So, I've had two meetings since the last time I posted. Last Mon I had a meeting with the SPED Specialist for the county and the Principal. Basically it boiled down to the negotiation that Piper will have a 504, with the OT assessing her and prescribing what would be helpful, and then someone at the school carrying out the exercises with her on a daily basis. This is in addition to the accomodations already in place, ie, social skills group, keyboard use, etc. On the heels of that meeting there was a gifted eligibility meeting, where her "points" didn't add up to a gifted id. I brought up the appropriateness of a Naglieri being used on a highly verbal child, and the fact that a teacher who had Piper in class for less than 4 weeks was the one who did the teacher recommendation. The outcome was that they would send out two additional recommendation forms to teachers who had Piper in class previous years. We scheduled another eligibility meeting today, along with a 504 and Child Study Team meeting.
So I walked in today prepared for the worst (again), but came out pleasantly surprised. She's now officially gifted, and will do pull-outs, and more importantly will start going to 5th grade for Science. The scheduling didn't work for her to go to 5th grade for Language Arts/Word Study, but her teacher for LA is great, and more than willing to give her appropriate work, and will also be taking over the Word Study, since her teacher for that is basically unwilling to offer appropriate work. As far as the 504 piece, they've already started the educational evaluation..finally.. and we'll meet on that again once the evaluations are complete. In the meantime she'll continue with the accomodations already in place, and the same wonderful teacher is going to work with her at lunch daily on her fine motor skills, things like opening and closing packages, etc. Interestingly enough, the school psychologist was not in on any of the meetings
and I'm hoping that pattern will continue!
It was wonderful coming out of a meeting feeling positive for once! Thank you all so much for the help and advice. I realize that pushing will not always work, but apparently her school isn't used to it, so it definitely helped.
-Amanda
Nan
Congrats, Amanda!