Assist meeting

REducing the amount and number of work or exercises she is required to do is probably the best course of action. You want her to learn, but do you really want to sit day in and day out struggling at home over unfinished classwork? Why not institute every other problem, etc.

Hi Angela,

Our school has something called a “Student Assistance Team” that meets prior to deciding whether to evaluate a child for special education services. I’m sure all teams work differently - but my team consisted of the school principal, the general education teacher, the school’s special ed caseworker (in this case, the resource room teacher), and me. We sat around a table, and everyone told me how wonderful my son was - and it didn’t matter that he wasn’t finishing his work, and was requiring a lot of individual attention from the teacher. He was a nice little boy and a solid “middle of the class” student. They refused to evaluate him.

I had my son privately evaluated and he was diagnosed with inattentive ADHD, an auditory processing disorder, a non-verbal learning disorder, and an anxiety disorder. He takes Ritalin and Wellbutrin (an anti-anxiety med). Boy, was my team WRONG!

My advice to you is to put some of your daughter’s papers together from this year - those that might indicate a processing problem. Can you think back and document the number of times she has had to finish her work at recess? Write down what you think your daughter’s strengths and weaknesses are. Describe things you see at home (can she ride a bike? does she hold a pencil properly? does she speak in complete sentences or partial sentences? can she rhyme? does she understand humor? can she tell where you are in the house when she is calling and you are answering? does she seem to be able to pick up reading phonetically or only by sight?)

Do some research on the internet this weekend. Look into ADHD (a great place to start is the LD Online “In Depth”). Go ahead and follow the links to other disorders where you think something might sound like your daughter. Get sort of an overview so you understand what the team is talking about (when I started I had a hard time following the educational jargon).

Write it all down, and review all your points with the team. I had a very negative experience with my team - but all teams/teachers/principals are different. The most important thing is to stay with this board and continue to ask questions! :)

I wish you all the best.
Lil

It is not necessary to go through SAT, or in our schools PAC (pupil assistance committee) prior to an evaluation. It has it’s place, but a parent can bypass this by simply putting the request for an evaluation in writing and submitting it to the principal and the director of special services. Many schools will have you believe that the child must be brought up at one of these meetings first, but that is not the law. In many cases interventions such as private tutoring,extra help, basic skills ect have already been tried, but the student continues to struggle. PAC, SAT and the like may prove to be a waste of time in these situations. We know our kids best, know what has been tried and the areas that are difficult for our kids. We are experts on our children. Lil is right, bring plenty of documentation to this meeting. If they say “no”, put your request in writing and submit to the principal and director of special services. They have a certain amount of time to reply to you, IN WRITING, stating whether they will do an evaluation and why not if they chose not to. Many times, they won’t act until you make your request in writing.

As we see here, this is a generic word for many types of programs & things. You might need to ask what it is for your school and post that for folks. It could just be a staffing to problem solve or look for pre-diagnosis interventions. It could be a meeting to plan a full assessment. You won’t know what to expect until you are sure what “Assist” means in your child’s school.

In our district, they’re called IAT (Intervention Assistance Team) meetings. I was not prepared for our’s, and even my 28-year veteran schoolteacher husband was a bit overwhelmed.

Hopefully, your district is different. When we walked into the room, however, for our meeting, there were no fewer than 15 school personnel in there, most of whom had never even met our son. The school district’s perspective is that it’s best to “put good minds together to figure out what the problem is”. Most of the attendees looked quite bored, however. Our “assistant principal” spent the whole time munching a HUGE bagel/cream cheese sandwich, which we found quite repulsive and unprofessional. Another “professional” tapped her fingers incessantly. I wanted to shout at them (which, of course, I didn’t), “Excuse me, but since this is a very scary thing for us [we had just discovered that there was a problem with our son, and we had absolutely no idea what it was], could you put down your breakfast and at least act like you’re interested!?”

However, we did have a very good school psychologist in the meeting, as well as Kevin’s classroom teacher and speech pathologist, both of whom were wonderful advocates for Kevin. It turned out that we didn’t agree with most of what the other school personnel were saying, however, so we just said, “That’s fine. We’ll have our son evaluated privately and get back to you in September (our meeting was at the end of May).”

My husband and I feel strongly that, in our situation, the school district uses the large number of personnel to intimidate parents into agreeing with them. We are pretty formidable folks ourselves, however, so this didn’t work. We still resented them for trying this tactic however. Our attorney later told us of one enterprising young mother she knew, who after having been through several of these charades, invited a dozen of her closest friends, relatives, and neighbors to attend with her, just to even the playing field.

If I were to be just beginning this, I would now know to ask the principal or whomever you’re dealing with just who will be there, what their role will be, etc.

Good luck!