IEP Meeting Today

We had Elijah's three year re-evaluation IEP(in Texas they are called ARD) meeting today. We briefly discussed his evaluations and that was OK with me, because my main concern was next year. I had some concerns and I don't want to get into all the details, but lets just say I wasn't sure how things were going to go. He has been in a behavior class for almost 2 1/2 years, which has worked, but I wanted him out of it. It really isn't appropriate for a kid with tourette syndrome.

I don't think his teacher was very happy with all that transpired, she was rather quiet. The principal from his new school was there as well as his current principal. We had a long discussion on the schedule of services page. Elijah will have resource English/Reading and Math. He will also have a social skills for about 20 minutes a day. He will be in a co-teaching class for his science and social studies and then have his other classes out. Now I am concerned about the transition between classes, where he will go when he gets to school(he will have to ride the bus next year) and those mainstream classes. We discussed several plans we might put in place, and I will want to see what is decided upon before school starts. The "plan" would be about what happens if he starts ticcing a lot and gets agitated, or if he just gets agitated in general.

We then discusses his deaf ed. itinerant teaching time. Well, the principal from the new school about flipped out when she saw 120 minutes a week of pull out. HOW would this affect his time in the core classes, we would have to rearrange everything. OH MY. I guess she has never had an itinerant kid before. The 120 minutes is broken up into 3 40 minute sessions. He still needs that time with his deaf ed. teacher and I was not going to back down on that time. I think the new principal finally GOT the concept and agreed to it.

I plan on taking Elijah up to the school over the summer and getting some video of him at the school. I know it will be a hard year. I don't expect it to be perfect starting on day one. We will have some bumps along the way, but as long as everyone is trying, well we can work with that. I'll find out come September, I guess!