Whoa, I see it's been awhile since I have posted, things got away from me but in this new era of uncertainty, I feel like I need to start posting again, because I'm pretty sure some politicians will start trying to take away funding and services again so I will.
Things have changed here as well, after much debate, arguing and banging my head against the wall, we decided to place my son in another school outside of Deer Valley School District. It was not an easy decision on our part, we did everything we could, including going to a school board meeting and speaking out about the lack of services and letting them know about their reputation in the Special Needs Community as being one of the worst districts to deal with. THAT did not even precipitate many changes for my son.
So, I, after some research, I found another school (I do not want to give the details in this public forum, nor do I want someone to be able to identify who he is). I had a couple of last straws, one being my son coming home from school, banging his head on the wall telling me he hated himself and he thought he was stupid on a continual basis, the other was him being continually assaulted by another student that was bullying him. My meeting with the principal did not go well, she looked at me and stated that she didn't want to use the term "Bullying" when discussing this situation, to which my reply was "Okay, how about we use the terms assault and negligence on your part?"
She then told me the aggressor was another special needs student to which I replied that she failed them both for both of them being in a situation in which one of them could be harmed. I asked her to explain to me how she thought it was beneficial and healthy for the other student to be in a situation in which he was able to harm another student if he could not control himself. I asked how would she feel if she was put in a situation in which she was going hurt someone and could not stop herself, what kind of stress would she be under, and what that would do to her self worth. Her reply? "I didn't think about it that way" For me, I just can't reconcile keeping my son in a place where someone in authority does not "think" that way.
It reminded me of a phrase that I saw online it's like "Playing chess with pigeons, no matter how good you are at chess, the pigeon is just going to knock over all the pieces, crap on the board, and then strut around acting like it won"
The good news is my son is in a much better place now, it took us awhile to work out a new IEP because the other one was so poorly written, executed and had little to no documentation. There were goals that were written when he was in kindergarten that had not been updated at all.
What we found is that in fact my son is a gifted learner (this was figured out in a week, as opposed to the old school whom never even noticed that this was a possibility), and while he doesn't test well on gifted placement exams, that is how he functions, we now have the documentation to prove it, and a terrific school that is willing to work with him on his level to address his needs. He excels in school work, and is performing 2 years above his grade level. He is happy, and has not once stated that he thinks he is stupid anymore. He scores extremely high on his AIMS test, according to their graph, he outscored most of the kiddos in his district, at times I have been tempted to send his old district a copy of his scores and tell them to "suck it", but I have refrained. He has been at this school for three years now.
As far as DDD goes, services for us have been a challenge with timing and the distances we have to travel to and from his school, but thankfully there has been no effort to reduce them.
So far, so good, I will do research on some of the political stuff coming out, I'll try to be as objective as I can.
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