Unnecessary Stress!

Hey! It's me Jay! So I just want to take a minute to vent about our week.

As many of you know, Carson was all set for mainstream kindergarten this fall. We had our IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meeting in the Spring and were so excited with the outcome. We were told that Carson would be in PM kindergarten with a class size of about 16, with aids in and out and a resource room that he could go to periodically, if needed. Sounds pretty good, eh?

We got a letter last month saying Carson was in AM kindergarten, which I thought was just a mistake so I called and left a message for them to call me when they got back so we could straighten it out. Well, it wasn't a mistake. I got a call on Monday telling me that Carson was placed in AM kindergarten because all of the kids with special needs were placed in AM. Every section now has 28 kids in each class. Call me crazy but that seems insane to me. 28 kindergarten kids with one teacher, five of the kids with special needs. Now, the principal has changed as well as the speech therapist that we met so half of the people from our IEP meeting are gone, which also lessens our comfort level. One of the elementary schools in our district closed so I guess they had to divide their kids up among the other five elementary schools. I get it but really, could they maybe have let us know the situation since it is totally not what we all agreed to in our IEP?

I am not at all comfortable sending Carson to this environment. Anyone who knows him can only imagine how one teacher could handle him and 27 others. Crazy!

We spent most of the week making phone calls and scrambling for other options. School starts in two weeks..at some of the places we checked, it starts in one week.

We have a couple of options. However, they are private schools so the tuition is $1500 - 1700 minimum (so far.) Some are as high as $3500. Don't get me wrong, you cannot put a price on your child's education. We will find the best fit for him but it is ridiculous that we only have two weeks or less to do it now. Thankfully, Em and I are on the same page and are tag-teaming this issue. I had an appt. set up for us yesterday. She has another one set up next Wed. and a call into another one. I have a call into the district's special services department (they are in charge of the IEP.) I'm requesting another IEP this week and asking for a full time aide for Carson. This was brought up in our last IEP but no one felt it was necessary with the situation the way that it was.....now I think it is necessary or we will not be sending him to our local public kindergarten.

Just some unnecessary stress.....ugggh! Thanks for listening to me vent.