First things first: I am happy to report that Friday’s adventure in ick wasn’t the first wave of something worse; Wonderboy stayed healthy over the weekend. Must have been carsickness (again).

But I promised to tell you how the IEP meeting went. It was a very good meeting and I got exactly the outcome I was looking for: Wonderboy will receive speech therapy and audiological services (ear molds, hearing tests) from our local school district.

There were six people at the meeting, plus me (and the boy and the baby). Audiologist, district school psychologist, two speech pathologists, itinerant deaf/HH teacher, deaf/HH preschool classroom teacher. That’s six, right? A goodish crowd. All very nice, all respectful and eager to meet us where we are.

After introductions, we discussed the various options open to my boy (preschool, private speech therapy, etc.). We talked about the results of his speech evaluation and his history. The deaf/HH preschool teacher described her program, which is a four-hour/five-day preschool in which three other students are currently enrolled. It sounds like quite a nice little program, but I don’t think it best fits the needs and situation of Wonderboy and the rest of our family, so I declined that option, choosing private speech therapy sessions and audiology services instead.

Then we looked at the "goals" that had been drawn up by the speech therapist, itinerant deaf/HH teacher, and audiologist. The way it works is you must spell out, on special forms, the goals you’re aiming for and the specific services that apply to each. For example, one goal for Wonderboy is to be able to make several additional consonant sounds in a year’s time. ("Child will correctly produce consonant-vowel-consonant words containing the phonemes b, p, m, t, d, with amplification [hearing aids], with 90% accuracy.")  (That doesn’t guarantee he definitely WILL meet that goal by this time next year, but that’s what we’ll be aiming for.)

I was in complete agreement with the speech therapist’s goals and recommendations.  I approved those pages and they made it into the final IEP.

However, I did not agree with the necessity of the itinerant teacher’s goals/recommendations. Her goal had to do with language development—not sounds, but using words and sentences—and I do not see a need for outside help in that area. (To put it another way: we can homeschool him in that just fine.) The teacher, who is a very nice and pleasant person, described a curriculum she would like to use—both directly with Wonderboy and "training" me to use it myself. I had to suppress a smile. The curriculum is designed to get a child talking about all the different parts of his day, using conversation about household objects and activities to develop facility with sentences and individual parts of speech.

I think we’ve got that covered.

So we scrapped that goal and its accompanying recommendation for services. This was not a big deal; there was no tension involved. As the parent, the final say on goals and services is up to me. But it was also up to me to decline this section of the proposed IEP. 

I mention that here because I think it’s an important part of understanding the IEP process. The school district can make recommendations, but the parent must approve every syllable of the documentation. If you’re not happy with what’s in the IEP, don’t sign it until you are!

Which leads me to a very interesting and important thing I learned at the end of the meeting. I need to look into whether this applies to California only or the entire nation. As my pen was poised to sign the final paperwork, the psychologist notified me (as she is legally bound to do) that once the parent signs the IEP, the child is officially "in the system," and the parent can’t just decide later to pull him out of services without a big to-do. From that point on, the appropriate district personnel (in this case, speech therapist) must agree that the child no longer needs these services in order to cancel them.

This is a significant point. Apparently, it is a recent change to the law (again, I’m not sure whether we’re talking state or federal law—I’ll get back to you on that) during the past year.

Naturally, this caught my interest. I don’t like to be boxed into anything! Now, this news did not affect my course of action, because Scott and I had already made the decision to access these services through the school district instead of seeking them privately. We weighed the pros and cons before I ever picked up the phone to call the district.

But I was curious about how exactly this provision works. I asked what would happen if a parent wanted to pull her kid out of services, say, a month or two down the road. One of the teachers explained that if the speech therapist (or physical therapist, OT, etc) did not agree that the child’s special needs no longer existed, the case would have to go to mediation. If an agreement could not be reached—which I assume means "if the parent still wants out"—then the school district would initiate a due process hearing.

Got that, homeschoolers? If you decide to tap into the public schools’ special-needs services (which is your right), be sure you’re completely comfortable with the goals and services spelled out on the IEP before you sign it. Because once you do, you’re committed. Or rather, your child is. In California, at least.

So did I sign, you’re wondering. Yes. I do want to access the speech therapy and audiology services (ear molds, hearing tests) to which my son is entitled. After all, my tax dollars are helping to pay for these services. But this new law makes it all the more important to do your homework and to read the paperwork with an eagle eye. Make sure the IEP says exactly what you want, and not a syllable more, before you give it your John Hancock. 

Related posts on accessing public services for special needs:

Beginning the Process
The Speech Evaluation
Getting an IEP

Last month I posted about beginning the process of setting Wonderboy up with speech therapy services through our local public schools. These things take time (especially during the holidays), and we are just now moving to the next step. Today will be the "goals" meeting with various district personnel to determine what will go in Wonderboy’s IEP, or Individualized Education Plan.

This important document will spell out what services Wonderboy will be getting from the district and what our goals are for his progress in the next six to twelve months. If he were enrolled in a public school, the IEP would also define what special arrangements would be necessary to help him in a classroom: accomodations such as an aide, an FM system, seating near the teacher, and so forth. (I’m giving broad examples here, not necessarily things that would apply to a three-year-old.)

In the home, meeting Wonderboy’s specific needs is much easier and more intuitive than would be the case in a preschool setting, so his IEP will serve chiefly to get him speech therapy. We have a couple of options for this, and part of my job as his "case manager" has been to educate myself about the possibilities. Our district does have a dedicated deaf/hard-of-hearing preschool classroom, and I have been strongly encouraged by district personnel to consider placing him in this class. I don’t at all mind their making a pitch for the preschool: it’s part of their job.

Neither do I have any qualms about politely declining the offer. Deciding what’s best for him is part of MY job.

Here are the steps that led up to today’s meeting:

• Knowing Wonderboy qualified for speech therapy, I called the district special education office and requested an evaluation. (Even if you are only wondering whether your child qualifies for services, you can call and request an eval. The purpose of the eval is to assess whether there is indeed a qualifying need. For children over three, call the local school district’s special ed office. For children under three, call the Early Intervention office. Google your town’s name and "early intervention" and you’ll probably find the number easily.)

• The special ed office asked me to fax over his IFSP (Individualized Family Service Plan). This is the equivalent of the IEP for three-and-unders. If we had not had an IFSP—that is, if I were seeking services for the first time—the special ed office might have asked to meet with us before setting up the eval, but not necessarily. The eval itself is what determines the child’s need for services. Certain medical information can be helpful, such as Wonderboy’s latest audiologist report.

• Special ed passed our name and number to the district speech pathologist (since I was asking for speech therapy). She called and set up the evaluation I wrote about in December. If I had wanted, a physical therapist could also have been present. (I opted to postpone his PT eval for a few months.)

• Also present at the evaluation was the district’s school psychologist. This is standard practice.

• The evaluation determined what we all already knew would be the case: Wonderboy does qualify for speech therapy through the district.

• Today’s IEP meeting was scheduled. This took some coordinating, as there is a rather large team of folks involved. This is why I think it’s important for parents to do their homework—especially homeschooling parents, but really it applies to all of us. It can be intimidating to walk into a roomful of school-system professionals. They are there to help, and as parent, you are the person in charge; but it can be hard for parents to remember that.

The "team" of people at Wonderboy’s meeting will be: speech pathologist, school psychologist, traveling deaf/HH teacher, dedicated deaf/HH classroom teacher, and district audiologist (yay!!). I think that’s it. And me, of course—on this team, I’m the coach!

• After the IEP meeting was scheduled, I got calls from most of the folks on this team. I had short preliminary meetings with the traveling deaf/HOH teacher and the school psychologist.

• Which brings us up to today. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Yesterday’s speech evaluation went very well. Wonderboy was obligingly talkative, so the speech/language pathologist (we’ll call her the SLP) was able to get a good idea of the range of sounds he can make. She was delighted, really excited, about the extent of his expressive and receptive language—his sentences seemed to thrill her as much as they do me. Of course, she could not understand much of what he says; his intelligibility to strangers is maybe 80%. But by the end of the session, she was catching a lot more of his words.

I had all the girls with me, of course, and they set up camp with their books and drawing materials at a table in the same room. They proved most useful in keeping the boy chatting; every time the SLP tried to get him talking about an object, he picked it up and trotted around to show his sisters, addressing them each by name.

"I can see you’re a big help with your brother’s therapy," said the SLP, which is absolutely correct. As we were leaving, she actually thanked the girls on Wonderboy’s behalf. It was a great moment. You always wonder what public school employees are going to think about your homeschooling brood, and it’s nice to leave feeling like you made a good impression. I really think she grasped the tremendous impact on Wonderboy’s progress (in both speech and motor skills) made by the constant interaction with his sisters.

All four of them! He considers the baby his special charge; he is always looking out for her welfare, bringing her toys, putting a pillow behind her when she is sitting on the floor. At the evaluation, some of his clearest words were about Rilla and the stroller.

We talked about the scheduling challenges, and as Peggy suggested in yesterday’s comments, the SLP is eager to accomodate our needs. There’s one 8 a.m. small-group session that currently has only two children in it; since my girls can come and hang out on the other side of the partitioned room, we should be able to make it work without too much disruption to our schedule (such as it is).

Next step: the Goals meeting. This is where the SLP and I will sit down with the district audiologist and the district psychologist to draw up the language for Wonderboy’s IEP. It’s scheduled for January, after the school break. Until then, we’ll just keep on doing what we’re doing, which seems to be working!