The plot thickens

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So we had our first IEP meeting yesterday, the principal acted like the whole thing was his idea, although we requested this verbally several months ago, and were denied twice, so we put it in writing, and things are finally starting. First thing that happens is he suggests home schooling, we refused him flat out, since odds are he'd wash his hands of the whole situation if we agreed to it. Next, he brings out an email from another student's father, which was very threatening in tone, I guess my son hit his son, and now he's threatening to get together a "coalition of concerned parents" sounds like a lynch mob to me, and he also threatened to press assault charges. I feel this is rediculous, and although I understand wanting to protect your child, this is a bit overboard, especially since my son lacks the motor skills to really hurt anybody. We told the principal to inform him of our son's situation, and the fact that we're making efforts to resolve these issues. We informed the principal that we wanted a transfer to a class that could handle our son, to which he said that the persom in charge of such things is backlogged, and the transfer would likely take until near the end of the school year. We're looking over the wrightslaw site to figure things out, since the packet we were given by the district on our rights was vague at best, I'm thinking it's in their best interest to make it that way, so we are less likely to insist on them. They are wrong. They pretty much threw out our doctor's diagnosis, and insist on reassessing him, yet they gave us all of the assessments to fill out, including one, that we later found out should have been filled out by a psychologist, no wonder it was so confusing. They refuse to accrpt that our son has Asperger's, and are pushing for a HFA diagnosis, since they know little about AS, and they have a lot more knowlege about HFA, I do not want this to be convienient, I want it to be accurate.

Once again, I love red tape.

That sounds horrible. I've never heard of schools trying to re-diagnose someone once a doctor determines the disability.

our district refused to accept our son's neuropsych eval determination, and insisted on testing him again... fortunately for us, they still shipped son out of district ( that's what we wanted)...they did not, however, agree with our son's diagnosis. in the end, i don't really care whether they agree or not~just that he's receiving the services he deserves. I'm happy to say that he is
have you tried mentioning the "L" word to the district ? (lawyer, that is)....what about having a parent advocate along with you ? it is such a stressful time trying to get what is right for your child from a district whose main concern is the almighty dollar.
good luck

Sounds very similar to the meeting we had a few months ago at my son's school. The first thing the principal wanted to do was to show me the door. I refused. The second approach was for her to make me feel like a dx was next to impossible because the wait list was so long and when I said I would pay for a private eval, then she said the board may not accept the dx that he will get through the hospital because it's not THEIR ed psych.

How on earth is that type of approach supposed to help our kids reach their full potential? It really burns me up!! You keep on fighting and one day your child will look back and see that you were their number one fan.

I agree with ster's suggestion of bringing an advocate with you. I brought my son's psychotherapist to the meeting with me and it was the best decision I made! She was able to say all the same things that I would have, but because she's not his parent, what she said carries more weight. The principal tried to railroad her as well until she informed the principal that before opening her private practice, she was in charge of the special ed department for X number of years.

Good luck in the battle. Don't let them beat you down. Sometimes when you stand up to them often enough, things will get accomplished.

Districts reject medical diagnosis all the time. Just because you have a medical diagnosis does not necessarily mean it affects school performance or a student's ability to learn. Entirely ridiculous of course. As an example, my daughter has microcephaly which is simply determined by the neuro getting out the measuring tape. There are no opinions involved and no one can dispute the diagnosis or claim that they interpret the data a different way. YET - we still had to PROVE that with this measurable undisputable condition and with all the problems my daughter was having (not behaviorally but still at 1st grade level math in 4th grade) that there was any connection to her learning problems.

My advice would be to try and get into another district. My son was little and the effect of him being in a classroom without services while we tried to work something out with the district was not worth it. The stress caused him to regress to the point where he was shutting down. He has HFA though not Aspergers. When we started homeschooling a couple of people had the nerve to imply that we were just giving in and if we had fought long enough services would have been provided. A year later two of those people have also pulled their kids out of the district - one remortgaged her house to send her son to a private school and another pulled her son out after they called the police on the kid. Some of these districts are used to litigation for special education and have attorneys on call. And I have heard of the "forming a coalition of parents" tactic before from someone on my local group. Understand that these principals and administrators go to conferences on how to do the least possible for special education students and I'm sure they share intimidation tacticts. After what they have said I think you need to get a lawyer to advise you.

There is really not that much difference between a diagnosis of AS and one of HFA, but in some school districts, a diagnosis of HFA qualifies the student for more services, so if they want to have their own professionals evaluate him again for HFA, that might not be so bad, but only if they start providing services right now based on his current medical diagnosis of AS. We have had a school district challenge our daughter's medical diagnosis of autism. They wanted to check the box on her IEP that said Other Health Impaired on the basis of her anoxia when she was a baby, which would mean they could give her as much or as little services as they wanted. We said no and moved up the school district chain of command.

They relented and checked the Autism box, but explained to us they did not think she had typical classical autism, which we agreed with. We were ready to take the issue to due process if they had not checked the appropriate box to give her the services she needed. We had the best special education attorney in our state attend her IEP meeting with us, because the relationship between my husband and the Executive Director of Special Education for our school district had become heated. We have officially become the parents from hell, which has some advantages as well as some disadvantages. They treat us with kid gloves and are much more likely to tell us something good about her day as opposed to something bad. I like hearing some good news, but I prefer to know what really happened, good and bad. How can I help her if I don't know?

She has gone after a few kids at school, even though she has one-on-one supervision at all times. One day, she ran away from me while I was bringing her to school and grabbed a little girl's glasses off her face, bending them. I was horrified. After I got my daughter safely to the person who was responsible for her at school, I found the little girl and explained about my daughter's challenges and I took her glasses to be repaired and then brought them back to her. If they could not have been repaired, I would have paid to replace them. Then I went to the principal and explained what had happened and gave him a card to give the little girl's parents and gave him permission to discuss our daughter's challenges with the little girl's parents and to please tell them to call us if they needed to talk to us about anything. Then we, with the assistance of an autism specialist, decided to talk to her class about her challenges and strengths. It was a difficult decision, but I believe that her classmates were much more understanding of her once they were given information that they could understand. Our daughter was not in the classroom for this talk.

The issue with your child and this other child - if it happened at school why didn't the principal handle it then and there? Concerns me as an ineffective leader. Then he brings this up a day late and a dollar short, and it sounds from your email like maybe he agreed to share your son's information with this other parent re your chld's dx or issues? He should have refused to do so immediately on the grounds of confidentiality. Gives me grave concern about the quality of this principal.

That is a good point, AspiesMom1. In my daughter's case, I had to give explicit permission for the principal to share any information about my daughter or her issues with the little girl's parents. I could not contact the little girl's parents directly because of confidentiality issues.

We did the whole IEP thing last fall and had HFA and/or AS on it. Didn't matter. By December the assistant principal questioned his dx since my son can talk. We had trouble getting him any services initially since he's so smart. When the school was putting him in stressful situations and creating anxiety, he was lashing out as well. They just couldn't/wouldn't help him and then doubted the dx while complaining about his behavior.

Our local Center for Independent Living does have a youth advocate and the services are paid through public tax dollars here in the U.S. We talked with our advocate and he was very helpful and offered to attend IEP meetings with us. He particularly likes taking a tape recorder.

We did opt for homeschool and it has been a huge help for our son. If we had not been able to homeschool, then we would have used the advocate and gone through the legal requirements that were suggested (encouraged) by the advocate.

These centers are supposed to be all over the US but services can vary. Hopefully you have one near you with a good youth advocate.

I can't help but wonder why all these quality people have left the medical field to pursue careers as principals and vice-principals. Since they are diagnosing and questioning diagnoses (which indicates they have their own idea of what the issue is) clearly they have medical degrees?

Our principal isn't the best, my son's school not among the top rated in the state, but I can't believe how fortunate we have been. The school's "diagnositician" sent him to a specialist to be diagnosed, and no one since has ever questioned that dx. We have had a few minor sqirmishes over a service or an issue, but I've never had to find the ground war at home like many of you have had to. My hats off to all of you for that.

Makes me afraid for August, when my son leaves the school he's been in since Kindie to head to middle school. All new peeps. I can only hope our luck holds out.

In my area, the local chapter of The ARC offers someone to sit with parents in an IEP meeting - it helps establish a more equal dynamic between district and parents.

I had to demand he inform this parent, as the alternative would have been much worse. Here's a copy of the email that the other parent sent to the principal, names ommitted
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I am writing you with a very serious concern. It has been brought to my attention that a student by the name of xxxxxxxxxx has been bullying xxxxxxxxx. Today he kicked and pushed xxxxxxxx. This is not the first time this has happened, and I have heard through the grapevine this same problem is occurring with other students. This boy is to keep his hands and feet off my son. It is unacceptable to allow this type of anti-social behavior to take place. I consider this a very serious matter.



I have heard the boy has been suspended on several occasions for similar issues and has even threatened his teacher. If he assaults xxxxxxxx again, my next step will be to take this issue to the school board and build a coalition of other parents who are having the same types of issues. I will also consider involving law enforcement for battery by a juvenile.



If you have any questions or would like to schedule a meeting, please feel free to give me a call. If I have to take time off from work to accommodate you, it can be arranged.



Sincerely,



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



It does not take sharp eyes to see the sun and the moon,

nor does it take sharp ears to hear the thunderclap. Wisdom

is not obvious. You must see the subtle and notice the hidden

to be victorious.

-Sun Tzu, The Art of War

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I honestly understand his concern, and although I would rather it not come to airing outr business to other parents, I hope informing him of my son's condition, and that we're working to address these things, will help him to understand that this isn't a bad kid. What really gets me, is this man knows me, and could speak to me about this at any time, but he didn't.

Hello,

I hope it all works out for you. I know that it all gets a bit weird. We're in the same situation with our 5 year old. It's happened a few times with the same boy, other children and his teachers. So we're probably only about a week or two behind you. The headmistress called last Friday afternoon for us to pick him up early. Lots was going on at the school because it was Easter and End of Term so he had a melt-down at school and head-butted his teacher (among other things) when she got behind him to try to pick him up.

I don't know how it's all going to pan out but, if it's any consolation to you, you're not alone. I'll be thinking of you when I make myself a cup of tea in the middle of the night to grab 5 minutes of calm to myself!