciate the really detailed info you provided, thank you. Looks like 504 is the way to go...
Do you have a medical diagnosis for autism or ADHD or just school diagnosis?
A "developmental delay" is only eligible for special ed under that category until a kid's 10th birthday.
If you can, getting a medical diagnosis for autism makes other services available even outside school (see kidswaivers.org). Doing so can be difficult both in cost and in the backlog of neurobehavioral health clinics that do autism diagnosis. You would probably need a referral from the kid's GP/pediatrician.
You can get more services on an IEP than a 504. If your kid needs individualized instruction they need an IEP. Either way your kid will have special protections when it comes to disciplinary action. A school can not academically disciple (suspend, expell, ot remove from the classroom, or e.g. not allow to attend full day vs half day) a disabled student for more than 10 school days in total over the course of a school year without holding a "manifestation to termination meeting" to determine if the behavior is a manifestation of the disability. If it is the school has to implement behavior intervention programs instead of disciplinary action.
If they ask you to come pick up your kid early that constitutes "suspension or removal from the classroom". If that happens keep track of the number of days, and use those words talking to administrators.
I don't know if those rules apply to preschool and kindergarten, but they should if kindergarten is mandatory in your state.
School district are also required to attempt to identify children with disabilities living in their district prior to enrollment in a process called "child find". This is to provide early intervention programs, like developmental preschool.
It's extremely distribing that your son was excluded from preschool due to a disability. I would be considering talking to a lawyer if I were in your place, at least seeking out the advice of a Michigan specific advocacy group.
Yes, both my children have finally received their medical diagnosis for both autism and adhd. Unfortunately, his exclusion was last year; before I knew how any of this worked. He's in kindergarten now, and so far, he's not being forced to go home early. However, they are really trying to push him out of his CMH class. We've had issues with the school many times. The most egregious being the forced half day and the time one of his preschool teachers called in a false report to cps about us. Legally, the caseworker can't tell you who called the complaint. However, the cps agent left her paperwork in full view long enough for me to read it. It gave the name of his teacher and her "complaints." They were quickly proven wrong. They actually called cps on us 3 times. The last time, the cps agent straight up said the complaint was rejected due to lack of evidence. They knew what was going on based on their last report, and it's like she let me see it on purpose without actually telling me. I am very thankful for that, but I'm also still irritated it happened in the first place. Now that we finally have a medical, I hope it'll force them to work with us.
I actually know none of that. I was eating dinner with my spouse.
I don't need this information, but just wanted to thank you for sharing it.
If moving to New York or a state with better services is an option, do it.