Hello,
I was wondering if anyone out there has been successful in getting one on one after school tutoring provided by the school?
I am also interested in extended school year services and if my nephew would qualify.
Here is a little background:
I have a nephew whom I am in the process of adopting, (children services currently has custody). He is going into the third grade. He does receive resource room for 3/4 of the day, but he still cannot read after a full year of resource room. He read 17 wpm in the Winter and 17 wpm in the spring…. to close out the year. They concentrated most of the year on reading only, so the other subjects were not hardly touched.
Nobody has ever formally tested this child, although he does receive services as a result of alot of subjective testing. Every proffesional I talk to.. tells me that the school is responsible for testing and services, that medicaid no longer covers educational testing, and that I need to contact the school. The resource teacher tells me that she is afraid for me to request testing by the school because she worries that he will not have a discrepency and therefore will be weened out of the current services.
I was able to and I am in the process of getting IQ testing and The weschler tests done, from an agency that tests children services children, for emotional analysis..Thinking that I could share the results out of the box with his resource teacher or at least have a handle on his IQ. His hearing and sight are both OK.
I have been working in the Reading Reflex over the summer, but my latest thinking is that I need to arrange for someone else to do his tutoring in the future…so that I can concentrate on just being mom and providing the emotional needs for him.What I found is that tutoring is very expensive and out of my reach financially. EVerytime I ask children services for help they say it is the schools responsibility.
I have also worked with child advocacy centers locally in the past and I actually knew more than they did..or they ended up being more so an ally for the school.
Back to my original question…..I was wondering if I am going to need someone to help me advocate for these services when the school year starts or if I can handle this on my own. I was also wondering if he would even be eligible for tutoring services in your opinion?
Any thoughts that come to mind about what to do would be appreciated. I am trying to create a plan for the new year.
Thanks,
MO
Re: none of this AFTER school business
Certainly don’t move then, there are lots of other towns in metrowest like mine; we work very, very hard with our son with LD, and he’s hanging on, and looking forward to middle school, new friends and babysitting jobs! He just had his first daytime job, and he’s much sought after by our neighbors because he’s great with younger kids(except his brother).
Re: none of this AFTER school business
Well, we’re not planning on moving. I feel really bad for people who don’t have good school systems. I know how hard we work with my son, and how easily he is overtaxed at school without the right support, even in this school system.
It doesn’t matter how much work you do with a child outside of school if when they need the help is on the spot, during the school day. Without in-class support, he wouldn’t survive.
We’re heading for middle school this fall too. I hope it’s a positive experience. We’re doing all we can to make sure he has the proper supports in place,but I also know how many NLD kids fall flat on their faces in middle school.
Karen
Re: One of those fine lines
Medicine is one of those fields where I have a worm’s-eye view, and believe me, it’s a detective story and it’s a *long* way from an exact science.
I have a thyroid problem that took ten years to convince doctors existed, because they were using only coarse screening tools that missed me — the finer tools that would have caught it earlier and saved a couple of wasted years of life were reserved for people who failed the coarse screen low enough (sound familiar to parents in education out there?) One of the institutions that missed it was Johns Hopkins, and they were very rude, too; it isn’t a matter of hot-shot programs, but someone being willing to look a little further. Then the thyroid problem is probably related to an auto-immune disorder, but the mess trying to track that down is a book in itself.
I have very solid bone structure and went for ten years with infected impacted wisdom teeth because nothing showed on the X-rays which are of course set for the average. Then just last week I had two sets of X-rays of my bad knee; the first showed the usual no damage and got the usual diagnosis of just rest and lose weight (great — see thyroid above); the second was taken by someone who *finally*, the first doctor in twenty years, took the X-rays with me standing and not lying down, and he found serious arthritic damage to the joint –
Do these stories, of no result and no result and finally someone looks from a different angle and sees something large that should have been obvious, sound familiar to those of you trying to get diagnoses for your kids?
Beth,
In CA the state law states, “No resource Specialist shall have a caseload which exceeds 28 pupils.” In our state law it can be found under caseloads. If they go over 28 they must ask for a waiver. I have heard that almost if not all schools in a neighboring school district have a waiver.
Helen