Private school

I faced this issue this past year. My middle child is LD and was attending a public school while my other two were in a parochial school. For a wide variety of reasons, we were interested in him being at the same school as them and avoiding the public middle school. We met with the assist. prinicpal in Jan. She knows our son, as he has attended camp there. We brought all his records and test scores. She said she thought it would be best if he repeated a grade. Her own daughter, earning a master’s degree, had done that at 8 when transferring from public to parochial school. We agreed, knowing the school was ahead of public school and our son could not make that jump as well as the fact that our son is somewhat immature. He was in a boy scout den this year with kids a year younger and fit in perfectly.

They had no room so I put it all on the back burner, thinking it wasn’t an option. Then we got an acceptance lettter. We spoke to the audiologist my son has worked with extensively about her thoughts and she advised us all (son, husband, me) to all make a list of three pro and cons. We did. I then met with the assist. principal and shared these with her. I also wrote up a def. of accomodations and modifications and what I thought my son would need to succeed.

I have copied what I gave asst principal (minus my husband’s list which was quite long winded) at bottom of post. While reading my pros and cons, she told me that she had already selected Nathan’s teacher for next year and these were the kinds of things they could do. All were on my list (which she had not yet seen).

I think you need to make sure that your children can get the support they need. If they are LD, it is more than going to public school for speech. Whether it will work for them depends on their skills versus expectations, level of support, and attitude of school. I think you need to be very honest with yourself and the school about what your children need to suceed. I found the exercise of writing pros and cons very helpful and it helped calm the conversations in my head. We ultimately decided to send him.

Here is what I gave the asst. principal:

Beth’s list.

Pros:

1. Repeating fourth grade would give Nathan the opportunity to consolidate his skills and hopefully quit playing the catch up he has had to play ever since he finished first grade without reading. Our remediation always seems to be a year behind the demands of school.

2. It is a smaller, very supportive, close-knit community. It is a structured atmosphere with zero tolerance for teasing. This would especially be an advantage for middle school.

3. Administration is committed to serving wide variety of kids. There is a resource room that provides tutoring/support for kids having trouble—do not have to be classified. Teachers will make modifications for kids with documented issues. There is after school math tutoring as well.

4. Nathan will be able to be at school siblings are at. This would give him the same vacation schedule as well as the opportunity to be part of the same community they are.

Concerns:

1. Nathan might have deficits that won’t respond to remediation and in a couple years we could be in a difficult situation with him needing more support than the school can provide.

2. The homework expectations are heavier than public school and it might be a burden on him and us.

3. Nathan won’t have the legal protection of an IEP.

Nathan’s list

Pro

1.Same days off as my brother and sister. (This seems to be the biggest one—I think being on a different schedule makes him feel really different in his own home.)
2. P.E. twice a week instead of every other week.
3. Longer recess.
4. Don’t have to go to CCD.

Con

1. Don’t have same days off as kids who go to public school.
2. Making new friends.
3. That you won’t let me buy lunch every day because it is more expensive.

This is what I gave her on accomodations and modifications.

Accomodations: Working at the same academic level but processing differences require certain techniques and materials for school tasks to be completed effectively.
Examples include preferential seating, extra time on tests, notes provided, not using bubble answer sheets.

Nathan currently has preferential seating. He has extra time on standardized tests but seems to mostly handle the constraints of classroom testing satisfactorily. Last year he had notes provided. This year’s teacher does not write much on the board and his copying skills have improved through therapy.

Modifications: Changes to the curriculum because of processing differences that result in different grade level expectations.

Nathan currently is doing a different spelling program than other fourth graders. With summer work and repeating a grade, I think he will be able to handle fourth grade spelling lists. However, because of the nature of his processing, he may never be able to spell proficiently during in-class work. While we want him held to high standards, they have to be attainable. Thus, it may become necessary in the future to allow him the modification of not having spelling count on in class writing such as essay/short answer tests.

You said your children are in special ed and receive speech and OT. Are speech and OT the only areas of need or are they LD as well? If so. how would you provide the remediation for the LD? Also, the public school is not obligated to give speech and OT (or any other special ed. services) to private school students. They only have to provide services to a limited number of those students. So you’d have to check and see if you could continue to get speech and OT.

We took our child with speech/language problems out of a private Christian school because the Abeka curriculum was not appropriate for her. How does this school provide curriculum that is non-graded? Is it a workbook type curriculum? Would this provide the right kind of instruction for your children’s learning styles?

Public schools often do not offer appropriate remediation either, so it may be your best bet to get remediation privately anyway.

Janis

It is my understanding that if your child has service delivery under an I.E.P. and you send them to a private school at your expense that services such as OT, Speech/Language that are provided outside of the classroom have to be provided by the town/city. You will have to set up times with the school and provide transportation but I know plenty of children who do this. Matter of fact the school I worked at used to have a student at a local catholic school who came before her school started up, she came for service delivery with sped teacher in resource room. There were also a few OT and SLP students too.

We just pulled our son out of a regular private school precisely because they were unable to meet his needs - which are not that severe by the way.

It is a lovely, caring school, but as a private school they have no mandate to provide any services - reading remediation, OT , or speech - and had no mechanism to allow us to bring our own people in. That meant all of his services were provided after school hours, which really started to take its toll. Additionally, we had no way to require them to give him simple accomodations such as preferential seating or extended time on tests. Even though the school psych. agreed these things should be done I spent teh whole school year banging up against a rigid teacher because I had no leverage. ( However, I am sure even if he had an IEP and was enrolled in public school some of these problems would still exist - I’ve read enough on these boards to know that !!)

We also live in a city where it is notoriously difficult to get these services in a convenient or effective way thru the local board of ed. So most people with their kids in private school end up paying privately for these services - a double whammy.

I think as Beth said in her post you have to really evaluate what the school is willing AND able to do to work with you.