IEP update

The IEP was a little weird. We’re not done yet, it ran way over and we had to leave before all of it was hammered out. We agreed to discuss the rest via phone.

Here’s what we do know.

We’ve increased his ST from 45min a week to a minimum of 90min per week.

We’ve added a “motor therapist” at 30min every other week for OT concerns.

We qualify for supplementary program which consists of an assigned professional who is trained in working w/autistic kids (tho they were very vague on the specific training) who would work with Dominic 3hrs a week in our home (in 1hr chunks) and for a 2 ½ hr window on Friday mornings at school in a special classroom. This is only offered during the school year, but could start as early as next week.

We qualify for extended school year, but we ran out of time before we could discuss what that meant.

They have suggested that since we already know our local elementary is being closed at the end of this year, that we go ahead and switch him to a different school now. We don’t want to. He’s happy where he is, we LOVE his teacher, and we’ve already experienced once putting him into a new classroom in the middle of the year – and it didn’t go well.

They didn’t argue about his diagnosis being on the IEP. They did say that they felt he didn’t need a functional behavior assessment because his behavior issues are clearly to them the result of lack of communication ability. I reserved the right to revisit the topic.

We rewrote a number of his goals. The lady who does the supplemental autism stuff was very helping in backing me to when I made sure that they stated he needed to achieve his goals INDEPENDENTLY (one of the tips we picked up yesterday from the folks over at Alpine Autism Center), so that was nice.

He did real well for 3 hours of this. We did send him outside to swing for a little while with one of the ladies, who is a preschool teacher and will probably be his teacher next year at the new elementary. She’s very nice, and interacted well with him.

So, we’ll see. We obviously need a lot more information about the summer program.

I do feel, tho, that his needs were paid attention to. I also feel like they were paying a lot more attention to us as parents. They were deferring to us to do final approvals on things, and it helped SO much to have his current teacher, speech therapist and early childhood special educator there validating what we were saying. I feel like they get that there’s been another regression, and we are being paid attention to.

We have an appointment on Monday afternoon where the lady implementing the supplemental services AND the coordinator of the whole IEP are coming over and they’ll bring us up to speed on the Summer stuff and the supplemental stuff. So we’ll know more then.