Giving the District a Decision, What Would You Do?

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You might want to get him assessed at your local Regional Center. They assign you a rep who goes out to the school and observes him in class once a year. They also have a parents rights advocacy that can tell you what your district has to and doesn't have to offer your child. Also, they can properly diagnos him and have a legal department that can help you as well. Best is, it's a governmental agency and won't cost you a thing. They also have programs to pay for your son to take lessons (swimming etc.) and pay for after-school care. I wish I had known this when my son was in 1st grade. Anyhow, here is a link to the government site where you can find which one is closest to you: http://www.dds.ca.gov/rc/rclist.cfm.

Good Luck!

Also, you should ask for a full time aid to be in class with your child - they help alot.

I'm on the Spectrum with a kid on the Spectrum. Frankly, I forced the SD to do what I felt would help my son, and I'm in awe at how well he is doing. I can't socialize as well as he can and I'm 50 plus years old. He was literally taught socializing from before he entered kindgerten, and has had supports all the way through so far (he's 13) with amazing results. He started out non-verbal and now he never shuts up . I wouldn't even deal with a balky SD. I'd call the State Dept. of Public Education in Arizona and tell them t hat your SD isn't complying with the supports for your child. That's exactly what I did. Within two weeks, we had a new IEP, a frightened district that was ready to do anything I wanted, and my son was getting the appropriate help . Nobody is taking it out on him; they wouldn't dare. Actually, he is quite a likeable little fellow and his teachers love him. They may not love ME, but they're certainly polite to me. I think they're afraid not to be. They know I won't allow my son to be shortchanged. I'd go to court over it. I want my son to have the chance I never did and so far it's working really well. It's a fallacy that the SD will take it out on your child. They take advantage of passive parents.
My own personal opinion about homeschooling a child with a PDD is that it isolates an already isolated child, and I wouldn't do it. If necessary, I'd force the district to pay for my child to go to a district with more of a clue. My son goes to a district that is next door to ours. If I told you how far he's come, it would take a book. He no longer self-harms, tantrums or seems frustrated. He went from a frustrated little boy to a calm teenager who knows how to socialize, even when he chooses not to. I wish I'd been taught social skills. My entire life has been a series of people misunderstanding what I meant, and me misunderstanding what people meant, and I really developed a bad attitude towards people. I also have very low self esteem and have always had trouble holding even simple jobs. My son may have to work a simple job (he is challenged a bit when multi-tasking, like me), but he'll be able to at least hold a job, even if it's at McDonalds. And we have higher hopes for him--he's smart in some important areas. The school helps with transitioning to adulthood too.

Aspie94, I do not know what state you are in but each state is different when it comes to forcing schools to follow the law. It is obvious that the state you are in tends to be forceful in that arena as is the State of Minnesota. I know that New York routinely ignores parents complaints though. I know nothing about Arizona.

That's interesting about NY. I was on a parents site and the leader of the site is from NY. She makes NY sound like it's Utopia for autists. Sometimes I think it's a matter of who you contact. If the State Dept. of Public Education won't step in and help, frankly, I don't know where else to go. I live in Wisconsin. I had no trouble here or in Illinois, where we used to live.

Sometimes going to the media like 60 Minutes can help: also seeing your local member/political representative. Some people will do only as much as they can get away with and need keeping onto to make sure they provide the appropriate assistance to children with disabled.

Going to the media does not always work either. About 1 1/2 years ago, a family went to the media about their fight with the district and the attitude of quite a few people was that they did not care. The districts attitude was that the parents were simply looking out for their child (as if that was a bad thing).

I guess you just do whatever it takes to get heard and if some people don't like it, are their opinions really so important?

Well, I haven't updated as I don't any real "news". The meeting went not as well as we expected. As in the district acknowledged everything that the school did was wrong and even that the teachers weren't all that great (in front of the special ed teacher no less!). But then said that it wasn't the school's responsibility to undertake my son's issues but the district's. So, after all was said and done, the district offered another school to try. This includes re-enrolling my son as a special ed student (he is already but was being considered reg ed) and possibly him getting stuck in a self-contained classroom. One visit to this school already got postponed but I go in tomorrow.

I want to scrutinize the teacher, to see what processes they will use to allow my son to learn with his grade level peers. Then, see how they deal with accomodating him to pay attention to academics.
I'm afraid it won't work. I've special tailored his school days so much, he may not tolerate being in 1st grade for 6+ hours every day.

As I read your latest post, it really brings back bad memories of our experience in Sacramento, California.

They, too, offered a self-contained classroom for half the day, and then a regular classroom "experience" for the rest of the day. The trouble with a self-contained classroom, if your child could actually do fine in a regular classroom, is that the child gets pegged right off the bat as "special ed" or "different." If the self-contained classroom will provide the best education, then that's great! But if your child could do well in a regular classroom, with a little help, but the district doesn't want to provide that help, then the self-contained classroom is a cop-out.

We moved back to Pittsburgh, PA, and my son has been in regular ed since first grade. He needed some help in first and second grades, but none after that. Is he still different? Yes, a little bit. But he can do so well now. There just is no excuse for a kid with high-functioning autism or Asperger's to NOT be in a regular classroom, unless he is harming other children or himself as a result of that regular classroom. Also, if your child is in a self-contained classroom, they will learn the social abilities of the other kids in the self-contained classroom. Depending on the class makeup, that could be fine. But if the class has kids with social difficulties, then your child will mirror those social difficulties. Of course, the same is true in a regular classroom, but it is something to think about.

yes, it's such a sticky problem. Because my son does have tantrums, yells, screams, name calls and hurts. But those are usually after the fact that his needs haven't been accomodated.
IMO, if there is staff to deal with him, a 10 minute tantrum is nothing. At that last school they acted like it was a big deal.
I went to this school today. I was impressed with their special ed set up. The teacher was soft-spoken, the psychologist seemed to be hands on, the other students recognized her. They use "TEACCH" which is an easy to understand method of structuring special ed. They had an in-house speech therapist/pathologist.
I'm wary of the 1st grade class. They use the standard district material, which may be too boring for my son. The math is way below him. They have music but no PE teachers!!
One of his needs is structured exercise/recess so that he can destress and compete with his peers.

It seems that they are saying he would/could be fully included in reg ed, but that he needs to be designated as a special ed student, with a home-base in special ed. We tweak our expectations of him based on how compatible he is with the reg ed classroom.
This is the problem that we also had in CA, though our end result was perfect. There he had an itinerant special ed teacher, who oversaw his (college-educated) Teacher aide and they kept an eye on his "plan" in a regular kindergarten class. But this was unique to our area and they screwed it up when he was first enrolled. Then he was originally stuck in the special ed class and that teacher refused to discuss inclusion at all. Here in AZ, it was the other way around, where he was put in the reg ed class and expected to be NT with no real supports.


I guess we won't know if we don't try it.

Hmm, not sure if a 10 minute tantrum is not a worry. If your son is very strong and hurts people and these tantrums happen very often, this would present a challenge to most teachers. However, if they get to know him and avoid wherever possible situations that will cause a meltdown, it shouldn't be such a big deal.

He shouldn't be allowed to hurt people because if he doesn't learn now, what will he be like at 15 or 16 when he is really big?

I don't know if your question is rhetorical or not? Of course we wouldn't want him to be "allowed" to hurt. In CA and at home we have had a specific plan to deal with it.
If you follow my original thread that I wrote, I've discussed why we pulled him out and his tantrums were a major part of this.

my interpretation of Pandora's point was that a 10 minute tantrum is something to worry about ~ that it shouldn't be looked at as something simple or easy to deal with. 10 minutes with a kid who is out of control can seem like 8 hours...so many teachers & paras are totally unprepared to deal with these kinds of issues.
when things are normally chaotic, i think it's easy to adjust to things like a 10 minute tantrum...because you know it could've been the 2 hour tantrum, but you lucked out. most people have limited knowledge or acceptance of tantrums~ my co-worker took her class out into the community to go shopping. one of her students had a major tantrum in the store~yelling at other customers, kicking , screaming, knocking things over. because the student "looks normal" (whatever that is...), other shoppers were staring at him, backing away and asking if they should call the police. Now I know this is going to sound stereotypical, and i'm sorry if i offend anyone, but if the kid looks like he has issues ( ie; wheelchair, walker, leg braces, arm splints) others expect them to act differently...that's not to say they get treated any better~just that others aren't threatening to call the police for a 10 minute tantrum.

I guess it's hard to know if people are following the story or not. I know you have and there's a couple of others. But some people are replying to my thread without reading my backstory-so their replies don't make a lot of sense.
Regardless, I made a point of saying "if there is staff" to accomodate his tantrums. I mean they're going to happen and that was made clear before we started. However, his tantrums never exceeded 5-10 minutes and they were very rare before he attended that school I posted the thread about. His increased problems were directly related to their unprofessional approach to my son and us. If they didn't have the resources to handle an autistic child, they should have said, "we know a better place, here it is and here is why".
But the psychologist never did a care plan, the special ed teacher never handled the aide, the principal handled my son as if he were NT. It was all botched.

I didn't realize how the system works here. Segregation is okay, it's the MO.

Ster-I know what you mean about appearances. Once when my son was still nonverbal, I was at the pharmacy with him, waiting to pick up a prescription. He couldn't stand to wait, he was just 3. He started crying loudly. The other people were staring at us, glaring and a young woman loudly said, if she did that her mom would slap her across the mouth. Basically saying it was my fault for having a loud, crying kid. I couldn't go anywhere or do anything to soothe him. When I went up to the counter, there was a woman with a larger child in the big part of a shopping cart, stimming and crying. I felt jealous (at that time) that people would more likely accept her and her son out of pity.
It was a very hard time for me. I was in the midwest and peoplejust didn't accept children like that. I would take my son out of the room to make it look like I was spanking him.

I meant that kids shouldn't be just allowed to hurt other people when they have a tantrum ie. if they hit or kick their parent or their teacher, they need to be restrained from doing that or they will then think it is okay to hurt people when they have a tantrum.

That said, I can see that some teachers and other people might provoke tantrums at times because they don't (or can't) understand the kinds of things that set off tantrums.

Unfortunately, I am probably just as guilty as anyone else of glaring at a kid who screams loudly in a shop. If I knew they were autistic, then I would understand but the noise would still be hard to take due to my sensory issues with sounds. I don't tend to glare at the parents but at the kid because it's the kid that's making the noise.

If they just cried a bit (even if it was for a long time) that would be okay but it's when they full on scream that it makes me feel like a drill is being put through one ear and through my skull into the other ear. I really have to restrain myself from having a personal meltdown.

This might sound mean and I'm thinking of taking an MP3 player with me on shopping trips so outside noise will be mostly cut out.