Catholic Schools and LD modifications

Hi Kim-

My son is going into 4th grade. He’s been in Catholic school since K. At my request, he was tested, and had results that were not satisfactory us. He also score high on verbal tests, and loves to read. He has problems with handwriting as well as spelling and math. In all other subjects he’s in top scores.

We decided after much soul searching that St. Mary’s is not the place for him. Catholic schools just won’t deal with LD children. They don’t have the finances, teachers or the inclination to help these kids. Forcing them to follow IEP’s would just create huge animosity for everyone. Not to mention putting your son in the middle of it all. My oldest daughter in now in High School and my middle daughter is in 8th grade at St. Mary’s. They both did so well in that setting. But it isn’t for my son.

We’re in the process of setting him up in the public school in town and thank God the schools are really good. I won’t put him through another year like he had last year.

Hope this helps. E-mail if you want to just talk.

Mary

Since a Catholic school is a private school, they are not mandated to provide accommodations and specialized instruction under the law. And they generally do not.

If he is eligible for services- and NLD is not an eligibility category though written language is- then the public school is mandated to make services available to him. This does not mean that they have to make them available at his school though- he would likely need to go to the public school in the district you reside in to receive them- or occasionally they can be scheduled after school hours. This is messy schedule wise but that is the way it goes.

Your child can find success in a Catholic school, but A LOT depends upon your approach to the principal, teacher, and other school parents. And A LOT depends upon how accepting the principal, teachers, and school parents are of children with differences. If your school’s priorties are centered more around becoming an academic elite environment, find another Catholic or Christian school. My son has dsygraphia, auditory processing, and ADD. He attended a special school for kids with Language Disorders for Kindergarten, but we moved him to Catholic school for 1st grade. He is now entering 4th grade. Our school has an excellent academic reputation, but our priest, our principal, and school board never loose sight that the #1 mission of the school is to bring children to Christ. Even so, we take it a year at a time.

I recognized from the beginning that our parish school was not required to provide any special services or modifications. Resources are very limited, and for the most part do not have specialized training. We accepted that if we choose private school that we would have to supplement his learning in other ways. I expressed this clearly to his teacher and the school counselor. We were not “demanding” or even “expecting” extra. But, we felt that many of the things our child needs were things any good teacher would do naturally. Our son needed to sit closer to the chalkboard. He needed extra time on tests. Occasionally, we needed to shorten assignments for him. I volunteered up at the school so that I could get to know the staff.

VERY IMPORTANT: I did not hide my son’s challenges with the staff, but I did not SHARE them with other parents that first year. And in fact, I am still after 3 years very carefully about who I will discuss my son’s learning differences. Keeping quiet about it has made it easier for our principal and counselor to feel free to help our son, without worrying about opening a flood gate of special requests. Each year, we try to donate money separate from our fund-raisers directly to the school, versus the HSA, so that the principal and school board can use the funds for special teacher training. The money comes with no strings attached. They can use it to fix the teacher lounge sink if they want.

ANOTHER IMPORTANT POINT: The teacher is EVERYTHING!
Good teacher - good year. Great teacher - great year. Mediocre teacher - terrible year. If you like the teachers at your school, if is worth staying. Otherwise, look elsewhere.

In 1st grade our son had some struggles in class with attention, but his reading and math skills were right at grade level. Most importantly, he had a teacher who loved boys, accepted his challenges in a positive way, and helped our son feel safe. On the side, we had our son in speech therapy and occupational therapy. I also enrolled him in guitar (which has helped his fine motor skills and concentration) and gymnastics (more motor skills stuff).

I tried not to overwhelm my son’s teachers with requests, and offered my support to modify materials for any children in the class. She was willing to let him stay in the classroom a few minutes after school to finish things.

Second grade was a disaster. His teacher did not recognize that he was intelligent. He had lots of trouble finishing his work because of his handwriting. The glass was always half empty with her. And she suffered from migranes. She gave up teaching after that year. We survived because I had developed a good relationship with the school counselor. We thought about leaving, but I met with one of the 3rd grade teachers, and we decided to try another year.

For 3rd grade, his teacher was wonderful. AND we worked out a deal with an Academic Language Therapist to come on to campus 3x/week to work with him for 1 hour sessions. Again, we worked through the teacher and counselor, rather than raising the issue to the principal. We found an empty church office they could use. My son had a GREAT YEAR! He loves school now. He made friends. His teacher allowed him to dictate some of his homework and writing. And he stayed after school some days to catch up on his work. Once a week, I went up and helped clear out his desk. His handwriting is still very delayed. So, we are going to start back up with Occupational Therapy again next year.

Fourth grade will be challenge. But I’m optimistic. Our son may not be able to stay in private school through 8th grade. But, I have no regrets about him being there now, even though he has some struggles. He’d have struggles anywhere we go. As long as he has a sense of self-worth and confidence about some of his abilities, it is o.k. with us for him to struggle. He’s learned to be a very hard worker. He would likely learn his academics more efficiently if I homeschooled or had him in special program. But, we wanted him to be around regular ed. kids. The structured setting of the Catholic school has helped him. Plus, the kids are taught to be kind to one another. The people at our parish school love him and recognize him as a unique Child of God. We are blessed. Sadly, I think most Christian schools are not as accepting of kids with learning differences.

Just pray about it. And ask your school staff to pray for your child too. God will lead you in the right direction. It may be the public school. It may be a special tutor. Good Luck

I forgot to mention, there is another student at our school who has “duel enrollment” in the Catholic school and the public school. He goes 2 times a week over to the public school for reading lab. Perhaps the first step might just be to have your school counselor/assistant principal or even child’s teacher to attend an ARD meeting. You can request one any time. It might be that the “modifications” needed for your child are very easy and reasonable things that will not take much extra effort on the teacher’s part. Gaining a better understanding of the challenges is sometimes the biggest help. The words “modifications” and “accomodations” scare off some people. Sounds expensive. Oooo…

I get most irritated when I overhear Catholic/Christian parents talk about how they choose private school so that their kids don’t HAVE to be in public school classrooms with “ALL those kids with learning problems.” 99 times of a 100 is the LD kids that get short-changed in a classroom, not the regular ed. kids who suffer for the teacher spending more time with LD kids. Also, having a learning difference does NOT automatically imply that your child has a behavior problem in a classroom. Parents who are not affected by learning differences can be so ignorant sometimes. When I hear comments like that, I have to VENT with my friends who can relate to our situation.

I’ve often considered if things got really difficult for my son that I would request that we pull him out for language arts and have him home-schooled or tutored one-on-one for just that subject. Our counselor and I have mentioned it as something to consider down the road. I’m not quite sure exactly how it would work out. We would still want him to receive credit for that subject. But, perhaps we could have check-points throughout the year to ensure that he was on-track with the school curriculum. It would take some creative thinking. Good Luck.

Just remember you can have all the great tutors in the world and if your child has trouble with handwriting and language processing in the environment (the classroom)and the teacher does not carryover accomodations and teach your child how to implement techniques to use in the schedule of classroom instruction, what good will all that tutoring do? Your child will most likely get two messages - I do x in school and y at ___ , although what kind of accomodations best benefit your child?

I still believe the teacher in the classroom is the most important piece, but even a good reg. ed teacher will most likely not know about accomodations and the learning differences your child might need - here is where a damn good consultant or specialist comes in. You could be in a public school too and the sped people might also be clueless what to do or even worse say they know what to do when they really don’t. Do a lot of homework and never stop.

Hi,

Please see http://www.nichcy.org/private.htm This is a web site for the National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities. They have a “Memorandum from OSEP on Private Schools” under ‘new publications’ that addresses your concerns.

To sum it up —if you as a parent are deciding to place your child in a private school there is no obligation to have the school follow an IEP or any modified education program and there is no obligation that the school district/state etc pay for any help that your child might receive. (—but there is also nothing to prohibit assistance..each state, school district, etc has different policies to deal with this issue)

That being said I would ask both the public school district, the Catholic school district (there should be a head person in the diocese that oversees schools) and the principal/teachers what they would be willing to do for your child.

In my case the Catholic school was just forming at my parish and the principal had too many other issues to offer any aid for my child. My son was enrolled at the public school and went to the resource room daily for reading and 3xs a week to a speech therapist. The public school system had a policy to continue to provide the speech therapy (off-site of the Catholic school) but would not provide any other instructual aid.

For my son although I would have loved for him to have gone to the Catholic school there was just too much negativity and I felt that ultimately my son would be better off getting the understanding and help he needed thru the public school.

Good luck.

If the school accepts ANY gov funds (even reduced lunchs count) then they have to follow ADA law, that is for ACCOMIDATIONS and MODIFICATIONS, they would have to do a 504 plan. However they are not requirede by law to do remediation or give specialized instruction as IDEA mandates.

If you are in a district where the district has voluntarily desided to provide some specilized services to private schools (generally speech and/or tutoring) then the district can not pick and choose to provide those services at only some of the schools or for only some of the kids, its all or nothing. so if you are in a district like this and your child qualifys in your state for assistance then s/he might be able to get some in the limited capacity described.

I pulled my son out of a Catholic school becuase they were not meeting his needs. It was not an option to send him to public school due to the school he would have had to attend. We chose the best option for us- we moved to a top notch school district with a wonderful sped program. I had to fight my daughter into speech (offered by the township in a trailer on the school grounds but only to those who were BADLY in need of services) at the Catholic school but have no problems here. I have to spend one afternoon a week sending them to CCD but it was worth it to me.