There better be no school like the old school!

We're done. We're not going back.

Today was my last meeting with the folks at The Kid's school, which is now his former school, which is exactly how I want it to be...

His IEP was up for renewal last week, and today was the IEP annual meeting. I couldn't be happier to leave that bunch of people. In the end, my advocate I've been using counted at least 5 IEP violations over the course of the last month.

I've never not said that The Kid is a tough kid to have in a classroom. I just wish that they had communicated with me better, and that they had shown him more empathy.

In the end, they wrote in his IEP horribly inaccurate things. They said that he is a "student" for only 2% of the day. By my math, that is 8 minutes in a day. Other parts of the same document say that when he is effectively calmed down he participates in classroom instruction for 15 minutes at a time, and that that happens "several times in a day." So, going on that, we're up to 45 minutes a day, or a little over 10% of the day, so there's a discrepancy for you, albeit small. They also pull him out of class at least once an hour or so to take "sensory breaks" even though he is not labled with sensory integration issues, so a great deal of his time out of the classroom, not being a "student" is due to their "service time." This service time includes playing on the playground with a para. Great therapy.

They also mentioned that he displayed "obscene gestures," which I'd never been told about before. When I asked about them today, they said that he flipped them off. First, I secretly gave The Kid a high five in my mind. Then, flabbergasted, asked how often that happened and they answered only once. I really don't know why that had to be in the IEP, when of all the things that this child IS consistent with regarding the typical behaviors of a bipolar child, obscene or foul-mouthed is definitely NOT one of them.

They also gave him free rein to go to the social worker's office or the principal's office whenever he needed to calm himself. Now they are telling me that he would leave the classroom, and that was a major behavior problem in his day. They had trained him, however, that when the going got tough for him, he was supposed to go to the office. I just don't understand how they could expect The Kid to know when it would be appropriate or not appropriate to go to the office if they told him he could go down to the office whenever he needed to.

I could go on and on, but I need to say good bye to it all, and let it go. Ultimately, they are very poorly equipped to teach The Kid. I pray and I hope that this new school can.