Great School District

[Guest guest]

Hi Everyone:

Portland, SW Washington area folks (and anyone wanting to move to a

great school area)....

We have to move because of my husband's job, but we live in an amazing

school district area and, since our house is for sale, I would love

for someone who has a child with autism to be able to buy it. We have

put so much time and effort into his program, it would be wonderful

for another family to benefit from the services available and the

already trained staff at my son's school!

My son has high functioning autism. Since he was 4 he has had

terrific services. We worked HARD with the local district to get him

3 years of 30 hr. per week ABA program, FastforWord, Teach Me

Language, aspects of the TEACCH program, and many other excellent

tools to help him succeed.

Last year (5th grade) he had about 1 & 1/2 hours per day of speech and

social skills intervention (working on perceptual skills, social

language, social stories, etc. - 1:1 with paraeducator), 1 hour per

week 1:1 with SLP, the Buddy Program (kids in his class trained to

work with him... kind of like crossing guards for autism) 1:1 for

math, small group for reading, specialized small group for learning

functional skills (group went shopping and did cooking experiences,

etc.), Relationship Development Training and many many other excellent

interventions.

Our principal is committed to helping kids and was really interested

in autism, the special ed. teacher is excellent... young and really

enthusiastic. The SLP is an absolute saint and... we (the local

Autism Society) were able to get our district to hire an Autism

Specialist!!! She is priceless. (the sp. ed. director told me they

are looking for another Autism Specialist to hire, also!!!)

I'm telling you all of this because passing these services along to a

family like ours would be like giving a gift to myself. My husband

and I began the local Autism Society, we brought ABA to our area and

it just breaks our hearts to have to leave all of this. It would mean

so much to me to know someone else's child will benefit from the

dedicated staff at this school and in this district (our Autism

Society is also terrific, and we have a group called PUMS that is

great for support and guidance too).

Anyways... this is the URL, if your interested in our house:

http://portland.craigslist.org/rfs/36874516.html

We are about 45 minutes North of Portland.

Feel free to email me if you have questions. If you decide you want

to make this move, I'll link you to everyone in our area that I can.

We can walk over to the school together and I'll introduce you to our

principal!

The idea to tell everyone on the list about this was kind of a brain

blast. I hope this can help someone out there who is sick of their

district/school, whatever!

-