School program cancelled for next year

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One is never ready to battle bureaucracy; it's like slogging through quicksand-type mud, while forced to have a conversation with a buffoon.

I hope you get the required funding for your boy.

Next Tuesday we will hear what the new program is supposed to be like.

At the same time, I just got a note from the main SPED teacher in his class about missing and unfinished assignments. It;s a bit late to tell me now, isn't it!
It sometimes seems these people are reasonably well-meaning but utterly clueless. How would any 12 year old react to being told they have to make up homework stretching back over weeks? How do they think a perfectionist kid with ASD is going to react??? He has meltdowns when he gets a single answer wrong on 5 page math test--they know this They have seen him beat his head against the wall in frustration! They say he is doing well and then, just before the end of the year, "we have been going through the records and notice he is missing (long list follows) let's see if we can make some of these up before the end of the year--but they have already seen that he has made huge progress in english and social studies done very well in science and qualified for Honours math next year! What is the point of going through this exercise now, knowing it will tear him down and set him back.

I don't get it.

I feel really depressed about all this today.

Ugh, so sorry - and I think I would tell them exactly that. It's totally unreasonable for them to place what effectively is a punishment on your son for an administrative error on their part.

Adamantium,

Was there anything in place that put the responsibility on them to notify you of this sort of thing on a timely basis? We never had that in place b/c we never needed it, but I could totally have seen teachers who were not so on the ball, sandbagging us like this. We would have been screwed, too. It is unfair that as parents we need to anticipate every possible problem before they happen or be faced with this.

If there was nothing in place (b/c you couldn't be expected to anticipate this problem and b/c schools rarely put anything into place proactively, if there is no current issue) then I would try to appeal to their sense of fairness. I would (gently) still turn this back on them even without something in the IEP about being notified in a timely fashion about this kind of thing. I would ask why you were not notified on a timely basis, and tell them it is unfair to expect this.

If you stick with this district or go with anything other than homeschooling, I would definitely put something in a new IEP about having to be notified the next day about any missed assignments and that if you are not, your son does not have to make it up, or something like that. I would also maybe make a separate post asking parents with older kids what issues they had in the middle-school grades. Then I would try to make them put something in place proactively, for everything you think is even a remote possibility. I know they will probably resist doing it, but the one consistent thing I have seen is that schools are reactive not proactive and they keep a lot of information to themselves until -they- choose to make the parent deal with it. By then it is often too late.

Thanks, I just put in a formal request for an IEP meeting ASAP

I disagree. Go with the lawyer. Time is critical. It is the end of the school year and the teachers break over the summer. Get help, stat. A good lawyer WILL make sure your case is heard. Knowing your back is to the wall empowers the school system to think they can do what they want with little fear of immediate recourse.

When I had to place my son, I had gone through the DOE dropping the ball on him during CPSE (preschool). Because of that mistake, he regressed at age 4. When we went to his Turning 5 meeting and mentioned we had a lawyer, the administrator was quick to suggest the much-coveted ASD Nest program, which was largely already filled at the time. Needless to say, he got into the program, where he is currently thriving.

I have found that a well-connected educational advocate can be more effective than a lawyer. The lawyer we consulted wasn't really interested in becoming involved until there was enough proof to support a due process proceeding. Basically he worked on contingency -- he mainly took cases he felt he had a good chance of winning, and was paid by the court awarding costs (free to us if he lost). We didn't want due process, we wanted a solution!

The educational advocate we used was a former principal and former director of special ed for the SELPA (special education local plan area, in this case it oversees special ed for multiple school districts.) He knew all the players in the district and had a reputation for getting what he thought a kid needed. When he requested a full neuropsych eval, they agreed to it straight away.

Also, having brought a lawyer once, it slows down the process enough that you're better off starting smaller and working your way up. Once you get a lawyer, the school district has the right to get their lawyer, and they can make you wait to have a meeting until their lawyer is available (within a certain time limit.)

If your advocate doesn't help and you need a lawyer, the advocate will be able to say so in the meeting and you'll probably get a meeting with lawyers in the same time frame as it would have taken if you started there.

This is from someone who started in a school system that actively lied to me about what they could do with my son and did both things - we ended up with a lawyer at the end, we really started gaining some traction without them...we finally opted for the lawyer because it was during transition and there was talk of removing existing services because he was "doing better now." It's a bit difficult to recover from bringing a lawyer because it defines the relationship in the team as an adversarial one - fortunately, the lawyer was there for the team we were leaving, and it hasn't affected the relationship with the team we are using now (who did point out that the other school just plain screwed up when we were doing the 3-year review.)

In my experience, having a lawyer attend by phone during an IEP meeting goes a LONG way to getting things done, and done expeditiously. It is well worth the money if for no reason but to send a message that you're willing to bring your child's case to litigation if there is no adequate accommodation made to your satisfaction. They will be VERY careful in all their proposals and think twice than to bring you shoddy solutions that you feel you must take in the ass because your back is to the wall.