Pemberley - do you have a local parent advocate who can help you through the IEP process etc? We have an advocate's group which provides advice free of charge, plus a local disability legal aide society who helped us briefly. What you wrote in your last reply are clear, well-thought out strategies - and that's the type of specificity that needs to be in an IEP, basically quantifiable attainable goals that make sense in the overall educational plan for a child. An advocate who understands what should be included in an IEP and how to write the IEP can be a tremendous help.
We also learned through our advocate and local disability legal aide center that how well IEPs are written and enforced varies tremendously from school to school within our district, and we happened to have ds at a school that was one of the most difficult to work with for parents as well as being most resistant to providing services. I think from what you've written your school really wants to try to help your dd, but they may not have the strongest organization when it comes to creating and implementing a good IEP - and an advocate might be really useful.
The other thing that happens with schools and IEPs etc is that there is a school/staff/district agenda that might not have anything to do with your dd - for instance, our district has the Federally required box to check off on the IEP form to show that AT has been discussed/considered for all kids who are on an IEP - but the school district also has a written policy that states that AT isn't provided unless (fill in the blank with some absurd requirement that didn't apply to my ds here)... we spent a lot of energy and effort fighting to get AT included for our ds and ultimately decided we needed to actually provide it rather than rely on the school to provide it. There were other accommodations which we got easily - when *we* asked for them - but the school was not ever going to speak up and offer them up without us asking first. It was basically a situation of, the school knew that legally they couldn't argue against providing the accommodation, but they also didn't want to bother with it, so if a parent didn't know to ask for it, they weren't going to mention it would be helpful even though they knew it was a typical accommodation for the disability and it would be helpful. Again, it helped us to have an advocate to see through all of this and to know what to request.
polarbear
