Finding the Best School District to Deal With Your Child's Needs

[Kindra178]

We plan to move in the the spring to find a school district that could better serve ds' needs. His current school is good/great for a regular learner but cannot handle a kid who is at grade level generally but needs ot and language, plus extra help on standardized tests.

By way of background, he was dx with a language processing disorder in December by a private slp. The school accepted the private report to qualify for testing, as he tested average on their administration of the celf.

We had a big meeting at the end of May. His reading teacher brought up his handwriting. His other teacher mentioned he might have a visual perceptual disorder (three years with these same two teachers). He has poor fine motor skills, his pencil grip is poor and he pushes too hard. He didn't qualify for school ot but now may. His private ot graduated him. He also has anxiety.

I would like a district where we wouldn't have to have after school therapies, where there won't be handwringing but no action. Thoughts? Local special ed boards?


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[larig]

I don't know what SLP you saw, but I'd start with asking the SLP their recommendations for easy schools to deal with. Do you know any families from the SLP practice that you could ask for further recs? When we were in IL, DS went to Phyllis Kupperman, with CSLD. She is world-famous in hyperlexia circles. I think I'd have started with her, if we were in the Chicago area and looking for schools and see who she though had been accommodating of kids who see her.

[annex]

Special ed lawyers and/or advocates in your area too. They know from personal experience which districts make families fight tooth and nail for services. Some states also have a complaint database on their state education department site so you can see which districts have a lot of special ed complaints filed against them.

[Pepper]

I don't know what SLP you saw, but I'd start with asking the SLP their recommendations for easy schools to deal with. Do you know any families from the SLP practice that you could ask for further recs? When we were in IL, DS went to Phyllis Kupperman, with CSLD. She is world-famous in hyperlexia circles. I think I'd have started with her, if we were in the Chicago area and looking for schools and see who she though had been accommodating of kids who see her.

This. And ask other members of your son's care team, if you have one. My DS1 is getting wraparound services through a local agency and almost everyone on his team came to his IEP meeting. They all said how great his school is to work with, best one in the district (yay!).

[Kindra178]

I don't know what SLP you saw, but I'd start with asking the SLP their recommendations for easy schools to deal with. Do you know any families from the SLP practice that you could ask for further recs? When we were in IL, DS went to Phyllis Kupperman, with CSLD. She is world-famous in hyperlexia circles. I think I'd have started with her, if we were in the Chicago area and looking for schools and see who she though had been accommodating of kids who see her.

What's weird is our district is probably pretty good for many different issues. My problem is the weird combination of issues ds has, coupled with the two teachers he had for the past three years. I feel like his report card entry was written about another kid and not him. Put another way, the kid who we discussed at the end of the year meeting was not the kid they wrote about on his report card.

[cuca_]

I agree with those who recommended asking service providers. We were in your position a few years ago and ended up finding a great district that our psychiatrist that had great services and was very flexible.

[egoldber]

Are you talking about small districts or large districts? In large districts (really, in ANY district) I wouldn't assume that all schools offer similar levels of support for special needs students.

Also, was the issue with the teachers or with the school admin? Teachers change, but admin staff tend to be more stable and are a more reliable predictor of the level of support you will find at a school over the long term.

[sste]

Kindra, our school has been great for speech/language and OT (handwriting and visual perceptual issues) for a child at grade level. I was not wowed by the school social worker in my one time chat with her but the entire school does emphasize a social-emotional learning model and his teacher made it abundantly clear to me she would talk with this therapist, she wanted to learn more about childhood anxiety, she could implement things in the classroom. And you know where I live! FWIW, when DS was three and went briefly to a behavioral therapist we did ask her in our community which schools had good reps for quirky kids or kids with emotional or behavioral challenges and she told me X school but not Y and Z in our districts (so I think egolberg is right). We moved to X school district in part on her recommendation and it has been spot on. So I second talking to people in the field.

Have you met the school OT in your current district? A lot depends on the particular person working with your child. If you met him/her and thought highly of the person and their "plan" for your DS it might make you feel differently about your current district.

We were very lucky as DS had significant articulation issues and our school is all over speech issues -- apparently it can cause reading problems which affects their scores and the child's progress of course. Once we were "in" for speech it was easier to get qualified for OT and if we need accommodations for anxiety I think it will be easier too. Without the speech issue we would have struggled with the fact that DS has never tested below grade level which is their standard for IEP/providing services. I think we still could have requested the OT but my sense was that the school was more willing to err on the side of providing OT (DS's OT testing had some real strengths and then some other areas that he was below average, not wildly delayed though).

[LBW]

Does he have an IEP? DS2s experience with our district was completely different after his IEP was put into place.

[Kindra178]

He has an IEP for Language Processing. We signed it in March and he has met 2/3 goals on it. I am frustrated because they didn't do a complete eval at the time of his IEP. My attempts to get more evaluations failed. However, at the end of the year meeting, they identified so many other issues that could have and should have been dealt with earlier. OT, visual perception (?), etc. Now they will run the full battery with the psych.