How are my chances?

Well what you got to do is allow the public school a chance to offer F.A.P.E. (free appropriate public education) Appropriate will be the key. I would instead of asking for the private school right out of the door,ask for the specific curriculum this school offers. Show why he needs this,why he would benefit etc. If once you have done this,then you can reject the IEP and seek reimbursement for private school. Either way,it will take time,and it will take a papertrail. Start saving ALL documents,ask for everything in writing,reason why they won’t provide this or that etc. Your job will be to prove the school had their chance to provide it and didn’t. If you request the very same things this school offers,they will be left to either deny he needs it,or possibly reccomend this school placement. Hope this helped. Everybody I know has recieved private school via due process court,with an attorney. BUT,it doesn’t mean that the school will not offer this state program.

Everything socks said is true.
My two sons go to a pricey private school for dyslexic boys. Both were under the severe scale but my youngest even more so with some memory problems. Why have we been able to procure this
for them? Those two went through years of failure before I really realized that they weren’t playing catch up. When I finally realized they were being carried along and would emerge
from high school (if we could keep them in to graduate) without
skills that would enable them to be successful and go to college,
I went into over drive. I found a free advocate (through the state and worth what I paid for) that guided me to an advocate
that had secured a private placement for a local boy. I immediately asked for a meeting and volunteered my time. I had
a fair amount of paper trail and the initial 3 years of schooling
(grades 5 - 8) weren’t in an LD school but in a school that offered some LD methods (og, hands on learning) and it was cheap by private school rates. We took them to hearing and they just
happened to settle for those three years. We only had to do a hearing for 1/2 day once. I attributed their settling to the fact that the school was fairly inexpensive and that they had
proved they couldn’t do much for these guys in grades k - 4.
Last year they spent at the LD school and will go again this year. We have our CSE meeting next week with a new CSE chair.
NY also doesn’t have on their list a school for dyslexic kids any school is for multitude of kids including dyslexics which is not appropriate because their aren’t behavior problems.
I don’t know what else to say but it just depends a lot your
district. I know people from a variety of nearby districts that
have to take their district to hearing each and every year.
There is also financial aid available for these schools (you don’t have to pay it back).
In reality, your kid has to fail at what the public has to offer before there is any hope.

If your child was just identified and has not been in any public school special ed. program, I suspect you will not get private school tuition. You can get this if you beat the school in court or a hearing by demonstrating the school has not provided a free appropriate public education (FAPE). If you have never even accessed what they have to offer, you really do not have any grounds to support the hypothesis that the school cannot meet your child’s needs.

Be cautious in your approach. IDEA does not guarantee the BEST program, it merely assures an APPROPRIATE program. There can be a chasm between the words “best” and “appropriate.” Avoid phrases like “maximizing potential” and so forth. Stay with terms like appropriate, programs that work with the LD population.

The truth is you cannot prove something is a failure until it has failed. You do have to give things a chance. The very same cliche works against a school district when a parent comes in demanding a placement or program that everybody and their brother thinks in totally inappropriate. If the parent holds fast and firm, we have no choice but to accomodate, give our best shot and document. If we took a parent to court over an “off the wall” placement, the judge would want to know whether or not we have tried it and whether or not we tried all the supports and services before he/she would rule in our favor. Parents must meet a similar standard to demonstrate that a program is not FAPE.

Anitya,

This is the second post I have seen from you saying not to ask for kids to work up to their potential. I am confused why is that a bad thing to say?

I never meant to give that impression, I have been working on behalf of my son since the age of three (his first evaluation, needed to know if his high frustration level was normal) I have been working very hard to get him the best education I can get him and it hasn’t been easy, they just don’t make it easy and thanks to this board I have gotten a wealth of information that I have used. I am going to demand he get the right education and from what I hear that isn’t an integrated classroom but time will tell. I will keep you all updated. Liz

Liz,
Please do:-) I would like to know how it’s going. From one Mom to another.

IDEA does not assure anything more than FAPE (free, appropriate, public education). I daresay, my junior does not work up to his potential, either. If we wrote our laws promising parents that our public schools will educate all children to their potential, we would open a very messy can or worms. Every single one of us knows highly intelligent underachievers, oftentimes who are NOT LD or handicapped in any way. We also have the issue of trying to predict what anything SHOULD be based on test scores and when tests show quite a bit of scatter in cognitive processes, how can we state that an overall average is what a person should ultimately be doing on tests? An average is merely an average of various skills. Many students do not achieve to their potential and for a variety of reasons.

Parents are cautioned by lawyers and advocates to avoid terms that state or imply “best,” “maximum,” etc. The law does not give any of us parents this right. Of course, the word “appropriate” has been the subject of many disagreements. But, no it is not necessarily an assurance that if the IQ is 125, then the reading level or standard score should or will be equivalent. However, if progress is not being shown at all, then a parent definitely might win in a hearing. marion wrote:
>
> Anitya,
>
> This is the second post I have seen from you saying not to
> ask for kids to work up to their potential. I am confused
> why is that a bad thing to say?

Hi Liz,

If you shift the focus from “where” your son gets his education, to “what” is included in his education, you might have a better chance of helping him get what he needs. It might be worth your while to spend some time learning everything you can about the approach the state supported school is using with students. Sounds like you think it is a good one. Have you tried to analyze why you feel that way? Why do you think it is best? How is it different from what your son could get in his own school? What techniques and strategies are they using at the special school, could some of them be adapted to your son’s school? Spending your energy on what sounds like a very long shot (private school, public funds) is one choice you have. Another might be to work with the local school and give them the benefit of the doubt (for a reasonable length of time) to see what they come up with. If you have a clear idea of what your son needs, you won’t have to sound negative by only telling them what you don’t want. The last thing you want right from the beginning is to sound like someone who can’t be satisfied. Give them a chance, and point out you have some ideas based on what is already being provided for other students by the state. And remember parents don’t have to be perfect. We don’t always get everything we ask for, but if we try hard to keep things moving in the right direction, we’re doing our job. Good luck. JJ

From your post and from some of the others, I get the feeling that you live in NYS.

If this is so, when you mention state supported LD schools, are you referring to the BOCES schools?

I know Donna will agree with me, but a BOCES school is not always a great choice. It is the last chance for kids who cannot be maintained in their school district. Even when a particular school is geared for only LD, the fact is that the majority of kids have many more issues than LD. So your child would be going to school with kids who have lots of behavior problems which have stemmed from their LD.

Also, it is NOT the Least Restrictive Environment which is the goal of IDEA. Your child would be going to a school exclusively with other kids who have problems. Therefore, there will be few kids who can provide good role models.

Donna was able to have her district pay for private school (not state supported LD school) because she documented that the public school was not able to provide any services which helped her kids improve. (Did I get that right, Donna?) So, in effect, as Anitya said, the child has to fail before the school MUST do other things to help them succeed — and you have to be able to prove that.

If it is a choice between an integrated class in the school district or the BOCES school, I would push for many, many more services within the school district. When they tell you they can only offer resource room, ask for “push-in” services in addition to resource room, which means that an additional special ed teacher actually comes into the integrated class to help your child and a few others while the regular class is going on. There are many ways that the regular school can offer support services before you take the rather drastic step of removing your child from a regular environment and put them into a state supported school.

By the way, if you are not from NYS and you are not talking about a BOCES LD school, the information about more support in the integrated classroom is still applicable. And maybe the state you are in has a better program than BOCES.

Good luck.