Good IEP Meeting Today

I was, of course, properly dressed for the meeting. I had Miss I take a piccy of Baby A and myself before I changed to regular clothes after the meeting. It is tough making it to a meeting at 7:20am, but the good news is that afterward, you have the rest of the day to relax.

The great thing is that I got everything I wanted for my son yet again. And he has been doing better on the program this year. He is starting to be less anxious and depressed. He is smiling and joking more at school. He does much less homework this year. He is continuing with jujitsu, which he still LOVES. At school, he will continue on the schedule of 90 minutes per day in the Resource Specialist Program (small group tutoring for Math and Writing), 30 minutes per week counseling with the school psychologist, 30 minutes per week with the Speech and Language teacher working on socialization in a small group. And a short course of 45-minute sessions with an occupational therapist working on fine motor for handwriting and far-point copying skills.

After I sat down in the meeting room, the first person in was the lady from the district. My eyes opened wide and I thanked her profusely for taking the time to come to the school for my meeting. She said she saw it on the schedule and wanted to see how things were going. She is the one who made everything happen last June after I sent the letter complaining about the bullying. With her interest, everyone at the school sat up and took notice. And here she was again today, not only coming to the meeting but acting as scribe for the meeting minutes. There is still work to do, but he is making noticeable progress. And even the computer teacher told me last week that R was "coming out of his shell" this year and seemed different/better. So I concluded the meeting by thanking everyone again and again for all that they are doing for my son. I want to reward them for doing the right thing. His well being is SO important to me.

Summary of special adventures

Or should that read adventures in special education?

The first step is the "aha" moment when you realize that there may be something going on with your kid. I knew my son struggled in school since first grade, especially in math. We went on struggling, year after year, and I kept hoping it was immaturity, disorganization, and that it was something he would grow out of. My friend in the neighborhood loaned me a book called "The Elephant in the Playroom: Ordinary Parents Write Intimately and Honestly About the Extraordinary Highs and Heartbreaking Lows of Raising Kids with Special Needs" by Denise Brodey. This book sat on my counter top for months and months. I finally started reading it out of guilt when I found it while cleaning. A few stories in and I was hooked. I love reading about people's lives. And these heartwarming stories of family and love were amazing. Then midway through the book my heart skipped a beat. There was a story describing my son. I mean completely. The only thing different was that the boy in the story was SO stressed out by school he went through an episode of hysterical blindness before he was diagnosed with Nonverbal Learning Disorder. This gave me a lot to think about and I started researching it.

The school said they would look into it with my son's testing. It wasn't until the first IEP meeting on May 1, 2008 that they told me they completely ruled it out, and that my son had ADD, and that he didn't qualify for any special services. He was given some accommodations on a 504 plan. I was SO angry and devastated after this meeting. The school had ignored a lot of their own testing data. All the data that pointed to his learning disorder was explained away "oh, he must not have been paying attention during that part of the test".

My neighbor told me about a local group of advocates and trainers called Team of Advocates for Special Kids, TASK. I went to an 8-hour IEP seminar in late May. Around that time, I requested an IEE, an Independent Educational Evaluation, based on the fact that the school ignored testing data, and I didn't trust their conclusions. I spoke to the woman at the district and she approved the IEE. Without her approval, I would have had to go to a hearing to argue for it.

The day school let out, I sent a letter complaining about bullying in school, to make sure it was documented before the IEE took place. That caused a flurry of activity, and an IEP meeting was held the next day, granting my son a lot of services and support. At the same time, I obtained a doctor's report from an HMO physician documenting my son's Nonverbal Learning Disorder. The new diagnosis was also included in the paperwork at the school. I started to relax and come to terms with being an advocate for my son.

Summer came and went, and there has been another flurry of activity in September gearing up for his first experience in the Resource Specialist Program (RSP) where he goes 90 minutes per day. His homework load is much less this year. Partly because his teacher has a kind heart. His teacher doesn't want to send home unfinished schoolwork for any of the kids in the class. It is refreshing to hear a teacher who respects the children and their need for down time. I pray that my son has a good year this year. Body, mind and soul.

The meeting went well

I took care getting dressed today. I wore a crisp white shirt and black flat-front pants from Ann Taylor. With pearls. Professional. Here are pics of me after the meeting, posing with baby A.

Everyone was polite. And I got everything that I wanted. The most interesting part was when I asked to have a record removed from his cumulative school file under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). The principal asked to see the paper and the moment she looked at it she said, "this is illegal." She said she would have it shredded immediately. And the references to the paper in the meeting minutes will not refer to the objectionable terminology directly, so the vicious name-calling against my son will stop there. Done.

And I asked them to put those other 2 items that were left off of his accommodations list back on, the use of the Alpha Smarts computer and the teacher checking the backpack to make sure he has all his material to go home. Done.

We signed the Occupational Therapy goals so that can start now. Done.

They agreed to re-assess him for long-term recall, because he scored unusually low. The psychologist says that the score might not reflect his true recall because she felt he had trouble paying attention to that portion of the testing. So shouldn't it be repeated? Done.

I asked what the procedure was to get an in-service seminar at the school to educate the staff about Nonverbal Learning Disorder. The principal asked if I could find someone to teach it, and I said that I could. She said she would work with me on it, as long as it was research-based. And that it would be for the staff that works directly with R***. I hope I can find someone good in my area to teach this. Won't it be great to educate them? They are still reacting to my son as if everything he does is because of Attention Deficit. They really don't understand his neurological condition. So I need to do research on this. But the possibilities are exciting.

All in all I think we are moving in the right direction. We will meet again in about a month to go over the results of the psychological and speech/language assessments.

Shocking success with school administration

I was called yesterday by the school to schedule an emergency IEP (Individual Education Plan) meeting for today. The call was not a surprise, because I had dropped off one of my infamous letters at the school earlier in the day. I had been ruminating at home about the end of the school year and the upcoming IEE (Independent Educational Evaluation)and it occurred to me that some problems that **** had been dealing with probably had not been documented in his file. And if they were not documented, as far as the evaluator was concerned, they might as well not have happened at all. So I sent a letter to the school.

Dear Mrs. C***,
I want to make sure that certain incidents that occurred in school this year are documented in ****’s file. There were several incidents when **** was bullied and one time that he manifested self-mutilation.

The first incident of bullying was brought to my attention by a concerned mother on April 7, 2008. I was told that a mother who volunteered in ****’s class observed a number of children using a code word, “black,” whenever **** was approaching them. They would whisper it to each other when he approached as a type of warning. I informed Mrs. G**** of this the same day I found out and she replied, “Are they doing that again? I thought that stopped a while back.” So apparently **** had been bullied in the classroom before. Mrs. G**** informed me that there was a bullying assembly the following week and she would also address it with the class. The third incident that I am aware of occurred this week. **** came home very upset because he was told by a number of his classmates, most notably L****, that the end-of-the-year pool party had been canceled. **** suspected they were lying, as other students had told him that the party was still on, and wanted me to find out what the truth was. I called the host and the party is not canceled.

Last week I noticed that all of ****’s eyelashes were missing and I asked him what happened. He told me that he pulled them out during class.

**** will be receiving an IEE soon. Hopefully ****’s socialization and anxiety issues will be addressed.

As I suspected, the school administration was completely unaware of the bullying incidents, although they knew about the eyelash thing, since I had called them last week in a panic about it. So in 1 day we went from having a proposed 504 plan that dealt with accommodations for ADD only, to an IEP plan with 90 minutes of special ed help 5 days per week for writing and math skills, starting in September. He will also be evaluated to see if he could benefit from occupational therapy.
Oh, and I also took **** to the doctor a few days prior to all this and he *was* diagnosed with nonverbal learning disorder. The doctor kindly faxed the report to my home last night and I ran off 7 copies to bring to the meeting. The doctor also recommended physical and occupational therapy for ****. Interestingly, ****'s IQ testing results were 132 in verbal skills, which is almost gifted. 84 in nonverbal. And 78 in processing speed. Makes perfect sense. His teachers and I knock our heads into the wall wondering why it takes him so long to complete his assignments. Well, if your hemispheres weren't communicating properly, you would think more slowly too. So he has accommodations that he can do a smaller portion of schoolwork and homework and still get full credit.

I am very happy with these results. I think the accommodations will take some of the intense pressure off of him that he went through this year. And the special ed help will bring him up to speed, hopefully, in the areas of his deficit.

I brought a huge binder with me with his 8 by 10 picture on the cover. Inside it was chock-full of all of his assessments, reports, homework and handouts from the seminar I had been to. I combed through all that material and web material to glean any possible accommodations or services I thought might be of benefit, and asked for everything. Amazingly, I got almost everything before I even asked for it. The letter I sent yesterday must have scared them. I'm OK with that. I didn't send it out of malice, which I explained. I sent it to make sure that the IEE evaluator was fully informed. Perhaps this is a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease. I felt a little guilty, also, because yesterday was the last day of school, and today was the day for the teachers to all clean out their desks. So on this one day, the craziest of all school days, the teacher, school administrators, and a district administrator took time out of their day to sit with me and try to help my son. I was deeply touched and thanked them. I was also glad to have my friend by my side. There is another mother at our school whose kids also take the bus and she and I have spent mornings chatting these past 3 years. We have become friends. She is the one who told me about TASK in the first place (where I took the seminar). And she has a special needs child as well. So I asked her to attend the meeting as my advocate, and she agreed. One thing that she told me a couple of weeks ago was that she heard it was good to bring a food item to these types of meetings. I decided to go to a bakery restaurant near here that makes the BEST oatmeal raisin cookies I have ever had, bar homemade. And I got a little case of those mini Arrowhead water bottles.

I am wandering though the rest of my day in a state of shock. I have heard so many horror stories about school administrations being miserly with providing expensive services. I thought it would take a lot more effort to get anything close to this for my son. My hope is that giving him intervention now will help him to have a brighter future.