Need advice regarding a difficult IEP decision

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My DD has attended the same school from 3 years old until now (third grade). Her brothers both attend the school, and her father is a teacher there. However, it's private, and she just had an IEP through the public school. Her school does offer some academic assistance, so we actually obtained the IEP in order to identify the best way for the current school to meet her needs. However, the public school was able to offer recess shadowing, speech therapy, and 24 accommodations that don't restrict her level of learning.

Her current school can offer some of the accommodations, but none of the services. Because her dad teaches at the private school, the cost of daycare at the public school would actually cost more than we currently spend on tuition. Her entire friend base is at that school (although she does have issues making and keeping friends), barring some neighbor girls who attend different private schools. She is involved in afterschool activities at the current school, as well.

So, for third grade, which is more important to maximizing the development of an autistic girl: continuing a familiar environment, or getting the most appropriate services?

I think without knowing more about your daughter and her needs, it is hard to say.

FWIW, my son attended a small private school from age 4 to the beginning of grade 5. My daughter attended from age 3 to the beginning of 1st grade. As it was a small, private school, they did not get all of the services they would have gotten in a public school (we moved when the school closed). But, they were surrounded by teachers and staff who had known them for most of their lives and who were very personally invested in seeing them succeed. I would say that some of the staff actually loved them. So, although they "gave up" services that they would have gotten in public school, what they got instead I think was more important.

For them.

But, depending upon what services your daughter is missing out on and how much she *needs* them (as opposed to "might do well with" them), your situation may be different.

I can tell you one clear drawback for my son....his classmates had known him since he was 4. They were all very tolerant and accepting of his "oddities" and for the most part, they went unnoticed by his peers. Or if they noticed them, they had grown so accustomed to them that it was not something to pay attention to. When we changed schools, it was difficult for him to make friends and kids thought he was weird (he is, to be honest, but it was never an issue at the other school). So, I do feel like we "gave up" an environment that was probably a bit more "weird-friendly" for my son. For my daughter, teachers from her first school had known her since she was basically non-verbal. They understood just how far she had come and they all kind of "rallied around" her because they all felt like they were part of the developmental leaps they made. They looked at her in amazement. In her new school, although they are all very supportive, I don't know that they really understand, or believe, where she has come from developmentally. They see a bright girl who is somewhat shy and has meltdowns. I do feel that we "gave something up" by taking her away from a faculty/staff who saw her as being "miles ahead of where she once was," instead of "slightly behind her peers."

In full disclosure, neither of my kids have an IEP in school now, though they are both followed in the school's RTI program and get accommodations.

It depends on the girl, and on the schools themselves.

What is recess shadowing?

Speech therapy can be very helpful.

Considering the cost of daycare at the public school, and the fact that some of the neighbor girls she is friends with attend other private schools, have you shopped around (checked price and services and environment at the neighbor girls' schools)?

I don't know how kids that age make friends in school. My parents told me to invite kids I liked over on specific days. They planned stuff for me and my new friend like apple picking with a hayride, or hiking together, or a trip to the museum. That way we had a shared experience, and I didn't have to come up with things to say. So really, I made friends after school when I made friends. If you can figure out how to script making friends, definitely tell her.

Sorry I can't be more helpful.

Recess shadowing is when a monitor interacts with a student during recess, coordinating activities and reflecting how playmates are reacting so that the child learns appropriate social interaction in a supportive environment. It's like social skills class at recess.

My DD's teachers love her. The head administrator of the school is like a father to me, and I've known him since I was three. The teachers are incredibly supportive and will be all the way through, but she will continue to struggle with peers, and in a small school, one can run out of friend opportunities pretty quickly.

She has difficulty with speech, and I'm not sure we can fix that in our current situation. On the other hand, she requires a LOT of redirection (at least once every 5 minutes, per the evaluation), and she would be shifting from a class of 20 to a class of 30, with the new teacher knowing her only as a girl who is here for special needs.

I feel sick because I know that there IS a right and a wrong choice here, but I have no idea which is which. My husband currently gets to see his daughter every day when he looks out his window, and he feels like we'd be banishing her from her life. In other words, he isn't able to be objective, and he's usually my rock when it comes to the unbiased opinion.

On paper, a student in a public school will get more direct services than a student in a private school. I have very mixed feelings about this issue and find myself confused by it a lot. And what I've figured out is that it isn't necessarily the services on paper that count, it's the people who reach out from their hearts with all the love and compassion they can offer that actually make a different, and they're present in public and private schools. But a public school can be a very stressful place, and just when I convince myself they offer more, I'll have an interaction with them I can hardly stand that makes no sense, and wonder how the kids take being there.

There are a lot of kids on the spectrum who are miserable in school and being miserable year after year isn't an easy habit to break out of.

And though I can't tell you what's right for your child, if she is able to play with other kids most recesses at the private school, that to me would win out over recess shadowing in an environment where she knew no one and wasn't accepted and was completely dependent on an adult to structure her recess time.

I would have thought there would be an IEP at the private school with some services through the district. If that isn't an option, you could see if your insurance would cover speech therapy. And private schools will sometimes allow both public and private providers to work there.

I often wonder about this choice and there is no easy answer. I found the social world of the public school too confusing and harsh when my daughter was young. Don't know whether that was the right or wrong decision to go private, but it allowed us more sanity. If the social world of your public school seems positive, that may be a good choice. Just be careful not to assume more is better as the quality of that more can be quite variable.

Keep her in the school where her family is. I think it's a no-brainer. The enticements offered by the public school are meaningless against being close to her family.
She may run out of friends there, or she may not - who knows.
Is it possible for you to hire a speech therapist to work with her privately? It would be a heck of a sacrifice just for that. And the recess helper - that's funny.

@nicum

Don't tear yourself up over the right and wrong choice here - because it isn't that black and white. There will be advantages and disadvantages to each situation - which you've set out. There will also be unknown advantages and disadvantages which are simply unknowable right now. Not only that but whichever choice you make means you'll never know how things would have turned out if you made the other choice.

You need to look at the whole family situation as well. What's good for you, her dad, her siblings as well as her.

This is a tough choice. But that's good in a way because it means there are good things with both options.

This is exactly what I was going to say and there is no sense repeating it, because I couldn't have said it better.

One thing to look in to, I was able to get my daughter OT and PT while she was in the private school. We just had to go after school hours to a therapy center instead of having it done during school hours. The district paid for it. One of the "arguments" that I made that convinced them to pay for it was that I was footing the bill at the private school and was not utilizing district resources for special education placement. And I was a taxpayer. I think that when they realized that the services that I was asking for as support in the private school were actually cheaper than what they would pay if she was actually taking up a sped seat, they saw it as a reasonable alternative.

I think, as others have said, it really does depend on your child and the services that the public school may offer. In thinking about your specific situation, I am inclined to think that maybe staying in the private school she is at may have more advantages. She has a friend-base there (and we found that third grade was a bit of a social "minefield"; the more acquaintances, the better - particularly with girls), she has a family support system, and her services, while fewer than in public school, can be monitored.

Public school special education personnel like touting *all* the services they can provide. Indeed, they are numerous, but I would look for quality over quantity. With many more children to service, your child may not get as much individual attention as she would like/need. Also, moving from classroom to learning center takes time - in a larger public school, it may take 5 minutes to get a child from the classroom to learning center. It may not seem like much, but add that to the front end and back end of a 40 minute "mandated by IEP" session, and you really realistically have 20-25 minutes of true instruction time. And while there were some fantastic paraeducators at our schools, some were terrible and I felt, did more harm than good.

Are the accommodations at her current school meeting her needs? Are you finding that by not having the services described in the public school offering, your child is at a disadvantage? Another possibility is bringing in a specialist/aide, specifically for your child, to the private school. They do not need to be costly, as some colleges and universities have graduate programs for special education. If the private school is flexible, this may be a way for you to get more individual service without too much financial burden.

Is it possible for your daughter to have private therapy and specifically work on issues as they come up? This was far more effective for us than relying solely on the school for services - a better "investment", if you will.

I home-schooled my daughter for 2 years (4th and 5th grade), and by the end of 5th grade, she asked me to go back to a regular school because she yearned to be in a more "school" environment, surrounded by peers her age. If we had had a private school that made her feel more comfortable socially, I would have tried to work within that system before pulling her out and home-schooling her. I feel she lost a lot of time practicing social skills. She is doing better, but has yet to make a close friend at school. The difference is that this is now on her terms and she feels ready to nurture a friendship. I wanted to respect her wishes.

When my son was in private Pre-K (twice), we had speech therapy at the public school. For the first year, it was a normal situation, because our public school did not offer a pre-k class. In this case, had we needed it, the school system would have even provided bus service. The second year, he was supposed to be in kindergarten, which they did offer, but we held him back. He still received speech therapy, but no bus service was available, since technically, he was eligible to be enrolled in the school but since we had opted otherwise, they were not required to provide the bus service.

As I understand it, you can still get services through the public school system you're districted for, even if you child does not attend her districted school. I just don't know all the ins and outs of how it works at her grade level.

The private school sounds better to me.
Smaller classes and teachers who know your daughter well.
As long as she is getting a good education there, you should stay there.
It is a big plus that her father is a teacher there too.
For speech, I suggest thinking outside the traditional speech therapy box by getting your daugther a tutor with experience in ESL.
Explicit teaching of speaking and using language worked for me to learn these things when I was around your daughter's age.

Where we live, I have found that private speech therapists are much better than the ones in the public school. So I wouldn't see that service as a reason to move -- take the money you would've spent on daycare and put it toward private speech therapy. Socially, the private school sounds better. She may be on the outside but at least the girls have known her for a long time. Hopefully the teachers are encouraging them to include her. At public school she might be getting no interaction at all -- I would worry about the quality of the proposed playground shadow (at our old district the "aides" had NO training). It's easy to write a long list of accommodations, hard to actually put it into practice. Are there parents with autistic children raving about how good things are for their kid at this public school? A class of 20 trumps 30 hands down.

If you'd come here saying things were going downhill fast at the public school, your daughter was miserable, and the school seemed to be heading in the direction of kicking her out, my advice would be different. But if things are more or less ok, but not optimal, I would recommend looking for ways to fill in the gaps.

Exactly.

You can contract privately for the services, and that should be factored into your cost comparison. We found speech to be the most useful service our son had, although the OT was also useful. The resource teacher was helpful, but there shouldn't be much she did that a well tuned in general ed teacher can't do on their own.

Can you see if your school district can supplement services such as helping to pay for tutoring etc? Some school districts will add to the services.

I would mention at the IEP meeting that your child has a friend base at he private school and having to change to a public school would be detrimental to the well-being of your child.

Also your Husband works at the school and you are getting a discount there.

Furthermore since your Husband can work with your child's teachers to accommodate your child's needs this is a great asset that not too many people have. Not to take him away from his duties but he can help when it comes time to parent confrences.

If there is an issue the Principal will know better how to address it with input from your Husband and yourself.

In Public school settings sometimes they take the "cookie cutter approach" whereas in a Private school setting they can be more individualized with smaller classes.