Update. Was: Please keep my son in your thoughts...

February 28, 2009

>

> Today is D-Day. We have our 504 meeting where he will probably be

> referred to the Autism Team and something has to happen with the 504

> since nobody is following over half of it.

The meeting went pretty well.

They were NICE to me, listened to me and made some pretty significant

changes to his 504 that were needed, and the assistant principal/504

coordinator came up with some good ideas too. And I learned a lot

about how they operate by sitting and listening to them discuss

things. They still don't understand his communication issues really,

but I think it is better to move forward with what we have and see

what the Autism Team can do to help. They are all curious to see what

the Autism Team comes up with since they don't know what else to do.

I WAS very disappointed to hear that the Autism Team consists of

masters-level people such as OT, SLP, and school psychologists. This

means we will still have the problem that the people at the children's

hospital that we use, neuropsychologists and psychiatrists with

specialties in Autism Spectrum, have a considerably higher level of

training than the school staff, so they don't communicate with each

other very well. I'm going to have to figure out how to get this to

work better.

And I'm realizing that, although I have studied IDEA fairly

thoroughly, I don't understand Texas' interpretation of it very well.

It is very different from many other state's, as I see on this

discussion list and others. They are very fixated on grades and state

exam test scores as indicators of " success " , and it is very hard to

get them to take functioning problems seriously. So, I see I have

some further networking, research, documenting, advocating to think

through. They also aren't getting that a child with 130 verbal IQ

sitting in a grade-level class doing average is a problem. They think

I just want him to get straight As; they don't understand this is an

indicator or problems. So, again, ditto the above.

Ruth

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