Nick and I have been very fortunate that in our relationships with our therapists, it often goes past just a professional level. They are willing to go above and beyond for us- come to meetings with the school on their vacation, loan us copies of their personal books, and discuss things on a personal and not just professional level. We are amazingly lucky to have them and to have the relationships with them that we do.
One benefit for both parties is exchange of information. I am known as an ASD geek who reads the articles and studies and books and they will often ask to borrow my books or forward them articles. We just found out that one of our wonderful therapists worked for the school district and she had a sit down with Nick. OH the information gained.
Little Bug’s IEP meeting is supposed to be July 2- odd time, right? Well, in our county, the teacher’s contracts only go from the first day of school to the last day of school. There is a very high likelihood that no teacher would be there for this meeting.
Our school district has and ASD Specialist that works with the schools to advocate for the parents. This person is only available upon request- which is hard to do when this isn’t a published position.
Apparently, our school district is known for putting general non specific IEPs in place for kiddos with summer birthdays and then forgetting to update them when the school year happens.
This isn’t going to fly. We are not taking all of this time out of work to visit classrooms and have meeting after meeting to do this again in September with the teacher and the complete IEP team. I am going to contact our resource and request a list of IEP team members and who will present. If no one is available- because HI its right before fourth of July- we are going to request to move this up.
I know a few posts back, I said that I would try to be amicable, but this is just lower than low. I realize that this has nothing to do with the teachers or me personally, simply the bureaucracy of the school district. My thought on that is that it shouldn’t have to take a team of 6 people on our side to get the services needed for our son. I can’t believe that the system is set up to be so conniving.
1 comment:
My brother has type 1 diabetes and has had it since he was in the first grade. At that point, there was an IEP in place for him, which needed updating yearly, as you discuss. We were in the same school district as Nick. Ask him about this, and I'm sure he'll be more than happy to provide his share of stories about dear old Montesano...anyway...
Over the years, the school district disobeyed, did not follow, and broke the rules of the IEP so many times that my brother got to graduate on a technicality. You see, my dad died his senior year, and he basically gave up. He was failing almost every class and he was not going to get to graduate. My mom had to go in there with an attorney and tell them that if they didn't let him graduate that she was going to SUE them for the 12 years he was in the system where the plan was blatantly not followed. He graduated. He had to pass ONE test with a C- just to make it look good, but he graduated. They KNOW what they're doing. They're bureaucratic, but they're also just downright lazy and want to do things the EASY way. They figure they can make a cookie cutter out of one kid and that should work for everyone else. The system sucks. I'm glad you're taking such an active roll in setting Little Bug up for success, but I can almost guarantee you from my family's experience that this will be a continuing, and uphill battle for you and Nick. I wish you both all the best!
Kristy
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