The continued lack of joy of special ed....

I do not like the word "DISABILITY"

I think that word gives people a pre-determined mind set that a person is unable to do certain things.
So, Big Al was given detention, in a nutshell, for being pencil-less! So, I called the school and spoke with the head-disciplinarian and asked him WHY was Big Al being given the same punishment for a lessor "crime" than other previous violations. Of course I got the silent "..........." nothing. No response. Then when I asked why he was being punished and embarassed for his disability... still got the "......" nothing. The only response I got was that I needed to talk to the Special Ed teacher.... And guess what???? That teacher NEVER contacted me back on the issue!

Enough is ENOUGH! I finally reached down, grabbed my ca-honas... and filed a complaint with the State Dept of Education. I printed off every email from the last year (and killed lots of trees and lots of ink!), every copy of detentions, notes from doctors, IEP's, State and Federal Laws and sent a two inch packet off to the State. Flipped the school the bird and moved on! haha!

Sadly, though... the last few months have really shown us how in many areas, Big Al is truly incapable of certain skills and functions. And these skills are ones that are pretty essential to daily life. We have tried so hard over the years to help him attain some of them, but they are just either not there or he chooses to not do them! (probably a bit of both)

So, now we move on to mediating with the school. Which basically means that the school will take all Big Al's info, and put together their response to the State... ie, what parts of the IEP they feel they complied with and the areas they did not (like his reading level has dropped, yet again). The State will ask us to work with the school to come to some agreement on what to do. In a nutshell, it will be re-writing an entirely new IEP, probably changing his schedule up... and adding things in there that should have never been taken out, like extended school year!

The whole situation has been mentally and physically exhausting. But, you can never stop advocating... ever.... until they are out of school!!! (that would be 5 years, 3 months!)