[blindkid] LRE~School Choice

Richard Holloway rholloway at gopbc.org
Thu Oct 29 21:32:56 UTC 2009


Sue,

That sounds like a thing to look into, but it is definitely not  
universal-- In our county, they are REQUIRED to work with private  
schools only until age 5 as I recall. After that, it is all at their  
discretion. I think it works that way everywhere to some degree--  
beyond somewhere around age 5 (maybe it is the end of the school year  
when the child turns 5?), the school districts set their own policies.

I have heard some quick to argue that counties legally "must" support  
kids in the community in public schools at older ages as well. Well,  
(at least when we looked into this a couple of years ago for our  
schools) that is true and it isn't. They ARE required to spend (or  
have available to spend) a certain number of hours or dollars (I  
cannot recall which) on services for private or home-schooled kids,  
BUT the requirement doesn't mandate the distribution of funds be in  
anyway related to the distribution of special needs in the community  
or that services for any particular special need such as braille or  
O&M needs be offered at all.

In our county and others nearby, speech therapy is a popular favorite  
and the bulk of funds are directed towards that. It is pretty easy to  
offer-- the student sees the therapist away from other classes and the  
therapy is not very closely related to particular course material. It  
doesn't effect PE or field trips or walking from class to class. It is  
similar for a lot of children. It covers a lot more kids who have some  
sort of need. In short, it is a convenient way to meet the mandate.

Other services are offered only on a case by case basis and can pretty  
much be withdrawn at the county's discretion. Staffing and workload  
are likely to strongly effect a school's ability to offer it. I  
suspect they'd follow through for an entire school year once they  
offer to work with you and written an IEP (if they were to) but each  
following year would be an unknown.

Also, as far as services like a para-professional to assist with  
classroom needs-- I would not anticipate that happening at all (not  
from the county). Most private schools are going to quickly discover  
that it is very expensive to provide additional staffing and other  
equipment support needs for vision impaired children and I suspect  
that they would keep additional support hours offered (if any were  
indeed to be offered) a bit on the low side. Likewise, they aren't  
going to have funding to educate and support staff in working with  
blind kids-- it just tends to get very messy. Unfortunately, vision  
issues tend to require some sort of intervention for most every  
subject in school and the number of hours involved to solve all the  
problems is really just cost prohibitive for the whole private school  
model.

Because of all the logistical and support issues, I really suspect  
that very few children go beyond the first few years before moving  
toward public school options. If others have gone clear through  
private school I'd like to learn more about the details-- I'll bet it  
was very complex!

Richard



On Oct 29, 2009, at 3:41 PM, Susan Harper wrote:

> When I worked at the Catholic School, they worked with the public  
> school and
> the public school provided the services there with an IEP.   I don't  
> know if
> this was unique to our town or was a state wide kind of thing.  It  
> is worth
> checking into, if Addison is enjoying success at the Catholic  
> School.  It is
> worth checking into.
> Blessings,
> Sue H.
>
> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 1:16 PM, Stacy Lemmon <slemmonrn at spotlight-music.com
>> wrote:
>
>> I need some more input. We are re-opening Adison's IEP next week.   
>> As I
>> have previously said, she is currently in a Catholic school within  
>> our
>> school district with NO in school support....I have become the PCA,  
>> AV tech,
>> the works.  Likely, we will need to transfer to the public school  
>> in order
>> to gain adequate services.  The public school she would attend is  
>> very
>> large, about 950+ kids.  Plus they must travel approx 2 blocks to the
>> playground for recess. We have lived here for nearly 7 years and have
>> watched these kids go daily to the playground. It is utter chaos. 2  
>> teachers
>> often for 50-75 kids.  I have great concern over this. Adison is  
>> small (34#)
>> and has low vision...I have visions of her getting chucked under  
>> someone's
>> vehicle.  Can I say, fine, we'll transfer to the public school  
>> system...if
>> we can send her to 1 of the 2 other smaller (500-600) kids within the
>> district? Has anyone had any experience with this?
>>
>> Thank you again!!
>> Stacy
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