Well I had to do a phone ARD which is the admission, review or dismissal meeting for my oldest son Steve. As I mentioned in my previous entry, we have this meeting every year for Steve because he is slightly delayed from his early years and also from his epilepsy. Steve has multi-focal seizures which mean all four parts of his brains have seizure activity so it does affect his learning.
The school wanted to take some of the benefits that he has been getting off of his learning plan. I decided that they should not do that because of the fact that he still needs it. The teacher’s comments are that he has not been refusing to use the resources so they might as well remove them. Well here is a thought if they had told me that he was not using them I would have talked with him about it and he would have been using them. They finally agreed to keep the assistance in place.
They all say that they are working to do the best that they are for him and I truly believe them but this is two things in the last few months that they are not telling us. First right before Thanksgiving they say he has been more stubborn and having a big behavior change but they did not think to mention it to me. This behavior change was caused by his medication levels dropping, from what we heard from the neurologist this could happen very frequently because he is now going into puberty. Yeah more fun for us. Then now they don’t tell us that he is refusing to use his resources. When it has not been happening for months we should have been told much sooner so we have time to address it. The resources are in place from the prior year’s meeting and they are supposed to be utilizing them.
Lesson to be learned if you have a child with special needs find out your rights, call your states education agency if you need to but know your rights and the rights of your kids.