Inclusion/LRE/Placement
Mar 1, 2017 9:18:54 GMT -5
Post by mrsbuttinski on Mar 1, 2017 9:18:54 GMT -5
Feb 28, 2017 21:20:24 GMT -5 @kitchen said:
DD1 is 4.5. She'll be in kinder next year. We're meeting with an advocate next week in advance of her May IEP meeting (kinder transition meeting). What kind of advocate? Someone from the district who is part of the IEP team? A professional you have hired privately? A parent peer-to-peer volunteer? "Advocate" is a term that can be many different kinds of people, each with their own agenda and/or bias.
Currently she's in a self-contained preschool. The autopilot placement for her for next year is a mod/severe K-2 SDC.
How is she doing there? Is she learning? Are they working on pre-academic skills as well as social and adaptive life skills? Does she have friends there? Have you been able to observe the default placement?
She and one other boy would be the only Ks.
So, probably a very small setting where she'd get lots of attention.
I feel like if inclusion is ever going to work for her we have to do it for kinder. She's only going to get smaller (relatively) and I don't think she's going to magically catch up to grade level academics. For reference, she's now shorter than my 50th percentile 2.5 y.o.
I'm going to play devil's advocate.
You are probably correct that inclusion for a child with Downs Syndrome is probably easier in the primary grades where the gap between academics is going to be smaller that it will be later on. How high achieving your district is will play into this as well. I live in a crazy competitive district where nearly all children starting kindie have had a quality preschool enrichment experience and many start having mastered basic math and reading skills. The old saw about kindie being the new first was very real.
That said, size is not that huge a deal. I have seen size-outliers blend into a class easily. IME, being smaller and immature is better than being a big kid who is younger and "Babyish". Teachers and kids seem to cut such kids a break. So long as she can access the physical space, I wouldn't get too hung up. Having proper sized desks, etc can be addressed in an IEP meeting. Often a PT and OT can assess for this.
I toured our neighborhood school today.
Did you get to actually tour a mainstream kindie class as well as the, I assume, transitional kindie?
TK could be a great option if it is properly staffed. These classes tend to be smaller with kids who are less academically advanced than those who are very enriched and higher achieving. In my old district, these classes were 15 kids plus an aide compared to 28 with only a gen ed teacher.
The principal was very helpful. She indicated that we could probably put DD in TK instead of straight K because she's a summer birthday, she also mentioned that the EI preschool is moving to her campus so perhaps there's some option for DD to go there, and she offered to come to the IEP meeting.
OK, so sending your kid to a PK program is generally seen as a huge violation of her right to LRE. LRE means "same aged peers". Most schools cite this as the reason they refuse to allow parents to red-shirt a student which is kind of moot because the LEA is on the hook for services through 21 regardless.
Was the principal suggesting red shirting your kid? Or was she suggesting your child attend PK and they call it kindie?
She did start to get cautious when I said I couldn't imagine how DD could be in a classroom without a para (because diapers and attention to tasks). My understanding is that the blanket policy of the district is that they "do not provided one-on-one paras". Anecdotally I've heard that threats or actual lawsuits/due process are the only way to get one. I'm not hell bent on her having a one-on-one if they can figure out another way to successfully include her.
What do you want for your DD? Where do you see her learning best? More likely to be happy? Truly a member of her learning community?
LRE exists along a continuum. Mainstream 100% of the time is the absolute at one end, but it might not be her LRE. It wasn't for DS much of his academic career however much I wanted it to be. And there were times when he was physically mainstreamed but was a guest in the classroom. DS's public elementary school has a couple of SDCs for kids with significant intellectual and physical challenges; these students are included into a mainstream class for parts of each day. They were included for morning opening, recess, lunch/snack (if they were fed by mouth), trips, specials and activities like assemblies. Transportation was mixed; some took a regular bus, but most came to and from on a van service bus.
The LRE continuum is usually mainstream in the the neighborhood school at one end and a therapeutic special school at the other with various options in between. It can be really hard to get a firm grasp on the order your school recognizes. IME, "mainstream with a para" is the first step away from the absolute but in practice a para can be a real barrier to being truly a member of the classroom community- even young kids will recognize that a peer w/para is different. If attentional or cognitive issues impact learning, she might need 1:1 with her para while other kids are working in small groups.
It's very easy to be physically in the classroom but not a part of the class- a guest or mascot is how this typically evolves at DS's school. Plus, there's the whole notion that most gen ed teachers aren't as qualified as a Sped teacher would be and that the para she'd be working with would likely be even less qualified to instruct on academic goals then the gen ed teacher. When it was my choice to make, I'd rather DS (who was the needy kid academically) work with the most highly qualified individual available even if that meant a special school or being pulled out to a different classroom. YMMV.
TBH, being in diapers is something this age would pick up on, too. In the primary grades, bathroom breaks are generally communal for safety reasons. If she's not participating, it will be noted. Perhaps she could visit the EI PK for instruction/changing around bathroom breaks.
I'm planning to have her go to DD2's preschool for spring break camp (TBD whether I'll go or we'll have a sitter go or whether they can handle her alone) and maybe summer and maybe for after school.
This will give you a real sense of how well she can be integrated into a mainstream setting and make it easier to move forward with her IEP with more information and confidence. It's a great idea.
We could also pull her from her current placement for a day or two a week and have her go to DD2's preschool (although $$$). Or we could have her go after school a few days a week, though she's just exhausted in the afternoons so that might be hard.
I don't know whether pulling her from a SDC to attend another preschool makes sense. It could be seen in the context of a parent who isn't committed to getting services in place. In some places, it can be a risky move. FWIW, many typical kids are just exhausted with the challenge of all-day school even into kindie and early first.
I think I'm sure at this point that we should at least try inclusion for kinder. If it's ever going to work it seems like it will be now. I don't understand how the district can argue that a SDC is the LRE.
What do you hope to get out of mainstream kindie? Do you have some option between the two like an inclusion class that has kids with IEPs and without as well as a dedicated para/co-teacher for the class? Do you have an option for a hybrid of a SDC in the morning with a mainstream afternoon or inclusion for special and the social parts of the day?
If her testing and her IEP goals support the need for a SDC, it could be argued successfully that for your DD, at this moment in time, the self contained class is her LRE.
Any advice, questions I should ask the advocate, other things I should ponder soon? This whole thing feels so big and I feel so lost.
I would want to know about the adaptive skills and the curriculum choices available in both settings. ADL, like toileting can take up a big chunk of the day in a SDC but often this is balanced by academics that are targeted for ID and different learning styles. Many kids with DS are delayed around their phonemic awareness which makes learning to read more complicated- having a multisensory reading program that works on phonics rather than whole word or whole language would be a better fit if that is the case for your DD. Often math is taught differently- more visual and with more time allowed for mastery rather than a spiraling curriculum.
Good luck.
