Have you tried looking for a parent advocate? There are groups that are federally funded in some areas, we found our state's advocate group in the yellow pages at wrightslaw. We were in a tough situation when we were trying to advocate for services/help for our 2e ds in elementary school, and had many of the same situations happen that you've experienced, including being told that ds couldn't be in the gifted program and have an IEP or 504. We also had many of the same frustrations that blackcat experienced.
We did eventually succeed in getting our ds an IEP. The one thing that helped more than anything else was being able to call up our advocate for advice - and we didn't need much, but what we got was two-fold and key. The advocate was first, very familiar with the local schools and even staff within the schools in some instances (because the advocate worked with multiple families). This local knowledge helped us (parents) understand a bit better what we were dealing with. Sorry don't know exactly how to explain it, but it did help! Second, and even more importantly, the advocate gave us key words/phrases to use when we responded that took the emotion out of our responses and helped us keep meetings on track. For instance, our school really did not want to give our ds (or probably any child) an IEP, so they would construct very specific examples to prove that there wasn't an issue and present that as evidence. For example, to prove ds (who is severely dysgraphic and has an expressive language disorder) didn't have an issue with handwriting, they had all the students in his class copy a paragraph from the board and they timed it. They then claimed that ds' time was "in the middle - not the fastest, not the slowest" therefore no issue. Our advocate helped us see that the best way to respond to a tactic like that was to not show any emotion, and also not to give in, but to just refocus the meeting on the facts you had and why you were there. For instance, when ds was compared to other students, our advocate had us tell the IEP team "we're not here to discuss other students, we're here to discuss ds". When they showed an example like I mentioned here, we would not respond to that example at all but instead reply by restating that ds is known to have "x" disability, it impacts him in "y" way with re to classroom academics, and state the proof we had (neurospcyh eval, examples of classwork, data we'd collected at home etc) that proved it. Usually that was all info they already had and that we'd stated many times previously, but the point was - it served to get past a smoke-screenish type of road block tactic the district was using to discourage us as parents from continuing to request what our ds needed.
The third thing we received from the advocate was *knowledge* - although most of the state and district policy/etc is all online and researchable by any parent, it helped having someone who knew it inside and out tell us what it was and what applied in any particular situation, and also knew when we a policy was a hard rule vs a guideline. Our school was expecting (and hoping) parents would come to eligibility and IEP meetings uninformed about the law and district policy.
Last thing I'll add - like blackcat's experience, it's also much easier in our district to qualify for an IEP under OHI, and that's how students with ASD and ADHD are most often qualified. Our ds doesn't have a diagnosis that would qualify him under OHI, but our advocate had recommended that if he did, we should absolutely try that avenue first, as it was a more direct, easier qualification and once he had the IEP, he could get the services he needed to address his academic challenges.
Last note, even though we did successfully advocate for an IEP for our 2e ds, at a very resistant school, the school didn't magically change in terms of philosophy or caring once he had an IEP - which means they didn't follow it and ds didn't get the help he really really needed, and we did ultimately switch to private school. I'm sorry there aren't more options where you're at to change schools - are there any optional or charter public schools? Sometimes it's just the attitude and staff at a school that are the issue, and going to a different school if there's any way possible to do so might make all the difference in the world.
Best wishes,
polarbear
ps - my other recommendation as you continue to advocate - put everything in writing (emails are ok for this). If you are told something like "ds can't be in gifted program if he has an IEP", after that conversation is over, write an email, briefly summarize what was said, say that you want to make sure you understood what was said correctly (essentially offer a chance for the person to retract it), send the email to the person who told you that and cc everyone else who was present at the time. We did this with every messy conversation we had with school staff where something that wasn't exactly "right" was said by the school, because we knew the school would not put anything that wasn't legal or could be considered bullying in writing. We would either get no response at all or a retraction stating that we'd misunderstood - while we of course, hadn't misunderstood at all what was clearly said, we then had the legally correct information in writing, from the school.
