Irena, I've probably asked you this before, so ignore me if you want to
Is there any kind of disability pro-bono legal aide group in your area? If there is, I think they might be very happy to help with advice on this - I know our local group gives advice to families in your situation and if you had a similar group in your area they might be able to give you input on the chances of OOD happening and what's happened with other local families who've pursued it.
They did put Panther Math Peper on his Ipad but DS says he hasn't yet figured out all of the functions and how to do the carry function. Turns out, they put it on his ipad and never showed him how to use it. He says teacher doesn't know how to use it. C'mon really?
Irena, does ds bring his iPad home or can you spend a little time with him on it at school? If you have access to it, get in and learn how to do it yourself and also show your ds. It's *easy*. Not something a young student could figure out, but you can figure it out. If you would like, I can write up a little "how to" and pm it to you (but not until Monday.. life is busy until then lol!).
We got a lot of "the teacher doesn't know how to do ____" push back on AT and had to basically come up with solutions that required no work on the part of the teacher. I have some understanding for the teacher in this - they have a lot to do anyway planning and teaching a classroom full of kids. OTOH, I suspect this "teacher doesn't know how to do" may be coming from a place of "teacher doesn't want to bother with it" or "school principal doesn't want the teacher to be bothered with it". You can request that the SPED or AT staff figure out how to do it and instruct your ds and the teacher - but little things like this are just so ridiculous! The amount of time it would take to argue this point in an IEP meeting, then call in an AT person to "teach" your ds how to do it - it's so much time compared to the level of the task. With something like this, if you can just show your ds yourself how to do it, then when you're in your next meeting and the staff is arguing "ds can't do his math on his iPad because..." you can counter back "ds has the software and knows how to use it".
As an aside (or maybe not), in the midst of all of this, it is starting to feel like the school wants this all to be about ADD/behavioral... Almost as if they what to convolute the issues - almost like they'd RATHER all this be about ADHD and not EDS and dysgraphia.
This happened to us too. I honestly could never figure out why, other than getting the perception that our particular school staff saw many more children with ADHD than with dysgraphia, hence they were familiar with it. We were also told outright that if ds was qualified for an IEP under OHI/ADHD they could give him all kinds of accommodations - the very accommodations we had to fight like crazy to get for dysgraphia. DS also had a diagnosis of mild inattentive type ADHD when he was initially diagnosed with dysgraphia - all based on the input from his teacher who was convinced he had ADHD (and who nothing about dysgraphia) - the teacher profile from his BASC matched an ADHD profile, our profiles (parents) didn't, but the neuropsych diagnosed him with mild ADHD anyway. When we advanced to the stage of trying to get IEP eligibility and were told that it would be easiest to get him accommodations for ADHD and the school wanted us to drop advocating based on dysgraphia, we (parents) became very concerned that going forward we were advocating based on the *real* reason accommodations were needed and not using one diagnosis just to slide in the door - maybe that would be ok one year, but what was going to happen down the road if ds needed something else due to dysgraphia that wasn't a typical ADHD accommodation? Not to mention that it wouldn't be addressing the real problem, and was essentially leaving a label with a student that wasn't accurate. Anyway.. I'd better stop venting, eh? So - this is what we did to counter that - we pursued an ADHD eval through our pediatrician, and he was adamant that it could *not* be ADHD if we weren't seeing the same behaviors across environments (school and home) and if the behaviors hadn't been present *before ds entered school*. Our ped also noted that lack of attention in class could be tied to challenges with dysgraphia as well as boredom due to giftedness. So we then had an official "no ADHD 'diagnosis' " that we could use whenever school brought up the issue of ADHD. Which they continued to do!
For example, they wanted to do an FBA (even though he is never in trouble or disruptive or anything). I still do not understand why they asked for that.
If they are still insisting on this, I would ask for the reasons (in writing). I would also request that parent observations be included. This was the advice we had from our advocate.
And they want to talk attention all of the time when I think what we really need is what they are not bringing up - I think we need an Assistive Tech eval. For example, when I said "no" to doing OT in math class, principal emailed back saying he agrees with me, but not because it is a bad idea for kids with dysgraphia and EDS - he based it on "DS attention difficulties." It's a bad idea for dysgraphics period whether they have ADHD or not. Why does the school suggest an FBA instead of an assistive technology eval?
You've got to just keep asking. Put the AT request in writing. If the school tries to sidestep or derail a conversation about this, bring them back to what you're asking. Let them know that you can address behavior in a different conversation, meeting, whatever, but the point of this one request is an AT eval, and it's warranted due to your ds' medical diagnoses (Ehler's and dysgraphia).
It just is so weird to me and I am seriously suspicious of it but I can not figure out what they are up to.
It sounds like they are trying to not be held accountable for providing services. It's possible they are simply stretched to their limit in terms of what they can provide (I know this is the case in our school district - I have friends who are teachers and sped specialists, and there are just so many requests for services that often the only way to meet a child's needs is for the parents to sue the district - which creates a bit of a catch-22 situation because the district staff is then spending time in meetings meetings meetings (fighting fighting fighting) and it creates an atmosphere of parents vs school etc.
I'm just curious - have you looked into whether or not the sped resources and staff at other neighborhood public schools in your area might be better? In our district it's possible to request an out-of-zone exemption for any reason under the sun, and if there is not full enrollment at the school it's usually granted. The only gotcha there is you have to provide transportation to/from school. But it's something that you might think about - we were told by our advocate and also heard through our local grapevine that the ability to advocate and receive good IEP services varied depending on the school your child was enrolled at - a huge part of the equation was the attitude of the school principal and school staff.
polarbear
