what are my chances?

Liz,

First off, you need to modify your terminoligy. The “best place” for your son, your term, is not what the law stipulates they must comply with. LRE and FAPE are what they must adhere to. I fully understand your beliefs and feelings regarding what is best for your child, but you are dealing with a beaurocracy who plays by the rules only when it suits them, and then when they choose to go contrary to the law or simply ignore their obligations… it becomes a very difficult mess for a parent to untangle.

Their not wanting to go to hearing can be truth or it can be a cat and mouse or smoke and mirror ruse to keep you at bay and in a holding pattern. Tough call to make, and you are there, you need to make that call.

As far as trusting an attorney from the district??? I hope I am misunderstanding what you mean here. I would like to assume the best and think that the district has a list and she is an advocate who represents children, and in no manner recieves any financial support or has contract with the district. If she is a true blue and has history, record and reccomendation from other parents where she successfully represented children; well, that’s one thing. If she has financial ties AT ALL with the district, I would run for the hills, and not look back at her.

Be very certain to be absolutely sure you understand where this attorney is coming from. Does she play between both parties, or is she there to represent your child. Forget about you, and the district, what are her intentions and where do her interests lie?

As far as what do I know about this… we went throug hell when our son was in elementary school. We went to mediation, due process and federal court without representation for our son. He is now in his 2nd year of college and this is all muddy water well under the bridge for us. However, our exprience, hopefully, was not for naught, and others, like yourself, can learn from what can happen when you question your local school district. Our son to this day still is dyslexic/dysgraphic with auditory processing issues.

I prefer to bow to the theory of paranoia. I suggest you use clinical precision and document all that is going on. Leave all emotions out of this. Have all communications be done in writing, and send confirming letters of understanding to all so you are absolutely certain you understand what is happening. Remember, you aren’t really paranoid if they are following you! You need to trust your inner gut instincts and not be lulled into a false sense of comfort, where after too much time goes by you wish you had listened to that quiet inner voice.

Best regards, and do be careful.

Andy

Thank you so much for your response, my gut instinct is telling me not to quit even though I seem to be getting advise otherwise. I know I could do this by myself but it is very intimidating to go to these things alone but I am at the point of just being angry now (going to control it though :) and I really don’t think I am going to let them bother me anymore. I think I am going to hold steady and insist on a hearing. They offered tutoring 5 times a week/ one hour a week but if I insist on going to hearing that could well be off the table. I hate the way they work, this should never be about lawyers and the games they play, it should just be about the children. Can’t they see if these kids get the right help now it will absolutely pay off later. Thank you again for your input. :)

Check out the articles in the “LD in Depth” section of this website, under “IEP”. There are some good tips on dealing with the school and negotiating effectively for what your child needs. Phrasing can be very important, as Andy points out, and the articles provide you with the correct phrasing.

It’s also important to keep a paper trail, even if it means summarizing a phone call and sending a letter saying you are summarizing the phone call.

Mary

Liz,

I wish you the best of luck. I have been through a hearing (and did not win funding for the private school), appealed the decision, have gone to mediation, and now am waiting for a response from a federal judge for a request for summary judgement on the case. We will probably end up going to court and spending lots more $$.

My son was in public school K-2. I moved him last year to a private LD school and have been paying the tuition and all related services myself. It’s a great financial burden, but very well worth it. His self-esteem has grown tremendously and he gets the special attention he needs (CAPD and ADD issues). Class size is very small (no more than 9 kids with 2 teachers).

Even though I may end up “losing” my case, I feel I have done the best thing for my son by moving him out of the public school system. Even though the public school paid lots of lip service to helping my son, the special ed, OT, and speech language services promised on his IEP were not always delivered and not delivered very well, unfortunately.

I hired my own attorney and my own special ed advocate. I would not rely on anyone the school provides.

If you like the private school and think it would be good for your son, I advise you to try to move heaven and earth to get him in. Three years ago I was willing to trust the public school system and support the least restrictive environment. After my son’s experience, I have made a 360 degree turn around. Good luck.

Sally

The school district is not obligated to place your child in the “best” place, as Andy says. The law doesn’t promise you a cadallac, as one of the books I read put it. I know it is aggravating and seems short sighted but that’s just the way it is. I also understand that you have to show that the school’s approach has failed your son before you will get anyone to pay for a private education. I think you would have a hard time winning if you haven’t taken their offer of tutoring and then showed that your son did not make progress with it.

We faced a lot of this last year with our son. The program the school used in first grade was totally ineffective with our son. We hired an advocate and got a great IEP in second grade. The district then tried to implement the the very different IEP with the same ineffective program. They told us that the teacher had not been properly trained. I was so angry. I could have left him there and very easily showed how ineffective their programming was. Personally, I couldn’t do it when I knew it wouldn’t work. I also was being eaten up by the stress and anger of dealing with the district and decided I would rather spend my energy and $$$ directly on my son instead of fighting. We pulled him out of school partly and started homeschooling him. We also provided him with private therapy. He is still behind but he is now reading on second grade level. I am convinced that without our intervention he would be at an early first grade level still. He is in third grade.

There is a new resource teacher at the school (she was a big part of the problem—the district didn’t want to give us anything she couldn’t do and that was very little) and through it all I managed to maintain very good relationship with the principal and the director of exceptional education. The district people dislike me (one told me to go to due process if I didn’t like it) but they are far away. We’re hoping for a better year.

Beth

Liz,

You asked to hear from those who have been through it already. I have posted this letter I sent a number of years ago to the LDA publication called “THE GRAM”. It was printed in the edition that circulated throughout the state of CA and elsewhere I suppose. Heard from parents as far away as Alaska. Again, this was a number of years ago. Many of you have already read this, so I don’t mean to bore those of you who have :)

Attn: LDA, State of CA

GRAM PUBLICATION OPEN LETTER TO PARENTS

Re: What was learned from the nightmare of a Learning Disabled Parent of a Learning Disabled Child attempt to obtain a FAPE in our local district.

To Whom It May Concern:

First, I ask your patience, because I, like my son, have a learning disability. I have difficulty with handwriting, so I always type. Typing makes the words legible, spell check makes the paper presentable, however, unfortunately, they have yet to invent the program to unscramble the word processing of a dyslexic mind.

Anyone who has lived through / survived the hellish experience of help seeking within the public school system for a child will know that this letter has the capacity for a 1000 page novel; I will do my best to be brief.

Our son was diagnosed with “LD” by the public school Psychologist in the 1st Grade. He was given an IEP, which was to begin his 2nd Grade year. By the 3rd Grade, with minimal and no provision of the services specified on his IEP, our son was floundering terribly. His areas of deficit were dysgraphia, dyslexia and other assorted invisible disorders, which clearly affected his performance in school.

By the second month of his 4th Grade year, having no RSP (as specified on his IEP), and no Counseling (as specified on his IEP), our son tried to slam his head through a window at home. He told us, with tears streaming down his face that he would rather die than go back to school, “where the teachers did not understand, and the kids were so mean about this handwriting”. He was 9 years old.

My wife and I sought help from the school; and the rest is documented history. Of course, it is also documented that the school claimed he was doing fine in class, the problems were coming from the home.

We (my wife and I) attended countless IEP Meetings (with and without advocates), we have attended Mediation Conferences (with and without advocates), I have represented my son in State level Due Process Hearings, and I have represented our son, alone, in Federal Court.

I know what it is like to be a learning disabled parent, seeking protection for our learning disabled son from a system that allows a school district to hire the representation of a “consultant” whose sole purpose is to keep the district from providing those services which are due the child by law. (I could go on and on about this one extremely unfair practice that is tolerated, the fact is, everyone knows this happens, and the child is still left without help, unless the parents can afford the services of costly consultants or attorneys).

I know what it is like to have an inexperienced advocate intervene and represent our son at Due Process Hearing, and have to sit back and watch an absolute kangaroo court in progress, while the Dean of the McGeorge School of Law presided.

Perhaps I need to digress for a moment and explain that during this time I was working, and unemployed at times, in the construction industry here in Southern California. It is common knowledge in the business world for sub-contractors to be loyal to the general contractor; the reason is simple, future contracts mean more guaranteed income. Even in the blue-collar world of construction, it would be abundantly clear that if the “inspector” worked for the General Contractor, the quality of homes could be jeopardized by the “partial” decisions made by a biased inspector. How obvious must it be for a law school like McGeorge School of Law to be a contractor with the State Department of Education to side in behalf of school districts whenever possible?

In June of 1991 McGeorge’s Year to Date Statistics show that the total number of Due Process Hearing Decisions rendered, parents did not obtain the services they fought for in Due Process 70% of the time!

If the hearing Officer finds the district to be within compliance, then the State does not have to enforce any “laws”, because there was no violation! This is absolutely ludicrous. The burden is entirely on the parent, and the power is entirely in the system.

I speak from experience. I will gladly provide a list of all the names and numbers of “protective agencies”, government employees, political figures etc., who were well aware of our son’s predicament. This is not limited to, but includes Chief Liaison to President Clinton, the Federal Dept. of Ed, State Dept. of Ed., Protection and Advocacy, the Governor’s Office, Congressmen, Assemblypersons, Senators, local agencies, OSEPS, OSERS, Office for Civil Rights (the list is endless)… The bottom line is there is no help, only a terribly tangled web of beaurocracy the feeds off of our taxes, and is simply impotent, inept and incapable of enforcing the laws that were written to protect children. The blatant and total failures of these public officials to enforce protections is disappoint, to say the least; corruption of this magnitude would not go on, if it were not tolerated at the higher levels.

I have scores of letters I sent to attorneys and agencies (and their responses) from across the country, begging for help for our son. My only request was to either enforce the law and provide him the FAPE he required, or release him from the system, and provide us with the funding to ensure he be educated and not destroyed.

One of LDA-CA’s past presidents, Joan Esposito, had written a GRAM which clearly outlined the problems parents like us have experienced. She is one of the only ones who understood the frustrations of what we were going through. (I can only imagine that she has an entire file cabinet with our son’s name on it!) I continue to thank God for her strength and compassion for our kids. The gauntlet is excruciating, the retaliatory actions of a school district are disgusting, and designed to exhaust parents. Our son’s last “active IEP” was his 4th Grade IEP, which was never enforced. He is currently going into the 10th Grade!

After 6 years of attempting to “right the wrong”, and taking both the local school district and the state dept. of Ed “to task”, I have only learned that I could do the impossible for our son. That was to survive the stress of war, stay married to his mother, see that he finally get an appropriate education (outside of the system), and move on with our life.

I have since passed on my “law library”, a virtual war chest of cases, laws and protections for learning disabled children to a local (San Diego) advocate. She has my permission to copy and pass along any and all data I compiled; including phone numbers, addresses etc. My hope and prayer is some other parents may get the help our son never received. It was quite a paradox to find all the protections, and rights our child had, yet been completely incapable of finding any authority to enforce the law!

My wife and I went to a leading “special education attorney and we begged for her to help; she felt to “untangle this case at this stage” it would cost an estimated $70,000.00, at least. It might as well have been $70,000,000.00, if you can imagine the devastating news to hear such a proposal. The up front money was to be a minimum of $15,000.00. I don’t know about anyone reading this letter, but that is a substantial amount of money which we did not / do not have! It is probably noteworthy to mention that there are not very many lawyers who specialize in the highly complex field of special education law; and those that do, usually work for school districts and the states, those that don’t are extremely expensive!

Out of necessity for our son, I virtually became the closest anyone will probably come to being a lay-lawyer in the highly specialized field of Special Education Law. For over 2 years, I stood alone, as a parent, in Federal Court, without an attorney, and did the best I could. With my wife’s help, we won some Motions, lost a few, and even had Court Decisions OVERTURNED, without help from attorneys! Truly, I will admit that the damage and suffering of such battles was more psychological and detrimental to peaceful family existence, and the fall out was financial, emotional destruction. It was as close to divorce and stress that I will ever hope to experience for the rest of my life.

Ultimately, the Federal Court Judge Ordered me to find an attorney for our son, because, if I did not, he said that our son’s case would lose at the Appeals level, due to the child not being properly represented in Court. What an irony, even if we could have won at the first level, they would have had it overturned because of how he was represented. Again, after an exhaustive search, we finally located a young, fresh out of Law School attorney, who offered to represent our son “pro bono”. Remember, we had been in Federal Court for over a year prior to her having even graduated from Law School! Within 3 months, our son’s case was closed, and the State Dept. of Ed and the local school district were absolved of any responsibilities.

I believe it is important that you understand the following, which is of public record in the Federal Court system in Southern California:

The District admitted to not providing services on our son’s IEPs.
The District could not provide original copies of documents where my name was added to agreements. (Reviewed by a documents fraud examiner).
The District failed to properly diagnose our son’s disabilities.
The District contracted a Dr. (for $14,000.00, on record)) to diagnose our son during the pending court case, to determine “what would have been appropriate 3 years past; when this same district had tested him 7 times within 12 months during the time in question.
State level investigations were useless.
OCR findings were biased and inaccurate.
McGeorge School of Law hearing transcripts are of record, and the Hearing Officer’s failure to acknowledge or address blatant violations of Special Ed Laws are abundant.
Numerous other violations of Education Law were proven clearly on Court Records.
Our son NEVER had another “active” IEP from the time when we filed for Due Process; the two parties (parents and district) could never come to agreement, so…

Our son’s case ended over a year ago. The scars my wife and I carry may never go away. Time is the healer and seeing our son doing well as a soon to be 10th Grader is the soothing ointment to assure us we did the right thing. He has no IEP, he gets no special help, and he is working very hard. He is alive, healthy and we are grateful. We stood by our child and did what we thought we had to do, protect him at all cost.

Adding insult to injury, after the case was closed, we received legal documents from the school district’s attorneys’, attempting to bill us for the legal costs they incurred! Some of these costs included the depositions they took of our son’s “expert witnesses”, a document fraud examiner and a Neuropsychologist; both who are highly qualified specialists. These testimonies clearly demonstrate among other issues the district’s blatant failures to diagnose our son’s disabilities, their (district’s) inability to explain how my signature ended up on a copy of an education contract that I had refused to sign. The irony is the district DID NOT enter these depositions as evidence after their attorneys deposed these witnesses, I DID!

My advice to anyone who will listen. If you are an advocate, thank you for your strength, courage and perseverance, and for trying to help protect our children. To you parents, until there are drastic changes in how the laws are enforced, do what you have to do to save your child. Our experience dictates that it might be wiser to pull your child and put him/her in a safe non-public environment as soon as possible. The money will be more effectively spent there, and less stress placed upon your family.

You see, for those of us who do not have a lot of money, we need to determine where best to spend the limited resources we have on what we find to be most precious to us, our kids. Moreover, for those who have enough money for attorneys and consultants why would they spend it on fighting a system? They can afford the tutoring, counselors, private educations…

Absolute power corrupts, and all the laws in the world are useless, until they are enforced. God bless you Joan, Mary Ann, Chris, Sandy, Adele (retired), and the rest of you advocates who fight for our kids!

Sincerely,

Andy

Ps/ Everything we experienced is of public record; I wish (pray) to God somebody had the time, money and courage to look at what clearly was the “Anatomy of a Public School’s Failure”. What has happened to my family, and specifically to our child, is the story of one; however, it will clearly show what happens to all who get involved and try to help a child (anyone’s child).

I am using my nickname in case any district employees are reading this…Andy and I both live in California….We both faced one of the nastiest district advocates around….he looks like Snydley Whiplash…..

I took the district I used to work for to due process in the summer of 2000. It was an anxiety ridden year, my child is dyslexic, CAPD/ADHD I put them on alert that I was not a happy camper at the end of 1999, the test scores were showing my kiddo wasn’t making progress, they were out of compliance yadda, yadda, yadda. What I did was have my kiddo in half private placement and half in the district, they threatened to take me to the truancy board, but they never did…LOL But I sallied forth with this program for 6 months. In Late August we went into mediation with our advocates and sat down and talked. We had spent over $12K to get her turned around in an intensive program. They offered me a token payment and I laughed….They went back and coughed up a lot more…I took it because I knew that the district advocate would make mincemeat of me in a due process hearing and that my future career as any district employee would be in jeopardy…

While I got this money I still wanted a private placement and they were able to show on paper that they could provide a LRE….even though I knew this wasn’t in my childs best interests….I wanted my kiddo in a small intensive lab-class that was in a Non-Public Agency.and they by law didn’t have to PLACE my kiddo in what I felt was my kids BEST interests because it wasn’t a Non-public school…..

These guys play real hardball and if you have an attorney that is provided by the district I would be really wary….September I decided that I would fund the NPA Lab Class myself, I had arranged to work at this facility and got a discount in the price…but I joked that I drove 100 miles a day round trip with my kiddo in tow and paid to work there with the other kids in the LAB class. I did this for 16 months! It was one of the hardest years of my life, I was in my final year of college….taking a full load of classes but now my kiddo is mainstreamed and is doing wonderfully…

I would vote to fund the placement yourself, or arrange a trade/barter/work situation like Andy and I did….. It was the best thing I could have done for my kiddo without ripping our lives apart emotionally and phyically in constant volleys with the district attorney’s and advocates…and while going through that my child wouldn’t get decent services.. i decided to take care of it myself…and the monetary and less stress of doing it this was was worth it in the long run.

How easy or hard depends upon where you live, I believe.

Here, in Maryland, the school system will not pay for a special placement until they have had an opportunity to fail with a child for about three years. Then, if they will not own up to their failure, it takes another three years for the legal process to come to fruition.

Ditto: They don’t make it easy.

What we did was send our son to the school we knew was best for him, pay for it ourselves. We could not afford it. Don’t have any savings or retirement funds, but we’d do it again.

GOOD LUCK with whatever you decide.

Carol

An attorney who works for the district will not have your child’s best interest first, they will have the districts first. That is one reason they have lured you in saying it is free. Read Andy’s post and reread it. Consider his thoughts, what he has written is right on the button. I’d not only run for the hills but I’d keep running! Find yourself a good attorney and do as much leg work as you can on your own.

I am also struggling with the samething. My child is in the 6th grade, is severely dysgraphic with difficulty with higher order language and totally disorganized. I am exhausted working with the school system, constantly watching them, always asking questions. It’s a new school this yr. new staff, the assistive technologies are in place, an aide in the room to help with organization etc.. They say they get it, but today I see a note on a test in friendly red ink, that says please copy your answers from the board correctly! Well that says it all, he can’t copy well especially when using paper/pencil and thought we had agreed at a meeting no demands with copying lets bypass it and work on content ! My child says he likes his new school so I am just holding on tight. It is only Sept. and I am exhausted.
I would like to ask how do people pay for a private school? They are so expensive and I do not know how I could possibly pay it, the school district knows if he fails I’ll be looking for them to fund elsewhere. On the other hand my child likes his neighborhood school and wants to stay put.

Couple of issues that can be addressed here.

1. 6th grade is getting into the age bracket where your child is really going to be striving for independence from you (parent) as well as assimilate in with peers regarding acceptance and being “like the others”. This is a really tough time for ld’ers.

2. Your vigilant approach is obviously required, time consuming and exhaustive. However, all you need do is consider the alternative of doing nothing, and imagine what things would be like. Sad, but the way it is. Learn to take breaks, get rest, calm and quiet times and save your strength and judge what battles are necessary and which you can let go by. Case by case, instance by instance, you need to make that call as the parent.

3. The teacher notes and other signs that they simply do not understand are reinforcement that you are not wrong, but must maintain the vigilant watch and guard over your child’s overall well being.

4. verbal agreements at meetings, and having things documented, agreed upon and signed as agreed on an IEP are different matters completely. The frustration you are experiencing is universal, and most certainly you aren’t alone (if that even makes you feel any better).

5. They are simply biding time and waiting for your son to outgrow middle school and then he moves on, no longer their “problem” or responsiblity.

6. One of the toughest calls of all. Your child likes the placement, or at least says he does, and you don’t want to mess things up; yet you know it isn’t right. Well, welcome to the school of tough parenting. You know that for most of life’s experiences, your child will not know what is best for them, you must teach, lead and show the way. I am not saying drastic change of placement, but certainly open avenues and doors to other alternatives. Think about all the foods they say are yucky until they try them, or other experiences that would have been missed had you not “forced” them to just “try it”.

7. If you have a well reputed non-public ld type school near you, see if you can get them to let your son try out a few days there and see how it goes. Don’t let on too much to anyone, your son, the new school, particularly the current school teachers/administrators… Simply make the arrangements and then call him in as ill or unable to attend… with your permission. See how a day or two at the new place goes. You (and he) may never know? He could meet the person who may turn into the best friend he has for life from this one little experience.

8. The money. If all that is keeping your son from appropriate placement, there are infinite ways to figure out how to get around this. Beg. Borrow. Indentured servitude at the school. Deal with that problem AFTER you determine that this would be the appropriate placement. Then, and only then, can you pull out all the stops and find a way. We did all 3 of the above for 2 years for our son, no regrets. Met with the headmaster and president of the school board. Explained our financial situation, our son’s precarious situation in school and requested any assistance they could/would offer. They decreased the tuition by a bit, I borrowed some money, and negotiated working around the school for a fair hourly rate and did mainanance, yard work and anything else I could to work off the debt. Then, once agreed, I brought in friends from work, who worked at a substantial discount to me, and each one of their hours working paid off 1 hour of my debt to the school. A handful of “work party” saturdays with 6 & 7 guys going to town and I was able to pay off the “tuition hours”. I was reporting to the maintanance man, who was thrilled with all we got done. Everyone was happy, our son got the education for 2 critical years, and although I was tired… it was well worth it. If it’s worth it, you will find a way!

Again, don’t let your son solely dictate what is appropriate; he has input, but shouldn’t be the final word; that’s your job.

I hope this helps.

Andy

Thanks, Andy!
Your thoughts are helpful.

It sounds unfair, impossible, more than anyone can expect, but you need to stay on top of them. I don’t mean hound them or be a pain in the neck. I mean, a friendly reminder note about what you agreed and WHY it’s necessary. Often the teacher seems to “get it” but only gets it in a superficial way. It is not first-hand, basic knowledge for her, so she will miss the specific application.

You’re in the sad position, because your child is in a new school, of having to educate the teachers. We all are. We all do. I generally start out every new school year by sending my son’s teacher’s a friendly, descriptive letter (only one page long) and some back-up literature (only a couple pages long). Then, I supplement with notes through the year.

The reason why we can afford private school at all is because we found a Montessori School. Some Montessori schools are less expensive than most other private schools. That wasn’t the only reason why we chose Montessori. The other one is because this one was dedicated to a child’s learning in his own way, at his own rate.

For note taking, our son uses an Alpha Smart. It’s a computer-like gizmo that looks like a laptop with a small screen and costs about $220. He types his assignments into it and reads them off on his computer when he gets home. He also uses it to take notes in class.

Ask me more, if you’d like.

Carol

It seems hard to stay that you need to stay in there, but I agree with Andy that it’s what you have to do.

I think most of us find that with older children, particularly, we parents of l.d. children are in the odd position of having to educate their teachers. They may seem to get it, but in public school, I haven’t found any who really do get it, not in depth, not down to how they have to apply the knowledge they may have in theory to handling a specific child. Dysgraphia or the processing difficulty that makes it hard for a child to copy are somewhat less common forms of l.d., so a teacher may not have dealt with it.

I would suggest your sending helpful, friendly notes when you notice something going wrong, or when you feel a teacher needs to know more about how to deal with your son’s needs. I send short letters, sometimes short articles; sometimes I make concrete suggestions about how to work with my son. I try not to demand, or complain, or overpower the teacher. What I’m working for is a partnership with her.

We chose a Montessori school because: 1) it was more affordable than others; 2) it believed in a child’s learning at his own rate, in his own way.

Our son uses an Alpha Smart to keep track of his assignments and to take notes in class. He types them onto it, saves what he’s typed, then reads it out into his computer when he gets home. The Alpha Smart is like a laptop with a small screen. We got it through the internet, cost about $220.

Let me know if I can tell you more.

Carol

An alphasmart can be supplied by the school if it is in the iep. My son is given access to one if he needs it(can be checked out).No charge.