OK, so me again with my troubles choosing a placement for next year. Since the gifted school has now put into the contract that they require DS to have a 1:1 and insurance will no longer pay for it because the data they took this year does not show need, we will not be able to use the gifted school. They want us to pay out of pocket for an aide they have in mind at 20 dollars an hour (for 7 hour school days). This is so beyond unaffordable for us it is ridiculous. Tuition would already be over 25% of our net income, even after the financial aid they offered. We have tried to contact them all week to talk about ways we could modify this to make the contract work for us, but they just keep ignoring our calls and emails, so I am pretty sure this option no longer exists for us, which is very disappointing. DS loves it there and he has been doing great, even as insurance has titrated his 1:1 hours down to 4 a day. The data being taken by the agency we use shows no aggression or risky behavior, just extra prompts needed for staying on task/a little help calming down when he gets upset. Basically, nothing far enough outside of the norm to warrant services. The school attributes his success to the 1:1 and are basing their recommendations off of his behavior at the beginning of the school year before we started 1:1 service. It's a bit of a mess right now.

So, this leaves us with public school as being very likely for next year. We had a nice IEP meeting with most of the team (gifted teacher not available for the meeting, so I haven't yet met her) and they had asked me to get back to them on a lot of things. So I did. I sent my email to the main point of contact I have had there so far, the school psych, but the response came from the special ed teacher (who was at the meeting, but said very little). I guess I should have expected this since his primary diagnosis is listed as ASD and his secondary as gifted, but it definitely looks like they are looking at him as disabled first, gifted second. Since most of my questions were about the gifted program/math placement, it seemed especially odd that the special ed teacher was the one getting back to me. And I really didn't like what she had to say.

At the IEP I had asked what they would do with him if he has already mastered the elementary curriculum and they said they would look into it and I should get back to them. Well here is the response I got:

"We have a curriculum we provide that is challenging for students. If (DS) is excelling, we will differentiate based on his needs. He will take pre-assessments prior to each new unit and more enriched opportunities will be provided as needed. Those enrichment opportunities will be provided in the classroom."

Seriously? If? The psych who gave him the WIAT could not believe the level of math he was doing. I have no idea what grade equivalent a 160 might be when a 1st grader takes the WIAT (or even if he scored the bare minimum to get the 160 or went way beyond), but I do know that it is a pretty strong indicator that he doesn't need to take pre-assessments and get "enrichment" WHEN he passes them. I read that like more in depth second grade math will be offered. We also provided them with DS's 230 map score, which upon googling, I have found that some districts use as a cutoff for math enrichment in 6th grade! And I suspect that his MAP score will go up for his spring test too as he has been doing lots of Khan Academy at home for fun (and to compete with his dad, they are racing for 100%... obviously DS doesn't stand a chance, but he is keeping up for now.)

I also asked for them to fund a summer social skills camp through ESY services, they said he could just attend the program they have running at the school. Even DS's behavioral specialist agrees with me that the school program is too low functioning to be helpful (the community program we are looking at requires at least average IQ and good verbal communication skills as well as no significant behavior problems). They had also told me during the meeting that since he has already fully explored one of the 2 topics that will be covered in the gifted program next year that we could give them some ideas for something else for him to do. In the email they said this: "The goal concerning oceans was written because it is a specific topic covered in the curriculum." So I guess that means no chemistry or genetics or anything DS might be interested in and his 2 hours per 6 day cycle of gifted pull out will consist primarily of one concept he mastered at 4 and another that is pretty basic and that he has little interest in. Yay. I had also asked for his raw scores on his tests as the psych said that she did still have them. I was told that they won't do any additional testing and the evaluation report contains everything we need and will not be altered in any way. I didn't even ask for additional testing or anything to be changed with the report.

They had already told me at the meeting that gifted services take the form of differentiation in the classroom and gifted pull out twice every 6 days. I was not terribly impressed. The pull out program now seems entirely inadequate and I never put much stock in the whole differentiation idea to begin with. But what I am hearing about math does not seem workable at all. DS is likely to be ready for at least pre-algebra next year and they are going to give him some sort of enhanced 2nd grade math? Plus at the IEP (while we were discussing the issues DS has with written output) I was told that the math curriculum they use has a lot of writing and he would need to follow the curriculum (this was after I mentioned he was not enjoying history or science anymore because of the high written output expected at his current school.) I guess they were letting me know he was going to start hating math too once he started public school? Are they honestly planning on requiring DS to write out the logic behind elementary math to prove he fully understands it when on Khan he is having fun multiplying negative fractions and learning about statistics and quartiles? At his current school they are doing a lot of stuff with variables and equations and he is doing quite well at it. I guess to some extent they probably don't understand exactly how advanced he is in math, but what was the point of all of the testing if they can't apply it to their picture of DS? We have the 160 WIAT, the 230 MAP, and the 158 Non-Verbal score on the WISC, isn't that enough to kind of give them the idea this is a kid who has math abilities outside of the norm?

I really don't want to homeschool again, but I may have to. I do think DS really needs the social interaction and the practice functioning in a more structured environment. We could do what we did for K and try public and pull him out if needed, but that was probably worse for him than if we had just kept him home that year. Maybe a Montessori program would work? (We tried one before and it didn't work, but it was the very strict type where you had to follow the progression precisely and DS (then 3) didn't do his (way too easy) work, he instead helped the 5/6 year olds do theirs. He ended the year not having mastered colors, lol. But I know Montessori's can be very different from strict to ones that just incorporate Montessori ideas and materials. Or maybe we should just take a gap year and visit the world, lol. Why does this have to be so difficult?