Some questions about school services

[Guest guest]

Hi,

I have some questions about school services which I don't know if anyone on here

has any experiences with. I just dread spending hours on the phone being

transferred to various people who don't know the answer.

We homeschool our 5yo aspie, b/c there wasn't really an ideal classroom fit with

the school for him. His reading, math and general knowledge are several grades

ahead, but everything else is backwards...we are pretty sure he is hyperlexic.

As homeschoolers, he is eligible for speech through proportionate share, and has

an IFSP (which may still be blank, due to transferring between school after the

eval but before the IFSP was complete...I need to get a copy of it).

1. I know that IEP meetings can be convened as necessary, but what about in the

case of an IFSP?

2. I know that re-evals are every 3 years, but that parents or teachers can

request a re-eval (in writing?) sooner than that. I have been working almost

exclusively and intensively with him on speech and language development (since I

see that as the key to solving most other areas of challenge with him), more

than the school could ever put into him. He has made amazing progress (compared

to himself) this year. We are considering moving overseas, and, at the end of

the school year, I want to find out if this intensive work has helped bring him

more mainline, to close the gap between him and average, so to speak, so I can

have an idea of what to expect if we move overseas and away from support

services. When he was evaluated a year ago, his WPPSI verbal score, and the

speech language scores were in the borderline range, closely correlated. I

would like them to retest him in these areas, but when I asked the guidance

counselor about it, she gave a less-than-enthused response. " You mean you want a

full re-eval? " I did not ask for a full reeval, but those two tests. I don't

need to hear from the nurse, the social worker, or the autism specialist, just

the speech pathologist and the psychologist. If I request those, do they have

to do them? For now, they just seem to be trying to shove me off. My guess is,

that I know these cost money, and that if we are homeschooling, the school is

not getting any money for our son, so they don't want to do these.

3. It seems like the speech pathologists buy a lot of their stuff with their own

money? Is that true? I know that school districts, if they have homeschool

families who want to use their curriculum, have to provide the curriculum. But

what about when it comes to special services? If the speech pathologist has a

book (of reproducible activities) that I would like to use with my son, doesn't

she/shouldn't she let me photocopy them (on my own dime no less!) so that I

don't have to buy the book AND photocopy them myself? She made it sound like it

had to be in the IFSP, which brings me back to question #1. Can we just change

it when necessary?

4. Even though we could bring him to see the speech pathologist for 1 hour per

week, we don't do that. It is not an effective use of our time, and she is not

intimately aware of my son's issues like I am. That said, I would like a few

simple helpful things: a milestone check sheet or something in the

speech/language realm so that I can know how far off track my son is, and to

help me to choose where to focus my energies with him, since I spend several

hours per week working on these things with him (after having done my own

research). The speech pathologist also gave some helpful recommendations of

activities to do with him, and I asked her if there were any books she could

recommend for me to use to accomplish those activities. I just have this

sinking feeling that she won't take the time to find those recommendations for

me. I don't think I am asking for too much!!! I could bring him in for an hour

every week, but I don't. We have visited with her ONCE this whole school year.

I just want a list and a few recommendations so I can take care of this myself,

but I also don't want to rub things the wrong way and be a disagreeable parent.

If a month goes by, and she has nothing for me, am I back to question #1, trying

to get this added to the IFSP?

Thanks so much!