My daughter is 12 yrs old and has been handicapped since birth. She has attended school since she was 3yrs old. She started out in the early learning program offered at one of the school districts where we lived. We live in a large city, so there are alot of differenct school districts. Where we use to live when she was 3 was a different district, but they bussed her to the district that offered the early learning program. When she was 5 yrs old & about ready to enter Kindergarden, they group who conducts the IEP's was really pushing me to put her into the school district in which we lived. They said it was because of class room ratio of student to teacher's aides and that the state of Illinois was paying out of district tuition for her to attend her current shool. So in otherwords, I was forced into sending her to a totally different school in a different district. As is turned out, the current school district we are in now & where she went then was a Blessing! The current school district has a highly recommendation for education.
One thing that I was VERY upset to find out about the IEP, was that we were never offered to send my daughter to ESY (extended school year)-summer school. I did not find out about ESY until another special needs parent was discussing whether or not my child would be attending. I was shocked when I heard this, because now my daughter was going into 4th grade at the time and she had NEVER been offered to attend ESY. It was near the end of my daugher's 3rd grade year & they planned another IEP before her entering 4th grade. After the IEP was coming to an end, I asked the program director why I was never offered to put my daughter in ESY. The program director said that I should have been offered this at each end of the school years' IEP meeting. I informed her that I was not and that I was very upset to find this out. She tried making all sorts of excuses for this not being offered and even said, "i'm sure you were offered ESY, maybe you declined it". I told her, "how can I decline something when I didn't even know what ESY stood for", until I spoke with that other parent.
When my daughter finally started attending ESY in the summer, it was stated in her last IEP that she was to have a RN at summer school the whole time she was there because of g-tube feedings & chronic lung disease. I few days after ESY started, I called the summer school to speak with the RN & they told me she wasn't there yet. I asked them what they meant by that because she was to be there the whole time my daughter was. About that time the RN showed up & the school put her on the phone. I asked the RN why she was not there till now (1 1/2hrs after school startec) and she said that she was told that she only had to be there for my daughters g-tube feedings, which was at 10:00am & 10:30am. I was furious, so I called the program director (who was at IEP) & she said that this was not agreed too. She tried saying that the school nurse she has during regular school said that a full time RN during ESY was not necessary. Told her she was lying because the school nurse at the IEP had to leave the meeting early and she was not asked her recommendations on summer school nursing issues.
As you can tell, I've had my fair share of problems with IEP's. They have gotten better though. I don't particullarly like the program director because I don't thing she is very professional. She doesn't even dress appropriately for the meetings. She always looks like she had been working in her yard when she holds these meetings.
Thank you,
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