Ok, update to the prior issue. After reading all of the helpful comments and talking to some helpful friends I had finally decided to give up on the public school and homeschool again this year. Then about 2 days later I heard back from the head of special ed in our district and she offered to meet with me and revisit the NOREP.
I took her up on this. I also took along my son. Partly because I wanted her to meet him and partly because I don't have any available child care. Either way she loved him. She said he was amazing and delightful and she could not even begin to see how the present levels in the IEP described the child she was seeing. She immediately wrote up a new NOREP that states his homeroom will be the typical classroom with the learning support room available for backup as needed. He will still get a 1:1 to help him adjust in the first weeks. Basically I got exactly what I wanted.
After feeling excited I started to feel nervous. Sure, my son is great one on one and with adults, but how will school go in a room full of children? What about his vastly different academic levels? What if he can't keep it together at all? So I decided that if things aren't going great and he can't cut it in reg ed I'll just go back to my original plan and homeschool the rest of the year. Surely by the time he is 6 he will be ready for formal schooling? The maturity will have to come in at some point, right?
I bought school supplies and got books about going to school. We practice school skills at home and talk about things like what it means if the teacher turns off the lights and when to raise your hand. I'm going all out on this school thing, trying to build up excitement and make him want to succeed.
Yesterday we had K orientation and met the teacher and saw the classroom. I wanted to cry. I have mentioned before that our district is poor and has low ratings (2/10). Well, the classroom was so sparse I was appalled. The reading section had about 30 or so books and most of them looked to have been published in the 70's. They were filthy and sticky and torn and tended to be about Sesame Street characters. The first thing I asked the teacher when I got a chance was whether I was allowed to donate books. She was thrilled to hear that I was willing to donate. I had assumed that maybe it was against the rules based on the meager offerings available.
I could not make out any centers at all. There were 2 peg puzzles and a 12 piece puzzle. I couldn't locate any math manipulatives whatsoever. The only game in the place was Candyland Bingo (I think that's what it was called). It was all very old and beat up looking. Parents had to bring all of the art supplies for the school year as I guess somehow tax money doesn't cover crayons or glue sticks? I am also going to be donating some educational items, toys, and games.
Then the teacher had her chance to talk to all of us. She said "I see some of you looking at the words up on the board. Yes, our Kindergarteners are now expected to learn sight words. The goal is 25 this year, but we hope to get even further. Some kids will even get up to 100 this year! You can't believe it now, but you will be amazed at what your kids can do. Just a few years ago when I was first told I had to teach 25 words to the kids I told them it was impossible, that kindergarteners couldn't learn sight words, but a few years later my kids were averaging 12!"
Bad feeling. Then she went on to talk about how she uses tons of flashcards. She bragged that her kids will see flashcards of their sight words so often they will be spelling the words rather than saying them in everyday speech. I hate flash cards. Really bad feeling.
After all of her talking (most of which I missed because DS spent the whole time talking about the picture he was drawing), DS decided to draw a maze for me while most families were leaving. He wanted to keep the maze and the picture he made of himself with his name on it and it was supposed to stay behind. I told him that he had to ask the teacher, not me. Well, instead of asking when he got to her he started counting something. She was impressed he could count to 20. He said, I can count way past that, I can count to 1000, but Mommy won't let me count any higher because she gets tired of listening to it. She says Oh you like math. Well, he then tosses out a bunch of interesting facts about the multiples of 6 and counts by a few different numbers. He asked about the words on the board and she asked if he could count them. He said there are a hundred, I don't need to count. There are 10 lists and each list has 10 words. She gets a funny look on her face and jokes that she will need to bring in a 2nd grade math book for him. I didn't even know how to say that 2nd grade would not really be adequate. Or that he could read all 100 of those sight words when he was 3.
Crushing bad terrible feeling. And to also find out there he will be there for 6 hours a day with one 20 minute recess, one 20 minute lunch, and a daily 20 minute special made me decide that I probably don't even want him to go to school there. I agreed to give it a try and I guess I will do that, but it's clear to me that K is really not the right place for my son, especially in this district. I still plan on donating to the classroom though, it's sad that there is nothing to do but flash cards and read toddler Sesame Street lift the flap books
Oh, and the best part for me was the boy who sat and made a humming sound the whole time while tapping the end of a piece of paper. I heard the mother tell the teacher he has speech and social delays and that he will be getting speech services. I'm assuming he isn't diagnosed with autism because they did not use the word, but he was clearly moderately autistic. They said that he only speaks in movie quotes. And yet that child is up for inclusion without a fight and I had to fight to get my kid in the typical classroom because he was once diagnosed with autism years ago.
My son has to go into all of this and handle it with a positive attitude and great behavior. Feeling very discouraged.
