Thanks for the input polarbear and sweetie. We still haven't gotten the AT report so we don't know just what the plan is going to be. Last year they refused to look at AT or to introduce keyboarding so we bought DD a computer to try it ourselves. We went with a desktop equipped with a very large screen and a kid friendly color-coded keyboard. No luck. It just didn't click. After that we are even more in the camp of having the school take responsibility for walking her through all these steps.
It took more than a month to get even the cassette player and tapes arranged at the beginning of the year. No one could figure out how on earth to provide access to audio books. Someone in upper administration donated an iPod but no one could figure out how to download books to it and get DD to listen to them. All the while they were trying to figure this out it turned out that there were cassette players in the school library and that they still owned a copy of The Indian in the Cupboard on tape, which was the book they were trying so desperately to download. I stayed out of it and just reminded them that they were required under the terms of her IEP to provide the audio books. Hopefully once the AT is introduced the OT will help us get the whole thing operating more smoothly. For now at least DD gets to listen to her books so I don't want to make things any more complicated.
As I have documented here we have had a few issues with certain people in the district. As a result we have taken the position that it is *their* responsibility to do whatever they have to in order to meet her needs. It has been hard sitting on my hands but if I do *anything* it opens up a response from them to deny responsibility. Things are pretty tenuous right now as we try to figure out if this can work in the public school or if she will need an out of district placement. If they provide her an iPad with restrictions we will likely just buy a second one for home use. We can't/won't be in a position to be interpreted as accepting responsibility for her AT needs by sending a machine into school for her to use, though.
Nothing is ever easy in these situations is it?
