We received the email from the school district that we have been dreading- the testing and IEP dates and information. Little Bug's evaluations will be done independent from the normal cattle call affair on June 5th. They usually have 10 or more families come in and run the kids through stations. Because we have requested the ASD specialist for the district attend, Little Bug will be tested by himself.
We also received the date for his IEP meeting- June 30th. We were originally concerned that because this occurs after the last day of school it would result in a generic IEP and another meeting specific to Little Bug's needs in the fall. Luckily, it won't.
Unfortunately, that is where the bad news comes in. The attendees will include the evaluators from whatever area Little Bug qualifies in as well as the ASD specialist and the teacher from the our last classroom visit. The classroom that we hated. The classroom that was utter chaos. The classroom that made us feel it would be better to leave Little Bug with wolves for 5 hours a day than the school district.
The school district has tipped their hand. By including this teacher, they have shown us that in their eyes, Little Bug is destined for an ASD environment. You see, the teacher the student will have is the teacher who helps create your child's IEP.
Nick and I are at a loss. This doesn't match with what we want for him. It doesn't seem like the most appropriate environment for him. It also doesn't match what his current therapists are recommending. They feel that because of how far Little Bug has come and the amount of work and follow through that Nick and I put into this, Little Bug should be able to do the Special Education classroom as well as see a behaviorist every other month. He will need weekly speech and OT.
We are trying to wrap our heads and hearts around this and come up with a plan.
2 comments:
Fight, Fight, Fight.
~Bri
We had what we called "run the gauntlet" day where the J-Man was the only one being evaluated but a whole bunch of evaluators put him through the various 'tests' one at a time right in a row in the same room. It was kinda overwhelming. A room of a half-dozen strangers and a total visual overload of toys and stuff didn't seem like the best testing environment, but whatever. It worked out better than we thought.
You see, the teacher the student will have is the teacher who helps create your child's IEP.This shouldn't be true for your first IEP, at least it shouldn't be the exact teacher because making a placement for him prior to the eligibility/IEP meeting would mean they aren't following the rules. You can't place before eligibility is determined and before you all agree to it. I believe it's true that a qualified teacher has to be there (it's true here), but for the first IEP it doesn't have to be (and in this case almost never would be, at least not here) his to-be-assigned teacher. After the first IEP here, the actual teacher and someone from your school conduct your annual IEPs for I think the next two or three years, though you can request more people attend if you feel you need to.
You can get an eligibility of ASD (a slam dunk for you all it sounds) without necessarily being placed in a separate ASD classroom, though that's often how they do it here. Some counties have 'mixed' classes of kids with various disabilities, which in my experience turns out to be a mess for many kids on the spectrum who need a very structured environment. Sometimes you see 'typical' kids as part of the classes too. Depends on how your county does things, though for us a separate AU classroom as been a godsend. All depends on the teacher though.
You should be able to negotiate things like speech, OT, etc. separately from the placement because either the school should have those people on staff or at least should have an itinerant person that comes through the once or twice a week.
If you can get written statements from your therapists and/or have one or more of them attend the meeting, that might help. You can also hire an IEP advocate. If you think there's no good placement for him or that the school district is going to try to railroad you into a crap situation, I'd seriously look into one. I think there's a web site on how to find them, but I can't find it readily. Try the Wrightslaw site. You may have thought about all this already. If so, sorry. I'm behind on reading everyone's blogs with the baby keeping us up all hours.
I know how much this sucks, and I think to make it worse, you all seem to have fewer options than we had for placements. I know I read a lot of stuff about IEPs, worked like hell, got cranky with people when needed, and took a lot of Prilosec. Hang in there. If there's anything we can do, let us know.
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