Whose starting Kindy this year??

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Registered: 02-20-2001
Whose starting Kindy this year??
4
Sun, 07-15-2007 - 8:18pm

From Chirssy thread it seems many of us are starting kindy this year.

 


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iVillage Member
Registered: 10-18-2006
Sun, 07-15-2007 - 9:27pm
Emma's starting Kindy this fall. Without a formal diagnosis she'll for sure be in mainstream classroom without much support. But, to be honest I don't know that she'll need much. I plan to put a call into the school the first part of August to see what kind of assessing I can get done. The district also has the kindergarteners start two days after the rest of the school. During those two days they have parent teacher confrences, to give the parents aand teachers a chance to learn about each other. I plan to make full use of that time. I really think that with enough warning about what Emma responds best to, and what her triggers are she and the teacher will do well.
One thing going for Emma is her age. She turns 6 in November, so she'll be one of the oldest in her class. She's been in preschool for well over a year and knows quite a bit more than the average kiddo in her class. Hopefully those pieces will help her compensate for some of her weaknesses.
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-13-2003
Sun, 07-15-2007 - 11:03pm

My ds turned 5 in May and will start mainstream kindy with an IEP. He has been in the district sped pre-k for 2 years. He will go to our "home" school so that will be a change for him. The kindy has two classes next to each other and connect with a door. The playground and lunch area are separate, just kindergartners. He will have OT (with sensory breaks), aide part-time, speech and they want to re-evaluate for APE within the 1st month. His kindy is 3.5 hour day. We have so far been very impressed with the program and the people that will work with Liam. On IEP it is 7% of his day is with help. We requested the male teacher just because we liked his bare bones classroom (no fluffy stuff all over the place to distract ds) and he was great at being everywhere at once to help out. We have pretty much a guarentee to get that teacher. His dx is PDD-NOS but the school has labeled him under speech which is hilarious to me and does not describe my ds. We have a second clinical psych coming to help us with behaviors and she already seems to think Asperger syndrome(as I believe). So we may call an IEP to change his diagnosis to the Autism box. Many don't think it is important. But it is pretty f'n important to ME!

Molly

Molly
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-19-2005
Mon, 07-16-2007 - 1:23pm

I posted a few months ago about our frustrations with Eric's kinder placement and we are in wait and see mode right now. Eric had two great years in sped pre-k, first a very small autism-oriented program which had 4 ASD kids and 4 role model kids. Last year he was in a varying exceptionalities pre-K with 8 ESE kids (4 of the 8) did have HF ASD)and 12 typical kids. The curriculum was regular pre-K. He had no special services or 1 to 1 aide in either class, though the first year of PRE-K they had lots of support within the curriculm (very language-enriched, used picture schedules, lots of OT as part of day).

He did so well even in the VE class that we all felt he was a good candidate for an inclusion class. At the kinder level here, only choices for ASD kids are a self-contained class (which usually has several grade levels in one room), inclusion, or mainstream. We had many more options at the pre-k level and could chose any school that had the program we wanted at K-8 you have to stay at your home school.

So, we thought Eric would be in a class of 18 with 6-8 ESE kids at 10 typical, regular curriculum, ESE teacher comes into class to help out with reading, math etc. but is not there all day. Eric would be pulled out for a weekly social skills class with other asd kids (k and 1st). No other services. This was all fine with us. At the end of the school year though, we were told they were combining the 2 inclusion kinder classes in one room. Hence, 36 kids, 16 of them ese and 2 teachers. They are also doing this with 1st grade inclusion too. Recipe for disaster, we think.

To make a long story short, parents complained, we were told we due to overcrowding, if we wanted an inclusion setting, this is our only choice. We can change to self-contained (not right for Eric) or agree to resource room for certain subjects, or choose mainstream, but those classes are just as large and do not have ESE supports. We were told getting a 1-1 aide for Eric would be very hard, as he is not as challenged as others and there is a shortage of aides, but we might be able to get one aide/para for the class to share.

As parents we (rising k and 1st) took this to the district, had a big meeting, everyone was sympathetic, but nothing happened except they have formed a task force on the autism ese program to evaluate the situation. This is good news, but probably will not help us next year, though it will help all our kids in the long run.

So we are going to give it two weeks. If Eric crashes, we are calling an IEP meeting and bringing our advocate and our attorney. We've already talked to them. We just couldn't get it together before school ended, and everyone in our ESE chain of command that I talked to seemed to feel until we had actually started on the new IEP and had a problem, nothing could really be done unless we wanted to switch him to another environment (self-contained).

Sorry, I'm repeating myself for those who read the earlier thread. we have looked into private schools, but there is nothing that seems appropriate to me and even with the tuition voucher our state provides, we still could not afford it. Also, I hate to lose the legal protection of the IEP.

Eric is having a great summer, in a special summer camp for ASD kids and really, really thriving. Maybe he'll surprise us, maybe the school will suprise us. They have said they are looking into alternative ideas, such as staggering hours so the classes are not so large, but that it might not happen until January. I might be amenable to that.

Just don't have a warm and fuzzy feeling, am tired of all the fighting I've done already and school hasn't even started. Just focusing on enjoying what is left of the summer. Sorry to be so negative.

Katherine

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Mon, 07-16-2007 - 2:52pm

My NT daughter, Sierra, is staring Kindergarten this year. She will be in a regular classroom but will have speech therapy. She is so ready to go.

As for my son, Dakota, who is dreading for school to start and this year he'll be in a regular classroom for 3rd. He is being mainstreamed. I hope things go well for him. Crossing my fingers.

Shell

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