Friday, June 23, 2006

The Preschool Ordeal

So I did it. I finally filled out the forms and wrote out the check to put Derek into a typical preschool next fall.

The whole thing has been such an ordeal, first the school district agreed with us at an IEP meeting that he needed to be with more typical kids, he was moving through their program at a quick pace. Then they arranged for me to meet with a district rep to "look" at preschools in the area. After a week of playing phone tag with the lady we finally met one morning. She gives me this poorly designed brochure on how the district can help you with this process and has relationships with preschools in the area.

And her idea of "looking" at preschools? A 3 inch binder that was filled with copies of webpages of the preschools in the area. Um, ok. I'd already done all that, I was looking for you to tell me which schools you support and cover within this district so I can pick one.

"Oh we don't pay for that, its the parent's responsibility"

Whaaaat?

So you tell me my child needs typical peers, this I know, and yet you want to hand me a binder of preschools, a brochure that tells me you help with this process but this isn't part of his IEP, that you won't cover it?

Nope. And even better, on his IEP they wrote in "Parent's haven't picked school yet" where they want a reason for denying the service of putting him into a preschool.

Granted, I know I might have a valid argument here, but I'm so tired of fighting with the district, insurance companies and everything else I gave up on this one. Not only that, I could see them dragging their heels and not wanting to do anything for months, and around here preschools have become really popular and people sign up for them a year in advance! Wasn't like this 5-6 years ago when I put my 10 year old in one.

So most of them were already full as it was, as of last December. One thing I really wanted was a co-op, first so that I could be around the situation to see how he's doing, and second the cost factor. I also just like the idea of community involved in something like this, parents who take the time to be involved in their children's education.

We picked one, and I guess the next decision is him needing an aide. I think he will need one, at least daily for the few couple weeks, then phase out over the next few weeks. I doubt he'll need one all year, or even half a year. I'd really like to put in my own, but I know the district will fight me on that, and the idea of them putting someone in who doesn't even know Derek, that will take two weeks to get to know him, just bothers me. I need someone who knows him ahead of time, what makes him tick, and foresee problems before they are out of hand.

Derek's in a hitting phase, he's been hitting instead of using words, granted this is pretty typical for a 2-3 year old, and he just turned 4, but he's behind socially and I know that. My fear is that little Johnny is going to take a toy away from Derek and instead of Derek saying "hey give that back" or telling someone he'll just hit. Parents and teachers won't see little Johnny taking the toy, they'll just the end result of Derek hitting. Hence Derek gets labeled as a "hitter" and/or "problem child". I need an aid who has all eyes on this and can explain to a teacher or parent helper what just went on.

I'd do it myself but at the same time I don't want Derek to rely on me always being there, I think it might do more harm than good.

Ah, the frustrations!

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