HELP trying to get them to pay for Private School or Tutorin

I think your best bet is asking for compensory services for the hours of writing services he did not get since January. Add the hours up and if you can find an outside tutor that you would like the district to pay for before the meeting. Not providing services is an IEP violation but without going to due process I doubt they would pay for private school. If they deny your request then ask for Prior Written Notice (read up on it). School districts do not like to put in writing why they will not provide a service and are more likely to back down and give you what they want. They may not own up to even knowing what PWN is so be prepared to educate them about this aspect of IDEA. Do a search on the internet and you will find information.

Helen

There a few things I would do.

1. Have a school in mind. Go visit,be ready to discuss the program there,be well informed about the school. Same thing for tutoring.

2. Do you have their promise to provide the remediation in writing? If so make copies,MANY copies. Blow it up to giant size,place it on an easel.
Now ask them,show me where you have done what you promised to do. Have amny samples to show he can’t do it.

3. Have the middle school( junior High) curriculum standards. Have documentation ready to show that he doesn’t meet them.

Do all of this THEN reccomend they provide him with compensatory remediation. They will reccomend their summer school,be ready to explain ,by knowing what the summer program is. And why it will or will not work. Be ready with your school or program,give out brochures,sell it. if they believe you can and would file in court to fight for private schooling by showing them your very good case against them,then they might go for it. I am going to say,they generally don’t. It will be hard,you might fight for the summer program up until the end of summer. Do you have another plan?

Lisaa, I consulted with an educational attorney about this recently. He was very knowledgable about whether I would be able to be successful with this. (In our case his answer differed depending on which school district we resided in, and based on our decision to move we have decided not to try to get funding this year…) In our old school district he was very successful at getting partial - full funding depending on the school. And his fee would have been much less than the amount we anticipated getting from the BOE. My point is that you may need professional assistance to get this done, but that it may be worth it economically to do it that way.

Thanks for the replies… This is really going to help me prepare!

I have a person lined up to tutor my son this summer, but am still looking for something better…I am looking for “THE’ dysgraphia program…(I know, I know there is not ONE program….)

Does anyone recommend a certain program? My son has lots and lots to say about a subject, but ‘can’t think of what to write’ about the same subject. He can’t spell, and his handwriting is terrible. He can’t seem to organize a paragraph. And when he does write, his uses the shortest sentences possible.

I can live with the terrible handwriting if we could get some content and organization.

Thanks again,
-Lisaa

Lisaa,

The short sentence are probably due to the difficulty with the physical act of writing; at least they were for my son. Work on keyboarding this summer. Once your son can touch type at about 11 words a minute you will find that he can type faster then he can handwrite. When a child’s verbal oral output is much higher then their written output it is probably due to dificulty with the physical act of writing.

One thing to try is having your son dictate into a tape recorder. You could then type in form the tape and have him edit it.

With dysgraphia I feel you have to work at it from points:

Work to improve handwriting.
Learn keyboarding as a arternative to handwriting.
Work on improving the stucture of writng.

My own son is now 15. Keyboarding allowed his written output to match his oral output. Unfortunately, he does not always use technology when he should and can. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t always make him drink.

Helen

The path to public funding for a private education is a tough one. Basically, the student has to have needs that the school does not have a program to meet. Things get tough when the school doesn’t agree on the needs (thinking that muddling along in classes and being passed along is fine), or when they have (on paper, anyway) an IEP plan that addresses the needs. SOmetimes it takes some years of fighting to get the needs described and the IEP written, and then doing due process to prove that no, they really have *not* been providing what the IEP says.
At the private school (grades 6-12) where I taught, about 25% of our students were their courtesy of a Local Education Agency. Teachers weren’t really in the loop on the procedure — I did have one student whose parents had no battle at all… the system honestly and rightly believed he needed our school. “He’d just get eaten alive” were the words of the Sped director. (So yes, there are humans out there!) Many more had spent years fighting and advocating and documenting, documenting, documenting.
And of course, many more were kids we never saw because they lost.
The school has very detailed IEPs that clearly define things they do (*all* teachers trained to work with kids with LDs, weekly faculty meetings to discuss student needs, a daily language remediation class with 1-2 or 1-5 students with structured, systematic, individualized remediation, class sizes 6-10 in all classes except a few senior level get-em-ready-for-college lecture style things, and on and on and on…) This made it a whole lot easier to make the case for “this is what my child needs — can you provide it?”

My experience and opinion is that it’s all tied together. As long as the physical act of writing is incredibly difficult, there’s no brain space or energy left to think about content.

I have written up some outlines on how I tutor handwriting; if you have asked me for them , I’ll be trying to get better organized in a day or two — bad health week. If you haven’t and are interested, just email me and ask about handwriting.

I certainly agree that difficulty with handwriting would seriously interfere with writing. But perhaps you could start to have him learn the basics of writing organization and style with minimal handwriting. I am thinking of the IEW initial approach for reluctant writers (especially boys!) that eases kids into this by having them rewrite others’ paragraphs (preferably on a topic they are interested in). The child makes a key word outline for each sentence—no more than three words for each sentence. Then he gives an oral recitation of the paragraph based only on looking at the key words. Then he writes it, again using just the key words for reference.

This is explained in greater detail on the IEW website. (Please see the posts between Nancy and me under the recent topic “Reading/Writing Connection” on the teaching reading bulletin board for more detailed information.) Since handwriting is difficult for your son, you could write the key words for him, have him read his new paragraph, and then have him dictate sentence by sentence to you. (More advanced structure and style are also covered by IEW, but this is an excellent way to start.)

I don’t like saying this given the age of your son and the inevitable difficulties teaching your child at that stage of life, but I recommend you taking this on yourself. In my experience good writing teachers—whether in the classroom or in the tutoring profession—are very few and far between. Somehow, teachers seem to assume that a teacher before them must have covered all the basic writing structuring fundamentals, so many children never get them. An alternative would be to hire an eager college student who would be willing to follow your instructions and the IEW program (or possibly Step to Writing program—see other posts) slavishly, as well as do the handwriting for your son.

I want to thank everyone very much for all the responses so far and to let you know I am putting them to good use!! People here on this board have helped me get on the right track many times and I can’t thank you enough for sharing your wisdom and knowledge!

-Lisaa