Does anyone know?.....

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Hello everyone,
I was wondering if anyone knew if and how parents could find grants or funding for schooling for kids like ours? DS becomes so stressed and depressed when it is time for school to start and I know of a private school that is starting up that deals with children like ds, but at this time they are running it as a homeschool based program. It would be great for ds but it costs too much and we simply cannot afford it.
There is also another private school that seems like it would be a great fit for ds but again we cannot afford it. We would really like to figure something out for him before he goes to middle school, I am afraid we are too late to get him out of the school he goes to now for this school year but we would at least like to try. Any advice and suggestions would be great!
Thank you~

I would love to have some answers to those questions too. I dread sending my son back to school in a few weeks. He hates it so much! I was thinking about how great he has done over the summer and no stimming at all. I realized that he hasn't had his usual stresses from going to school.

When I used to read the boards at Autism Speaks, there were parents basically threatening to sue their school districts for the money for private schools. I remember one posting that the district was paying for the private school. But I think it's a tough road to climb, especially with higher functioning children. You basically have to convince the district that they are unable to provide "appropriate" education. They don't have to provide the best, just something officially considered suitable, and that isn't a really high standard, apparently.

Several families I know locally have been lucky enough to be able to afford the private schooling. They make a lot of sacrifices to do so, of course. But when I can tell that the placement has absolutely been the right one for a particular child, it makes me sad to realize that not everyone has that option, that even with sacrifices some families are never going to be able to make it happen. I'm not sure we could, if it ever came to that (we've been lucky that so far my son has done well using his IEP).

SOMEONE SOMEWHERE must have figured this out by now, and become sympathetic to those parents unable to afford the better options for their children. But how to find them ... I have no idea. And even then, there probably isn't enough to go around for the more borderline cases.

How far short are you? Do you have ANY ideas for how to make it work? Extended family? ANY thing? What about scholarships from the private school itself? Most have some available. Have you asked?

Thank you DW,
I have checked with the one school and even if we were able to get 1/2 off the tuition cost it is still too much. Problem we are running into is my husband is the only one working at this time and I am a college student myself. We are also expecting a baby again any day now.

I will have to continue to keep looking for ds sake, the school has not been horrible but we are having MAJOR issues with bullying and ds getting caught up in it all and so he gets in more trouble than the bullies it seems. At our last IEP meeting his teacher last year was the first to say that he witnessed ds getting "baited" by the boys that constantly go after him and the teacher was working with teaching him to walk away and stay away from the other boys, but it seems like every year we have to start over again in trying to get through to ds to stay away from these boys. We have also had major problems with ds "art teacher" and she is under investigation from an incident that happened during the last week of school... told ds that "normal people" would not do what he was doing, he was cleaning up a mess that was made by another student that was throwing things at him. I have yet to hear what came of that situation but the principal was on our side with what happened.

I will keep looking for other options though. Thank you for taking the time to respond:)

I know you said that you are going to college, but is that something that you can take from home? It may be a benefit for your child to be homeschooled. It isn't for everyone, but my son was in the same situation and as every new year started, it took nearly the whole year to get the school to work on the bullying problems. Having 2 with AS and the youngest having the same problems as he, I decided that it was a lot less pain and suffering for everyone if I just took charge and homeschooled. It has been great, they are blooming and learning to deal with social situations in a less abrasive and less overwhelming way. Also, it was a near no cost investment. You can get everything you need from the library (for curriculum) and the internet has loads of free worksheets. Just a thought.