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| Fri, 09-08-2006 - 7:34pm |
OK, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. And I thought things were bad here in Noo Yawk City before, but according to our big gun, things are getting worser and worser for Special Ed, they've never seen such a bad stinker-roo year.
No interim services available. There's a mandate. If your child fell off a skyscraper and was in traction for a few years --- no interim services can be given out for anybody, period. Oh, we could go a hearing, if we could afford that. Crazy. Illegal too, but there you have it. There's a mandate.
So our only choices were --- 1) keep the school, he has the placement, school CAN'T by law kick him out, 2) keep the placement and add a 1:1 para, or 3) enroll him in public school. Discussed option 2) with assist principal, he says it's just a great, big problem to get any kind of good para, unlikely they can really find anyone who can work with Malcolm and Malcolm needs someone with some skill, can't be just a babysitter, I do agree with that! Otherwise that would have been their suggestion up front. He isn't even remotely comfortable that a good one could be found, and he doesn't think we should be comfortable about this, either. But in the long run, it is up to us.
Our other unoffical option -- pull him from the system, file to homeschool. Then once set up, go back to SEPARATE office and get home services OT, SPT, social skills, no tutor though, because mandate : no interim services! Of course I know from others that we can probably get the services on paper, but then there will be noone available to provide the services, etc. Ugh.
So we set up an IEP for current school adding 1:1 para, PLUS lawyer then got us several MORE hours of OT per week, mostly outside, those outside services we can go for right away and get started, if we can find anyone, as I said.
THEN we wrote a second IEP, to be filed later in order to save time, for refering him to another agency (read : more needless hoop-jumping) in order to eventually remove him to another TBD non-public funded school if and when we land him a placement -- but at least the IEP is written up, ready to go.
My head hurts. School starts Monday. We will be calling him in sick/staying home at first. We will do that every day until we determine exactly what we are going to do! Asst principal is expecting this, we discussed it. So --- What to do. Try the para thing and send him back with the inexperienced little-girl staff, or pull from system and homeschool while we look into options, but no tutoring and we have extensive filing of forms, etc. to set up homeschooling.
Sigh. Tired. Took over 3 hours, everything was so complicated to unravel and figure out, for the District people as well as us. Nana # 1 arrives tomorrow night and we'll be checking in with our entire home team, psychologist, psychiatrist, evaluator, etc. and making a decision .... soon. Sigh.
Thanks for all your good wishes, candles and prayers. I could feel you all. I will say that the entire IEP review experience, although weird and confusing, was actually lovely in that everyone was trying their hardest in an untenable situation and we were well cared for --- and we certainly got everything we could without going to a hearing. Yet.
Sara
ilovemalcolm

Oh man Sara, you so did not need that today.
UGH. I hope you guys are able to come up with a good plan that doesn't involve calling him in sick until december.
My prayers are with you.
Renee
Oh.
I was so
visit my blog at www.onesickmother.com
I'm sorry you didn't get what you hoped for. How incredibly frustrating! Sending prayers you find him a good placement.
Samantha