Holy Holy Holy

The latest IEP meeting was a great success and huge relief. We were so thrilled with the school Director.

She relayed that she expressed to the school lawyer the concerns she and the Special Services Coordinator had last time we met about the school's ability to provide FMO the appropriate learning environment and services (FAPE). She reported that the lawyer said, based on the input of the team, that the current placement sounded appropriate, and only needed to be determined such by the team, which includes us, his parents. She then spoke music to my ears, "So [the charter school] is offering FAPE."

The Director told us how she got stone-walled trying to get a consultation with the deaf teacher for our town because FMO does not have a physical hearing loss. She seemed annoyed, but, undeterred. She said if she can't access what we need through that deaf teacher (who happens to be the sister of our school's Maintenance Director) by simply having her over to dinner, she would "just contract someone from San Francisco" if need be.

The Director took the initiative to call Dr. Camarata at the Late Talkers Foundation. No one else has ever bothered to call him, even when we asked. She was super impressed by his meta-intelligence, and straight-forward explanations. She had notes from their conversation typed up, including her questions about  what types of assessments to use for the upcoming Tri-Annual IEP in April, about FMO's diagnosis, and the information Dr. C gave her about the study he is working on.

The study shows how children who exhibit classical autism symptoms will continue to exhibit those symptoms, but if a child only has one or two symptoms, when examined again even two years later, out of 100 kids, only one in three will present with classic autism. Sixty-six percent of the kids are at risk for mis-diagnosis, and being placed and treated in the  wrong educational settings. Furthermore, 10% of all people have some form of Auditory Processing Disorder.


She was so enthusiastic. After she read this she said, "It's like a death sentence!" Yeah, it is. And I thought, for the very first time at any of his schools, "Holy sh*t. She really gets it."

This was followed by more positive participation on everyone's part, including the Special Services Coordinator. He said that, while we have a Tri-Annual coming up in April, and the school will recommend a full set of assessments to update the records, that, by law, under FMO's current eligibility category, SLI (Speech Language Impairment), he need only qualify in that one area, which is accomplished through the ongoing assessment procedure in place as part of the online speech therapy he is receiving. That means we can just refuse any other testing without risking his eligibility for any services the team deems educationally beneficial. I thought, "Holy sh*t. He actually understands the law."

We all agreed about how to modify the goals, but decided to meet again to finalize since we were over time. It was an amazing meeting, but the cherry one top was from the newest member of the IEP team, the school Music Director. He offered to meet with FMO every week to give him individual music instruction because of his musical proclivities, and I thought, "Holy sh*t. The fight is over."