I've added to the bottom of this post six reasons why our last school district might have a grudge against me.
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9/28 Post:

The Walmart fundraiser brought our total up to $1,500. Much appreciation to those who stopped by.
As we look into our private education options, I also want to bring awareness to what it's like in the public education system for parents and guardians of kids with disabilities.

To begin, I am posting a recording of Alexis' most recent IEP meeting, along with some accompanying documents. As we move forward I would like to post stories from other special needs parents and advocates.

You may submit your story via email to: 1stgrade4alexis@gmail.com
Refrain from using names for people other than family members, and be sure to indicate whether or not you want to remain anonymous.

Thank You and Namaste!
--angie

2014 Evaluation  (This is the evaluation the administrators do not want to acknowledge)

2014 Evaluation Notes (Notes from the evaluator)

2014 IEP Proposal (My proposal to the Utah district)

2014 Time Line (Time line of events during summer 2014)

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In fairness to our current district, I believe we arrived here without a good reference from our past district. I also believe our past district was quite happy to leave out the most important evaluation of Alexis' life when transferring her records. Thus, I put together the following explanations:

Six reasons why our past district might have a grudge against me:

1. I complained when they placed Alexis in the wrong classroom.

Alexis was enrolled in the public education system for eight years; she has attended two schools, each for four years. On the first day at School #2, I walked Alexis to her classroom, and found it was nothing like what I was expecting. They had three special needs classes to offer her, either lowest functioning, highest functioning, or in-between, and they had placed her in the lowest functioning classroom. The administrators used fancier words than I do to identify their class levels, so I didn’t realize until I saw it. I tried to get her moved to the in-between class that very morning. They kept saying they couldn’t do that until they had an IEP meeting, which wasn’t scheduled for three months, and in the meantime she would have to stay where they placed her. After hours of trying, I finally insisted the administrator figure out a way to get the meeting moved up so my daughter could attend school, then I took Alexis home with me…The meeting became scheduled within a week, and Alexis was placed in the more stimulating environment.

2. I complained when they wouldn’t give me information about Alexis’ school days.

I have been lucky; in the eight years of public education Alexis has had four really good assistants, and that counts summer school. At School #1 I was allowed to have conversations with Alexis’ assistants about her school days. This was incredibly helpful and appreciated, because by herself, Alexis did not have the ability to tell me about her day. At School #2 conversations with the assistant were not allowed. They said the teacher had to be the one to convey school day information to the parents, and she was too busy to do so. I understood the later reason, tried to push for conversation with the assistant a little more, and then dropped the subject until part-way into our second year with them when I brought it up again. After much coercion, I was finally allowed a ten-minute phone call from my daughter’s assistant at the end of each school day. Again, it was incredibly helpful.

3.  have complained about the details of Alexis’ IEPs.

During every IEP Alexis has ever had, I have battled over its details, most especially at School #2. Early on they wanted one of Alexis’ yearly goals to be: Alexis will do what is asked of her within five prompts. I didn’t think that should be a goal at all. I thought doing what is asked of one should just be an expectation of a student’s responsibility in the classroom. However, the team and I negotiated, and we ended up with: Alexis will do what is asked of her within three prompts…This is just one example of a multitude of “discussions of detail” I have had with our IEP teams.

4. I complained when they hired someone who did not have the qualifications to work with Alexis.

When we had a change-over with Alexis’ assistant at School #2, they brought in someone who didn’t know sign language. School started on a Monday. The assistant had been hired the Friday prior, was given a sign language book to study, and didn’t know a thing about my daughter. I found this out on the first day of school when I walked Alexis to her classroom. Immediately, I got on the phone, donned my pain-in-the-butt parent hat, and within two days my daughter was back in school with an assistant who had on her resume two summers of direct work experience with Alexis, and fluency in sign. It wasn’t all that challenging on the administration side to immediately hire this lady, because she had already submitted her resume weeks prior when she applied for the job. All they had to do was run a quick background check, and have her sign a few papers.

5. I have complained about Alexis’ safety on their busses.

The bussing situation has always been an issue with me. Bus assistants do not have to have special needs experience to be hired, because the administration provides the necessary and appropriate training. Additionally, none of our bus assistants have known sign language, so Alexis had to spend two hours every day amongst people who didn’t understand her. Even though it always bothered me, I initially chose not to complain about this. Instead, I expressed my concerns and asked if I could volunteer to be a bus assistant. I was told no, that wasn’t the way they did things. At one time I heard they were short many assistants and were scrambling to find people. I tried to apply for the position, yet wasn’t even granted a conversation about how to apply.

One day during the later years at School #2 a bus assistant handed Alexis to me while she was in a seizure. It was obvious, yet the assistant and driver didn’t even recognize something was wrong. They couldn’t tell me how long she had been seizing or anything about the event except for, “We thought she was asleep.” (Just for the record, when one is sleeping their eyes should be closed, their face color should not be blue, nor should their body be convulsing.) The next day I got on the phone with administrators. As a result of our conversations they switched bus assistants, and allowed me to provide our new one a bit of information about Alexis’ medical issues.

During our last summer with School #2, we had another new bus driver and assistant. Neither one of them were interested getting any information from me about Alexis. The driver adamantly insisted he had been properly trained. He said he was given a folder about Alexis, and knew everything he needed to know to get my daughter to and from school safely. When I asked him to tell me what he knew about her, he just smiled and said, “Got to go! Have a nice day.”

At this point in our bussing experience, I was working with Alexis on her independently driving her wheelchair down the little side-street to our house. Within a few weeks of summer school, Alexis got a new wheelchair and I decided to meet her at the bus instead of waiting for her on our porch. The driver and assistant put Alexis in her wheelchair, unloaded her, told me to have a nice day, then shut the doors and drove off. All the while, Alexis was in a seizure, and this time she required a 911-call and EMT assistance to pull her out. When I talked to the administrators, I demanded to know what happened on the bus. It is critical for Alexis’ medical health to know the details of these seizures, however the staff again claimed they didn’t know she was in a seizure, and the camera happened to broken that day. They apologized for the inconvenience and ended up conceding to allowing Alexis’ school assistant to ride on the bus with her for the remaining two weeks of summer school. (For another part of the record, I have since talked to many parents whose kids have had various issues on their buses, and were also told the cameras were “coincidentally” not working on those days either.)

6. I went public about my daughter’s right to be appropriately educated.

Administrators appreciate having their summers free. They begin their break the day after school ends, and resume their work two weeks prior to school starting. However, because of what I wanted for my daughter’s education, I created work for them during the summer of 2014.