Moved to a place with little service

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I recently moved across the states because of my job, from a state with top rated education system to one in the bottom (MA to AZ). We were in a bad school district in MA. My son goes to preschool full time, with transportation. There were 8 kids with 1 teacher and 3 aids in his class. Now I am shocked to find out,in one of the best school district in AZ, my son will only have 9 hours total service from the school, no transportation, 15 kid in a class with 2 teacher and 2 aids. It is a integrated class, which I don't have a problem with. But with so few aids/teacher, so few hours, I doubt he will be helped much. And no transportation! How am I going to pick him up when I am suppose to work? And so much trouble for just 9 hours.

I worked hard to get this job. Quitting is not an option. My son is very mild in the spectrum. I can live with 9 hour service but at least they should make the service friendly for working moms. Don't know how to make it work. I am really depressed.

Can you connect with other parents and work out transportation arrangements? Don't fret...it is not the end of the world.
You will just need to find adequate solutions to the dilemmas you now face in AZ.

Was your son in an inclusive pre-k in MA? The scenario you're describing for AZ sounds pretty typical for a child who is mild on the spectrum and in an inclusive pre-k in any state. My son who has Asperger's is entering his second year of pre-k in NY (great district) in an inclusive program. He receives 3 hrs/week with a special ed teacher, 1 hr w/ a PT, and 1 hr w/ an OT, mostly at school but sometimes at home. His classes are 3 days/week for 2.5 hours. He has 15 classmates of all different abilities and 2 head teachers with multiple therapists on hand. We are responsible for tuition (no UPK in our district) and transportation, but not for therapy. For our son, this set up has been working very well as I feel that 5 full days/week would be too much for him.

On the flip side, this set up is tremendously hard for us (the parents) financially and logistically. I'm a stay-at-home mom, but we really can't afford to live on one salary anymore. We also can't afford to send me to work because childcare is so expensive. Unfortunately, a lot of things in this country are not working mom friendly. I'm sorry I have no advice here, but I feel your pain.

They by law have to trasport your son weather they like it or not. You need to get a copy of the state and fed law and toss it on a few desks and start using words like law suits they also have follow the childs IEP. It dosen't matter what the schools are rated they all must follow the same laws.

2 things I get out of this immediately, if your son has an IEP:

1) The new school district must follow the current IEP from the old district until a new one is set up. They also must provide the services you child needs, whether through another district or whatever means necessary.

2) Transportation must be provided to all students with an IEP, even if they live next door to the school. This is codified in Federal Law and the district has no choice. I know this because I was a special needs school bus driver.

Of course, again this assumes your child has an IEP. If not, then you are at the mercy of the district.

I'm a little confused. Are you talking about transportation between the mainstreen class and the special services, or transportation to and from home? The former, I believe, the school is required to provide even if its a taxi. The later, maybe not; home to school transportation is being eliminated in many districts. But if its the later, then there are quite a few more problems in the logistics than you've mentioned, like what the plan is for your son when he arrives home, if you're working full time.

What are the childcare plans? How does all this fit in?

Will he be K or pre-K? Transportation of any sort may not be required for non-compulsory education.

As for quality of school district and level of service, there is absolutely no relationship. In our county, parents often find themselves transferring to less popular schools because of better special ed programs. A "top" school will fill with pretty little effort; a "lower" school will have to learn how to do more if it wants students. And many have; the ratings can have much more to do with demographics than actual teaching. It all vaires a lot; I have yet to see a rating system that is able to give a complete picture.

I am talking about both. In MA, the school bus picked up my son in the morning and sent him to a daycare in the afternoon. When the school was on vacation, I sent him to the daycare full day. This worked out pretty good, although I had to pay full tuition for the daycare to reserve a full day spot.

Right now my mother is with me to help the move. She will stay a couple of months, but not for ever. My husband is not home most of time. I have no problem with drop him to the school in the morning. The only way I can see now is to use my lunch time drive across the town, pick him up, send him to the daycare and drive back to work. I am a college professor, so in theory I am free to go anywhere when I am not teaching. But it doesn't mean I can be a great teacher while I spend so much time driving around.

My son has an active IEP from MA. He is almost 4, so he is still in preschool. The district does have transportation for Ks. In this case, are they required to provide transportation for preschooler with IEP?

Is the problem the lack of child care? I know that special-needs child care is often hard to find... I don't think nine hours a week is actually going to be so bad for him if he can get an attentive, nurturing environment the rest of the time, yeah?

(Incidentally, I like the integrated class idea--keep it if you can. Typical kids need to be introduced to disabilities, and disabled kids don't need to feel like they are shoved in a corner like some kind of a spec ed leper colony...)

Have you got in touch with a parents' group in your new area? It really needn't be specifically for autism; just special needs kids of all sorts. The point isn't really to talk about autism per se, but to find out how to get the system to work for you--and if anybody knows how to do that, it's special needs parents. You may not need preschool specifically for special ed kids if you can find a friendly environment for your child to spend the rest of the time. If he shows any curiosity at all about his environment, a good environment is all he needs to learn (even if he--like I did--spends most of the time doing things like arranging dried beans into patterns and giving appendectomies to his stuffed animals! Don't let people tell you autistics don't learn on their own, as we most surely do... good therapy is mostly a matter of introducing us to the interesting concepts we will find useful, after all!)

If it's on the IEP they have to follow it to the letter. No mater what they do most of the time they must get a bus for him. They might do a van or I've even had a taxi come for my son on the schools dime to get him back and forth to school. Drop him off at the day care should be an option most schools ask if the afternoon drop off is the same as the morning pick-up. If New Mexico <were I live now > and Lousiana can manage this crying poor isn't going to cut it. To bad so sad for them they still must do what is on the IEP.

alot of the southern states in the US have this shark and plankton theory of social darwinism....only the strong survive and the ones who have special needs are seen as a burden that the feds have put on them. There is a major cultural difference between southern and northern states. If you look into it, the high school drop out rates for special needs children is an ashtonishing 70-90 percent. They dont add specail needs kids in their normal drop out statistics. I went to school in Georgia and me being a special needs student, Only 3 kids from my special ed class graudated...out of 50 kids! the rest dropped out.

Anyway if you are going to file a 504 or lawsuit...just do it....dont warn them, because I dont know how it is Az but I asume it is the same as it is Georgia cuz the culture is the same. Anyway some of friends got their house burned down for planning to file 504...and the state gov. did nothing about it. Some of my other friends have been getting death threats for the same reason.

The job may be great...but your kid will suffer...and some things developmentally are irreversable. I suggest moving back to MA for your child's sake. Down south, they dont really like to follow the fed educational laws and usually dont and will do harm to those who try to make them.

Trust me on this one. Been there done that ...t-shirt


Jojo

Th west is far diffrent then the south east.

The way it works in NY is that a schools are only required to transport students in grades K-12, not preschoolers. If the district has a universal pre-k program (which is not required by law), then students in UPK receive transportation as well. Even if the district has UPK, not all students are guaranteed a spot, and admission works on a lottery basis. Special services such as speech, PT, etc., either through an IEP or through early intervention, are delivered to the child, wherever the child may be (at home, daycare, pre-k, etc.). The district is only required to provide special services, not general pre-k or daycare. At least this is how it is here, I can't speak for other states. Hope that helps!

I met with the special education team in the district today. Teachers are nice. Transportation is no way to find. Besides, the special ed school release at 12:00. Even if we have transportation, by the time my son gets to a childcare, he will miss the lunch time. That leaves me two options:

1. Hire a nanny for days he needs to go to the special school, have her picking him up and taking care of him in afternoons. I can send him to a part-time regular preschool in days he has not special ed. Will cost a lot. I never hired a nanny. Don't know if I will trust someone with my son.

2. Send my son to a good regular preschool. I am sure he will survive. He was fine in his daycare before the diagnose. Teachers said he never made trouble. He was just quiet and not-talking. I will worry about him not getting enough attention in a regular preschool.

Don't know what will be better.

I would assume that because this is pre K they are not required to provide the transportation you desire.

Option 3 is to find someone either to hire or exchange with for the transportation from the school to daycare. Carpooling. Which, you would find, is not only a transportation solution, but a potentially amazing social connection for your AS child - without a carpool my son would never have become close friends with one of the most popular boys at school, and that connection has been useful beyond measure.

As for the other options ... it really depends. My son had a nanny when he was an infant, and a nanny again when he was in pre-K and his sister was an infant. I had had this vision of my infant son playing next to me while I worked in my office, lol. Yeah. Right. Once we realized that wasn't going to work, we tried daycare, homecare, and various nannies until we got it right. Finding the right childcare for any child is difficult; for a "special" child even harder. But. Once you have the right person, it is wonderful, and my son had 2 wonderful nannies. His infant nanny walked him in the stroller from one end of town to the other, arranged play dates with other nannies, and taught him Spanish. He soaked it up. His pre-K nanny picked him up from preschool and provided predictability, structure, clear guidelines, and an amazing amount of love, and he soaked that up, too - the security of how she worked with him was just right for that time in his life. And he picked her himself - he was there at every interview. She didn't have any prior experience with children that young, but we just knew she was right for the kids. We're still really close with her. Part time nannies can be difficult to find, however - our pre-K nanny was a psych student, and students are a good place to look. Our infant nanny we had to help find a second part time job before she would agree to work that schedule.

I suggest you put your hand in the water with all the options to see what feels right. Its time consuming, its hard. I know that very well. But you have to do everything you can in deciding these things so that you KNOW, in the end, you've done the absolute best you could to balance it all for your family.