There is no excuse for your principal. However,the science teacher was likely not privy to all the documentations supporting the IEP. What I have found extremely helpful for my Special Needs child was to send a very detailed email to each teacher at the beginning of each year presenting the medical diagnosis, the practical manifestations of his medical issues and the specific concerns in the classroom, my offer to support the teachers and an open invitation to contact me with any problems. I have had many teachers thank me for helpful information that they would not have otherwise received.
I did, too, for the first time this year, and as much trepidation as I had about sending it out, it did help immensely.
After talking with my son at length yesterday (he broke down when he got home), it seems that the real disconnect was in the general assumptions people make about others' motives and behaviors based on norms. Just how Aspie-like my son became pretty apparent.
The principal assumed my son was lying and trying to hide his involvement because he didn't come forward immediately. It was inconceivable that my son would not break the rule the teacher had set about not interrupting him, would follow the teacher's instructions to look for the missing strip of magnesium over going up to tell the teacher what happened, and that because this took 20 minutes before my son found an acceptable window of opportunity to talk with the teacher and tell him, that he was being deceptive.
She also assumed that he would interpret "who took the strip" as a more general "what happened to the strip", which my son did not. He didn't take it, therefore he didn't raise his hand when the teacher asked who took it.
Because he is not diagnosed with Asperger's but has what his psychiatrist calls Asperger-like traits, I'm not sure we have a clear enough diagnosis to add accommodations to his IEP, but I am pretty convinced now that he definitely needs them. To be so frozen by the class rules that he couldn't discern that speaking up this time was the better choice - I don't know how one teaches a child that nuanced of a decision-making process ...
