We've been down all these roads. Paid advocate, three IEP meetings in the last three months, talking to the principal (no help whatsoever), talking to the head of G/T (probably the biggest nightmare of them all) for the district. It all backfires in our case. To our credit (??), we have never gone in "guns blazing," we've always been reasonable. But hiring the advocate to help us (because we needed a better IEP and weren't sure how to get that on our own) just created an angry school "team" that banded together to treat us like the enemy. We have never threatened lawsuits or anything like that, we have been very cooperative and reasonable as we advocate for DS. It's a shell game with this school, though. They stand their ground and change their story. The entire district locks down against whichever parents they perceive to be "difficult," probably because they've been sued over autism in the past (and lost).
The bottom line, I'm sorry to say, is that we're in a very bad school. This bad school is in a district that presumably has some better schools (the district has an excellent reputation, generally speaking), but the same people are in charge at the top. Meaning no matter which school DS attends in this district, some of the same people will be at IEP meetings. And they've already shown that they are unable or unwilling to make positive changes. I know for a fact that DS is not the only child getting a raw deal in this school.
Our two options, I think, are to leave the district or to hire an attorney. If there were better school options for DS, we would hire an attorney for sure. But there's no private placement here that will meet both the ASD needs (social skills group, for example) and the high academic needs. So basically I'm having a nervous breakdown.
The key thing we've asked them to do is to stop punishing DS for his boredom and his autistic behaviors (spacing out, repeating words), but they refuse. The principal says there must be consequences for his "manipulative" behavior. Even if DS is manipulating them (they consider his spacing out to get away from "2 + 2 =4, 2+ 2 = 4" worksheets to be manipulation), they could try other approaches besides punishment. I have asked the principal directly about this. She insists the work in his classroom is very challenging and that he's not bored. DS tells a different story, as does the mountain of preschool-level worksheets that come home every day. It's just a crappy school!
