Taking the Scenic Route

I am struggling to know what the hell to do with my son, education wise.

I was origninally going to homeschool. Once I came to terms with his problems, I realized that sending him to a school might be a better solution for him, however, that process seems to be fraught with difficulty.

I am torn on how much to pursue this. First, I don’t really understand my rights. I read the articles posted and, frankly, it overwhelms me at this point. It scares the crap out of me and I feel like I am being majorly screwed. We are also planning on moving to a better school district, but our lease isn’t up until March 2007, and the earliest we *might* be able to get a mortagage for a house is around the turn of the year…although we are considering renting in the district just to access those schools starting in the spring semester.

However, as it stands, I live in a huge, crappy district.

I requested testing him to get him an IEP started last February or March. They dragged their feet in a big way…making me come back multiple times because they ‘forgot’ to have me sign a peice of paper.

Then they said he had to pass a hearing test with the school nurse. He wasn’t cooperative, so he had to go to the school audiologist (more waiting). He sort of passed it, but still not quite well enough, so we had to have the sedated hearing test. This kept getting delayed too (although not because of the school, because of an equiptment failure at the hospital and problems with getting it fixed, then dealing with the backlog of appointments). We just finished that up last week.

Also, they wanted him to have his vision checked by the school nurse. Again a wait, and again, he wasn’t cooperative enough for them so they wanted it checked by a ped eye doctor. Long wait for appointment. Doctor was HORRIBLE. He refused to wear his really strong script. Worked with OT and ST (private) to no avail. Demanded retesting. The only other ped eye doctor in town said his eyes weren’t nearly that bad and he only needs glasses for intensive work (and only then if he seems like he is getting headaches). Got that script yesterday and he isn’t as resistant to wearing them.

So, now the school year is starting again and we got a notice in the mail that they want him to go to a preschool in the worst part of the city…murders and gang activity on an almost daily basis. My child is an escape artist and this is the area he would escape into. I called. They want me to just “drop him off and see how he does. *if* he needs help, they will do some testing and see if it is *bad* enough to get him into the special needs program. There is no fucking way I am just dropping him off in a neighborhood like that at a school where they obviously don’t take my concerns seriously enough. I am not even sure if he is safe to make it to the front door, and his escapes are super fast and despite barriers that would stop most kids.

I left a message with the autism coordinator for the district. There has been no call back.

Not only do I not know what to do at this point, I am not entirely sure if it is worth pursuing in this district. I have him in ST and OT, and just got a call from the speech-lang-hear clinic with the university that said they have some additional slots available with them. It is possible he will have ST 5 days a week if that happens. (2 days a week now).

If you have read this horribly long blog, what would you do? Just keep doing what we are doing and ignore the school district that obviously doesn’t want to deal with you since we hope to be out of district after this semester, and definatly before he starts kindergarten in a year, or start fighting like hell for services I shouldn’t have to fight for?