DownSyn Forum

[elizasmom]

I was just talking to a friend whose daughter is 4 days older than Eliza. We are both planning on sending our kids to the county SPED preschool at least part of the time. I have been picking her brain because she is a teacher and she is doing the IEP before us and planning on having her daughter start school next week., though we are both new to this. So i just got a message from her that when she asked about touring the different classrooms and meeting the teachers the school administrators acted kind of surprised. Her response was "I'm not going to drop my baby off somewhere i haven't toured>" My response is i thought the whole IEP process included the parents input as to what classroom would work and how would we know that without seeing the classrooms? Does this sound wierd to you all. I hae heard from some parents of older kids that the school likes to start all the kids with Ds out in the same classroom and then move them from there (or not). Our speech therapists feels they put them in a low function classroom with a teacher (who they always sell as having 30 years experience with kids with Ds)who has low expectations and she doesn't want Eliza to go there at all as our ST does not feel it is challenging enough for Eliza or the least restrictive environment.

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Liz - Mom to Walker (3/24/02), Eliza (Ds) (5/6/05), Alden Jane and Noah Henry (5/2/08 )

[ecki]

What the IEP process is SUPPOSED to be and what it actually IS can be pretty different! We've been lucky in that the school district has been very supportive of our decisions. It sounds like your school district already has everything planned! Remind them that it is an INDIVIDUAL Education Plan and yes, the whole Least Restrictive Environment thing. They are not supposed to say "this is where we put all kids with DS" or anything like that. Good luck!

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Ecki



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[momofrussell]

Yes, it IS an IEP "team" decision and you have every right to tour schools. What you technically can't do is "teacher" shop. You can go see different types of placement settings that are different levels of appropriateness. They don't have to show you , say 3 of the same placement.. but you should be offered a typical class and a sped option. Whether a district truly does that or not is another story!

Good luck.. and keep asking questions!

A.

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Adrienne - mom to: Regan 17, Russell 12 DS, Autism, Visually Impaired, Reece 10.

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[ajbest]

sounds weird to me - not that i'm experienced at this. but w/ Janna's IEP, it included a tour of the whole school and specifically the Pre-K section (once w/ her and once w/o her) and discussion about whether the am or pm class would be better (since she still naps), etc., etc. hope that you've got more info now and can 'help' in the decision making for Eliza at this school. i agree that, we as parents, have to have some say in the matter or either we say, 'she's not going to be there at all!'

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