The answer should be yes. Not "how can I get my loved one help?"

Category Archives: staff meeting

Day 9 ~ more fun than you can shake a taco at.

So I had to stop at our high school to sign some papers for one of my kids special education teachers, and the Superintendent happened to hear my voice.

He came out, asked me if I had a few minutes so he could give me the paperwork for home schooling. Now, if you are following my blog, you already know this.. we are in spirited discussions with our district regarding the return of our youngest to public school. He was in a residential behavior modification program for 7 months. And once he completed their program they discharged him. Now the school doesn’t want him back, they want us to bus him 40 miles one way to another day treatment program. They will pay all expenses.

Our argument is that our son deserves a chance to at least try to be successful in the public school setting. Least Restrictive Environment it is called. Well, they aren’t wanting to do that. So my wife and I toured the facility. It is a nice enough facility, and if our son isn’t successful in public school we would put him there, but we don’t want that to be the only option available to him.

At the conclusion of the tour, we met with the administration of the facility, as well as our superintendent, the reps form the local special education district and a secretary. I asked our superintendent, “If our son completes this program successfully, will the district take him back?”

His response was, “I can’t say that we would.”

I have a huge problem with that. Alarms are going off in my head, my wife is steaming mad. So we told them that we weren’t going to put our son there. So until the school comes to an agreement with us about our son’s education we are home schooling him. My wife is a special education teacher in another district and more than qualified to be our supervising teacher.

Today when I was at the high school the superintendent wanted to talk to me about an email my wife had sent to the elementary school principal telling her how unprofessional she was for trying to schedule an IEP meeting without first contacting either parent, our advocate, or the facility that he was discharged from to determine which dates would work.

The prior written notice (pwn) was delivered via fax and email. A day later I received a copy in the mail. It was handwritten, which in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but have your ever tried to read a handwritten fax? Next to impossible. Only half of the IEP team was included in the notice. So my wife sent a note talking about professionalism, and how we had other obligations the morning in question and wouldn’t be able to make it.

There are a number of options on the pwn that can be chosen from. The one that we received was marked for “permanent placement in a home school setting.”

The only reason we are home schooling him at all is because the district refuses to educate him.

So we are requesting a facilitated IEP.

I apologise for the length of my post tonight. I am just a little angry. This spirited discussion, this polarised communication between us the district, has been going on for over 3 years. It is beyond time for it to end.

I should post a copy of the email my wife sent. 🙂 it was well written.

>a Staff meeting for our son.

>
had a meeting about our youngest child’s return to public school.  As soon as we started talking about it, the principal piped up and said “public school may not be the best place for him”.  the principal was pissed off that my wife and I refused to let a consultant for the school district sit in on the conference call.

Plus, we asked for the special education teacher that our son will be working with to be a participant in the next meeting.  We were told that the principal couldn’t guarantee that.  The principal said that she would see.  We set up our meetings a month in advance, how hard would it be to schedule a conference call for a specific teacher?  Turns out that the principal might not be able to make that meeting because she has been elected the President of the Chamber of Commerce in our town and has another obligation.

Then the principal complained because the teacher at the residential facility has given reports that were read by another individual, because she had to be absent for medical reasons during the last meeting.  So we set up a time for a conference call with the teacher from the facility and the school.    Oh, and the special education teacher might not be able to participate in that meeting either.

Our son has the following diagnosis:  Severe ADHD, facets of Autism, facets of fetal alcohol Syndrome, Reactive attachment disorder, oppositional defiant, obsessive compulsive and pediatric bipolar.

It seems to my wife and I that they want to set him up for failure.