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Wednesday, April 21, 2010

*Exhale*

Finally I can breathe again. The meetings are done and no blood was shed. Frankly, we had reasonable requests, and there was no reason for a fight. The supervisor still pushed for Kyan to be at his 'zoned school' because it could meet his needs, and Kynsie was obviously going to be somewhere else, but finally they allowed us to keep them in the same school together. We weren't asking for a specific teacher, or class or even school. Just the same building. The supervisor argued on principal more than reason, but relented. We thanked her and she shared that it was in the best interest of the kids, not because it made our life more manageable. Ok--she wins. Fine. I don't CARE why. DON'T CARE. Just glad its over and that none of my tirade was required to get what is best for the kids. There was some 'fighting' required, but it was not aggressive or ugly, so we all survived just fine.

The long and short of it, Kyan got some summer hours, which he needs. He has a lot more goals for next year and that means more hours--4 days a week, which again he needs. I pushed for him to be in a class like Kynsie has been in for the last 2 years--a class made up of high functioning autistic kids--as opposed to a class of mixed disabilities. They argued that the other setting is better because all kids in the class aren't socially challenged. I argued that he gets that peer modeling at home and what he needs is an Autism specific class. It doesn't look like I will win that, but I made my point known and referenced Kynsie's success as reasoning. Sounds argument in my opinion. That wasn't a hill to die on though, so I pushed as far as I could. In short, there will be a lot of work on his social skills, language skills and behavior. I think the summer class, 4 days next school year and new goals will help him.

Kynsie's was much less of a fight. Her goals were right on track and she will be in a MAINSTREAM/regular pre-k class. She will still get OT & speech 30 mins each per week. She will also have "direct" special education help 1 hour per week in her classroom with a special ed teacher, and her pre-k teacher will receive 1 hour consultation per week with a special educator to specifically help make adaptations for Kynsie in the classroom. I am SOOOO thrilled. This is setting her up for Kindergarten, and this is exactly what she needs. I am grateful that her needs were most important and this was really easy to get through.

All in all, it was much ado about nothing. They were anticipating a fight with me, so they ramped everything up and called in the pre-k head supervisor. That and meeting changes, plus other factors amped me up and so I got ready for a fight. When all was said and done, there was little to fight about. Location for Kyan was the issue of the day. Programming wasn't much of a fight. I had to fight for summer school, but that was it program-wise.

Once I explained that it was humanly impossible for me to drop one child off at one location--with 2 kids in tow, and then take those 2 back to the van and re-buckle and then make a 20+ minute drive all in 15 minutes (Kynsie starts & finishes 15 minutes before Kyan), they relented. It would have meant that Kyan was late every day AND that a teacher had to wait for me to pick him up EVERY day. That was the crux of the issue. So, we got everything we requested. I am thankful. Thank you for your prayers. We definitely felt them!

2 comments:

Liz said...

Good job Momma! Glad to hear it wasn't a battle but honestly I had my money on you if push came to shove! :)

LeslieTummel said...

This makes me happy! :) I thought of you when I read a blog post on www.myspecialks.com today. She was talking about IEP apps for her iphone with laws at her finger tips. She also had some funny things about IEPs in previous posts this week. You might already follow her blog, but you should check it out if you don't. :)