Re: Introduction (long reply...sorry!)

[Guest guest]

<<My husband and I would like to have her referred for admission to a school for

the deaf that is nearby, but I have the feeling that the school is going to

fight us. If anyone has gone through this before, I could really use some

advice.>>

Hi ,

It sounds as if your school district had somethng in place that they thought

would work for your daughter but now that she's having difficulty, they're a bit

clueless about how to proceed. This happens a lot and yes, it's often up to us

parents to help lead the way to better solutions. There probably will be a bit

of a battle if you'd like to move to another school (at district expense,

I'm assuming?) but perhaps you can make a strong enough case for there not to

be. In our case, I DID let the district try with our son by placing him in the

special ed environment they requested. (He was 4 and newly-diagnosed but his

language skills were severely delayed due to two years of midiagnosis.)

However, I could tell after the first two days that it wasn't what needed.

Here's what we did:

We took to our local children's hospital for a full language assessment by

the excellent speech path there who works out of the audiology department. She,

in turn, wrote us a recommendation that be in a class of no more than 10

children (he was with 21!) and that he have sign support if at all possible. (I

specifically requested that last part.)

I then went to the school for hearing impaired children which was in our area.

I toured the facility, saw that it was what we wanted and...placed us on the

waiting list. I didn't know where we'd come up with the money if we got in and

found that the district wouldn't pay but I just knew, after visiting, that this

was the place my son needed to be. I made friends with the education director

and began calling every couple of weeks to see if there were any openings. I

also did some spying and found out that there were 4 other kids from our

district being bused there. I said a few prayers and thought about going back

to full-time work to pay for all this! :-) I did research, more research, and

then more research. I had quotes from every article I could find which would be

relevant to ' level of hearing loss (mod to severe at that time) and how

kids with hearing impairment learn language. I began to work with on

expanding his very simple sign vocabulary (begun in private speech therapy) to

prove how well he learned with the added visual support. I volunteered in his

special ed classroom two days a week to " free up " the aides so they could work

with him more...and so I could document how little one-on-one time he actually

received. (It was paltry...)

After a month, the call came that there was an opening in ' grade at the

new school. The education director there wound up talking to the special ed

director for our school district and really went to bat for us. With her

support and my letters and documentation, the district placed my son at the

school for HI kids without blinking and I'm convinced it's because we made such

a good case. Still, expensive as it would have been, we would have found a way

to place there ourselves if we had to and, on some level, I think that

came across to the district as well.

I know parents who have had to go the legal route to get such things for their

kids from the districts. We were fortunate not to have to but, again, you might

need to be prepared for that. Had there not been the HI school available to us,

we would have been in a lot of trouble because our huge, well-financed district

doesn't really have a clue when it comes to educating kids with hearing

impairment. (There is not one speech path in the whole district who has

experience with hearing loss or the speech issues which accompany it.) There

are NO itinerant TOD's. I don't believe there is intentional disregard

there...just a lot of undereducated people trying to serve too many kids on too

few dollars--spending most of the money where it keeps the most people happy.

So, the " squeaky parent " usually gets some of the " grease " , but the educated

parent with reams of documentation and experts standing behind her often gets

more. :-)

Good luck to you!

Carol - mom to , mod to profound, EVAS, and happily mainstreaming to a

small private school after only three years of " appropriate " education.