Re: Independent assessment-- (reallllllllly long)

[Guest guest]

,

At our most recent meeting we had requested ESY for our daughter and

had statements recommending it due to her behavior regressions over

Christmas break, and for the four weeks she was out of school till

summer school began (we pay for it privately at this point)from our

behavior consultant, our speech therapist, our physical therapist

all stating her behavior issues escalate without intervention. The

school district told us all of these were " anecdotal statements " and

unless we could supply specific data with regards to these, they

would not consider it. They refused to consider anything except

regression recoupment. We currently use the autism scholarship and

the school district refused to accept the statements of the

professionals dealing with our daughter on a weekly basis, and

decided that their " professionals " opinions were much more

valid...of which only one had ever eval'd my daughter and it was

over a year ago when she eval'd her (school psych who sat and

watched her for 45 minutes once). Being on the scholarship and

writing an IEP for summer would have cost the school district

nothing....however since we are the first family to use the

scholarship and push for year round services at the preschool level

they have decided they need to set precedent with us. So they want

a data driven year and yet still be able to write vague goals for us

to implement...such as ... " X " will speak to adults with an expanding

vocabulary. Nothing measureable. They refuse to address any OT

issues, such as she cannot grasp a pencil without using all four

fingers and her thumb, because she didn't score low enough in the OT

sector at her previous evaluation when she was 2 3/4 yr old.

(ignoring that pencil grasping at that age is

inappropriate...however at four it is needed to progress) They

refuse to address anything other than social emotional because that

is where her biggest deficits were upon evaluation (not like social

emotional might tie in with communication...gee I guess she gets

frustrated and shuts down because she has the vocabularly to

communicate and chooses not to use it...duh) The school district I

live in has an excellent rating...however it is notorious for

providing poor services for sped kids. LMAO they took our request

for summer services straight to their attorney for review before

they would even speak with us about it. Long story short I truly

believe at their next eval they will try to gloss our daughter so

she doesn't get services by saying she doesn't qualify for them,

because she is naturally so high functioning (never mind the private

speech, pt, ot and aba program in place because those are irrelevant

according to them in the amount of gains she has made) They are

already trying to cut back on the number of goals and services she

currently has written for in her IEP. With the scholarship going up

to $20G, if we utilize it all, the school district will have to

roughly pay $8000 out of their budget (on top of the $12,000 they

would receive if she went to their program) and I am sure they

aren't really excited about that. It sounds like you have used

Nessa...were you happy with her services and was she efficient about

getting things resolved fairly quickly? I don't want to fight

something involving now for the next 5 years. Also if you don't

mind me prying...how costly was she...I know nothing comes

cheap..just trying to brace myself so i don't fall over from

shock...same token not looking to spend $30000. to get nowhere. If

you feel more comfortable email me privately. Sorry to drone

on...just extremely irritated and tired fighting to get them to do

the right thing... Thanks again. Patty