Question 1

Do I need to buy special hardware?

Accepted Answer

No. SPEDScribe works with any way of dictating: your phone, a laptop mic, or the browser-based recorder built into the platform. During the free pilot, use whatever you already have.

Question 2

Does the AI write the entire IEP?

Accepted Answer

No. The AI generates draft documentation (SOAP notes, PLAAFP statements, annual goals, progress reports) from session transcripts. A licensed provider must review, edit, and approve every document before it becomes official. The AI handles the paperwork; the clinician retains full clinical judgment.

Question 3

How does it handle students with multiple providers?

Accepted Answer

Every provider on a student's IEP team can see session notes from other disciplines (read-only). The SLP sees the OT's most recent note. The school psych sees everyone's data before writing the annual review. No more working in silos.

Question 4

Do parents need to consent to provider dictation?

Accepted Answer

SPEDScribe is designed so students are never recorded: providers dictate their own notes. Whether and how dictation fits your district's consent procedures is a determination for the district under counsel; we provide template language districts can adapt, and the formal California framing is under attorney review.

Question 5

What if the recording quality is bad?

Accepted Answer

If the audio is too poor to transcribe accurately, the transcript shows it: it lands in the notes field, where the provider can correct it or fill in from memory before generating. Even a partial transcription saves significant documentation time.

Question 6

How do you prevent the AI from making things up?

Accepted Answer

The system is designed to ground every clinical claim in what the provider dictated, and to leave out, rather than fabricate, test scores, accuracy percentages, or assessment data the provider did not give. A SOAP note is designed to restate only what the provider dictated, keep the provider's own hedges, and compute no figure the provider did not say, and a section with nothing dictated for it holds a [CLINICIAN REVIEW NEEDED] tag instead of filled-in content. And every document goes through mandatory human review before approval.

Question 7

Does the AI understand my specific discipline?

Accepted Answer

Yes. SPEDScribe has discipline-specific documentation models for SLPs, OTs, school psychologists, BCBAs, SPED teachers, APE specialists, and DHH professionals. An SLP SOAP note looks fundamentally different from a BCBA session note: different clinical vocabulary, different data structures, different goal frameworks. Our AI knows the difference.

Question 8

Can it help with bilingual students?

Accepted Answer

SPEDScribe carries L1 transfer pattern reference data for the 16 California languages we support: Spanish, Hmong, Russian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Arabic, Filipino/Tagalog, Korean, Punjabi, Farsi/Persian, Armenian, Ukrainian, Japanese, Pashto, and Dari. A SOAP note records the speech-sound and language errors the provider describes, in the provider's words, and is designed never to call one a language difference or a disorder unless the provider did: that judgment belongs to the provider and the IEP team. When a provider documents an error pattern the reference data does not cover, the note is designed to carry a fixed review tag after the provider's own assessment instead of guessing.

Question 9

Does SPEDScribe generate IEP content or just session notes?

Accepted Answer

SPEDScribe generates the full pipeline: provider dictation to SOAP note to Present Levels (PLAAFP) to measurable annual goals to progress reports. Each stage builds on the previous one, so your IEP documentation is generated from the provider's fresh session recap rather than written weeks later from memory.

Question 10

What clinical standards does the AI reference?

Accepted Answer

The full list is public at spedscribe.ai/clinical-standards: 80+ standardized assessment tools across 7 disciplines, with score interpretation bands, IEP goal translation guidance, and bilingual considerations for each. The AI also enforces the Endrew F. 'appropriately ambitious' standard, the Condition-Behavior-Criterion goal framework, and California Education Code timelines.

Question 11

Will it catch errors my providers miss?

Accepted Answer

Partly. Each SOAP note is checked against what the provider dictated when it is generated, and a figure that differs is flagged above the draft, though the check cannot see every kind of difference. Cross-referencing a session against the student's evaluation history and IEP goals is on the roadmap. Every flag is a suggestion, and the provider decides whether to act on it.

Question 12

Is student data safe?

Accepted Answer

Transcripts pass through layered server-side PII redaction designed to strip personal identifiers (student names, parent names, dates of birth, school identifiers, phone, address, email) before any AI model sees the data. AssemblyAI applies its built-in PII redaction to the returned transcript, not the audio itself; SPEDScribe applies a second server-side pass before transcripts reach the AI provider. Redaction reduces exposure of student identifiers; it is not a guarantee that every identifier is removed. Data stored on SPEDScribe infrastructure is encrypted at rest with AES-256 and access is role-restricted via RBAC.

Question 13

HIPAA or FERPA: which applies?

Accepted Answer

FERPA. Most K-12 schools are not HIPAA covered entities. Student health records maintained by schools are generally education records under FERPA, not protected health information under HIPAA (per HHS/DOE Joint Guidance, December 2019, originally issued November 2008). SPEDScribe is not a HIPAA covered entity or business associate by default and has not signed a BAA.

Question 14

What about California's student data privacy laws?

Accepted Answer

SPEDScribe is aligned with AB 1584 (pupil records remain LEA property, no non-educational use, breach notification, data deletion on termination per the Data Processing Agreement) and SOPIPA (no advertising to students, no selling student data, no profiling for non-educational purposes). Our data architecture is designed to prevent non-educational use of student data.

Question 15

Who owns the data?

Accepted Answer

The district owns all student data. Period. Per AB 1584, pupil records remain the property of the local educational agency. We process and store data on behalf of the district under our Data Processing Agreement. Upon contract termination, all district data is returned and then deleted from our systems on the schedule described in the DPA. Formal FERPA framing of our role is pending attorney review.

Question 16

Does the AI learn from student data?

Accepted Answer

Our AI provider (Anthropic) does not use customer inputs or outputs to train models under their commercial terms. Anthropic retains inputs and outputs briefly for abuse detection and to meet legal obligations before deletion. SPEDScribe does not hold a Zero Data Retention enterprise agreement with Anthropic; standard commercial retention behavior applies. AssemblyAI processes audio under contract terms governing retention. Our own platform retains data only for the duration specified in the district contract.

Question 17

How long does setup take?

Accepted Answer

There's no IT infrastructure to deploy; it's a web application. The only setup is account creation.

Question 18

Does it integrate with SEIS?

Accepted Answer

Not directly; SEIS doesn't have a public API for content injection. SPEDScribe generates documentation that maps to SEIS form field structures. Providers copy and paste the generated content into SEIS, or use our structured SEIS export file. Direct integration is on the roadmap.

Question 19

What about districts that don't use SEIS?

Accepted Answer

SPEDScribe exports to any IEP platform. Copy to clipboard works with anything. The SEIS export is California-specific, but we can add export templates for EasyIEP, PowerSchool, or any other system based on district needs.

Question 20

What does the free ESY pilot include?

Accepted Answer

Full platform access during your ESY session. All documentation types: SOAP notes, progress reports, PLAAFP drafts, goal generation. Up to your full ESY provider team. We measure time saved, documentation quality, and provider satisfaction. Zero cost, zero commitment. If it doesn't work for your team, you walk away.

Question 21

What does it cost per provider?

Accepted Answer

Pricing is customized per district based on team size and contract length. Essentials covers SOAP note generation and SEIS export. Professional adds the full IEP Document Suite (PLAAFP, annual goals, progress reports), goal scoring and Medicaid billing metadata. Enterprise adds custom contracts and dedicated support. Only licensed providers who generate documentation count as seats; directors and reviewers are not billed. We provide a full quote and ROI projection at your demo.

Question 22

What's the ROI?

Accepted Answer

We don't quote a figure here, because the answer depends on your district. The interactive calculator at spedscribe.ai/roi lets you plug in your district's actual numbers and includes turnover, litigation, and contractor costs.

Question 23

Are there per-session or per-document fees?

Accepted Answer

No. The subscription is per licensed provider, per month, with no per-session charges and no per-document fees. Monthly volume limits do apply on the entry tiers: Free Basic includes 20 AI generations and 20 dictations per month, and Starter and Essentials each include 150. Pro, Professional, and Enterprise are unmetered.

Question 24

How do I cancel my subscription?

Accepted Answer

1. Sign in and open your Account page at www.spedscribe.ai/account. 2. Under Your subscription, click Manage Subscription. This opens the billing portal, hosted by our payment processor. 3. In the portal, choose Cancel subscription and confirm. Cancellation is online, from your Account page, with no phone call. It takes effect at the end of the billing period you have already paid for, so you keep access until then. Your Account page then shows the cancellation date. No refunds or credits for partial billing periods.

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