Special Education -- March 24, 2009

Alex already has an IEP in place so I have been through the process of getting special education. Now it is Katie's turn. I went in and the same mean lady that told me that Alex wouldn't qualify for services, was still working there and basically told me that it would be better to wait until Katie started school before doing an evaluation. That Katie was showing signs that she would have issues in school but that we should wait. Luckily I had my advocate there who suggested to me that we do the evaluation now and if we don't get services that we can also ask for another evaluation when Katie starts school in the fall. But it would be better to have every thing in place before she starts school because if not they could take up to 3 months to provide services, and Katie would suffer during that time trying to cope. I am so, so, so happy that I had an advocate. Even going through this before had not prepared me for what was happening. It did make sense to me to wait to see what problems she would have at school, but it would be better to have the services in place and then if anything needs to be changed, we can always re-write the IEP. But atleast during the time of re-writing the IEP she would be recieving some services to help her out. So here we go. Katie has the same team working with her that Alex had except Katie has a nurse involved since FASD is considered a medical condition, so I am familiar with almost everyone. I really liked everyone that was on Alex's team and am very happy that Katie will have the same team. They are a really good group of people to work with. Now I can only hope that Katie will be given all the services that I think that she needs/deserves. She is a bright little girl but has issues that get in the way of her learning.