Preschool jitters

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-30-2005
Preschool jitters
3
Thu, 12-08-2005 - 4:34pm

Hello everyone -- it's been a while since I've been on the board and I'll hve to read through to catch up on what's happening with everyone. We've been good -- Calvin's been really good -- and we're bracing ourselves for the holidays just like everyone else seems to be doing. ANYWAY, Calvin's preschool evaluation is coming up in early January (he'll go in September -- turns 3 in May) and every parent I've talked to has said that preschool evals are awful and that I will have to really stand up for what I want for my child, and that the system tends to work against parents, etc. When I press for details, I never really get anything concrete, but they always tell me to bring people (therapists, etc.) along so that I will have backup for my requests. Which leads me to another question -- what are my requests? I mean, I assume that he will continue speech therapy, OT, and special ed. Plus he will need some more physical therapy as well. These are services he receives now. Will I have to fight to maintain those services? It's so clear to me that he needs them, ya know? I know it's different for each state (we're in NY) but I'm wondering what some of you have been through and what I should look out for? I guess I'm just naive and can't imagine that my autistic child would be denied services, but I also know that money is money is money and budgets are slim. Any anecdotes and advice would be appreciated.

Kellie

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-03-2004
Thu, 12-08-2005 - 4:50pm

Hi Kellie,

I am in NYC, and here the services usually remain for preschool pretty easily. The troubles here come when you transition to grade school. I am not sure what everyone is warning you about. And so much depends on what the evals and reports of current teachers and therapists say --- ours all wrote up that Malcolm continued to need all the services and why --- which meant he kept them.

When we transitioned to grade school, 2 of his teachers did come with us to the session. And we got everything we asked for without a fight. I do know other people who were denied, even though there was no reason for the denial, but it seems to me that they then won the mediation or further IEP meetings pretty easily. The only problem was they had to jump more hoops and many of them hired lawyers to do it. Which translates to more meetings, lots of firing letters back and forth, not accepting the proposed cutting of services, i.e. NOT signing agreements.

We had prep work towards our transition meeting with his preschool. We prepared a 3-ring binder with every scrap of evals and reports we had on him to bring with us to the meeting, in case we had to refer back to anything, etc. We wrote up what goals and services we wanted, presented it all very clearly with plenty of strong reasons why he needed all the services.

My advice is go in knowing what you want, expect to get it and don't take "no" for an answer. Expect to fight until your child gets what he needs, no matter what. Don't sign anything until you are in agreement. If you get in trouble, go to IEP Board here for advice, they'll walk you through everything, they are great!

Good luck. You could get everything right away, though, we did...

yours,

Sara
ilovemalcolm

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-25-2003
Fri, 12-09-2005 - 12:03am

Kellie,

I heard all that stuff too. "The schol district is your enemy. Don't share information with them. Tell them nothing" I ignored that and shared information wih the district, worked with them, and did my reseach. We didn't have any real problems with preschol placement. I am on Long Island, BTW.

-Paula

-Paula

visit my blog at www.onesickmother.com
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-19-2005
Fri, 12-09-2005 - 12:20pm

Hi Kellie,

I hate to be the wet blanket here, but we did have a less than perfect experience transitioning from early intervention to the school system, but we live in Florida and every state is different. Please don't let our experience color yours, however, many people in my community with kids ages 2/3 have had the same experience we had, so it is probably our state that's the problem.

This is what happened to us. Eric's bd is in April. In Feb. the EIP people scheduled an exit evaluation. Long story, but combination of things: first, little dude was having an exceptionally great day and rocked on all the tests; second, we found out later, problems with the testing. Anyway, Eric did not qualify for enough of a delay in anything to qualify for services or sped school. His adaptive delay was more than 40%, but they said that had nothing to do with schooling (I beg to differ!) In fact, they dropped us from early intervention on the spot, even though he had been getting ST, OT and ABA from early intervention for about a year and a half and was not even 3 yet.

I didn't realize it until this was happening, but here the school's criteria for services is tougher than the early intervention. That is, EIP requires kids have delays of a certain percentage to get services. The school system's percentage of delay is higher than early intervention's, so that was our problem.

We were shocked as were all our specialists. I came to this board for advice and got good advice. Through the grievance process, we were able to schedule another meeting, which we attended with all our own evals from Eric's neurologist, OT, ST etc. The neuro even wrote a special letter spelling out the kind of classroom situation he felt Eric needed. The specialists did not attend, although they offered. But they wrote special letters. At this meeting we met the school system people for the first time and by luck, got an experienced person who was sympathetic. We knew we could not qualify for ST, Eric really was doing well in that area, but we also knew he'd fall apart in a regular classroom and badly needed OT and a teacher trained in autism matters.

That meeting got us our IEP meeting, and we brought an advocate with us to that. But in the end, the IEP went fine. Also, unfortunately, since Eric had been dropped from services before age 3, we had gone a few months without ST and OT, during this time he regressed. So when we showed up for the IEP we brought him and despite the "stellar" "exit" test scores, nobody could argue upon seeing him in his little stimmy world that day, that he needed services. The administrator told us that the letter from the neuro helped too.

Our goal was to get Eric into the SPED program we wanted, here a LEAP program with 4 ASD kids and 4 role model children. We would have loved the ST but knew we couldn't get it (we pay out of pocket for private now). We knew he needed OT, but the school only views motor skills as they relate to learning (here, writing) and Eric could qualify for 1 session of OT, but just for fine motor. We didn't even try for sensory OT etc., but we had visited the LEAP class in advance and knew the set-up included sensory diet kinds of things.

Our advocate helped us write up our goals in advance and everything went smoothly at the IEP itself. But that first transition meeting between the state early intervention people and the school system had us very nervous too.

I bet it will all go smoothly for you. It sounds like NY is much better about this than FL.

Hope I haven't scared you, but I just wanted you to know that it is actually a "fight for your kid" situation in some states, just from my experience. For us, it was not really about going in with a confrontational attitude, just about thinking over what you want in advance, reading the school's policies, and being organized by bringing all your evals, paperwork etc. Be courteous but be organized too.

I'd be happy to share more specifics, if you need them. I seriously almost had a nervous breakdown at the time all this was going on! This board saved me!

Katherine