Which ES in Bethesda is good for special needs kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One school can be great for one special needs kid, terrible for another. Generalizations are not helpful.

Exactly. I have a friend with a dc with HFA. She is very happy with Wood Acres. A lot of it can depend on the individual teachers and your own dc and how he/she responds to a certain environment. I often bemoaned that I didn't know about Bethesda Elementary when we moved here from out of state. But I have learned that it is very crowded. It likely wouldn't have been a good fit for my dc as he needs smaller classes. He had a great IEP but ended up at a small special needs private. Our goal is to return to public (hopefully soon).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, definitely NOT Ashburton!

Yes, I'd like to know why not Ashburton too. My child will likely start PEP there in the fall.

As someone who has had a special needs child at Ashburton for several years (though not in PEP so I can't comment on that), the problem is the administration who is obsessed with the school's test scores and has little patience or understanding for SN kids. Ashburton tends to score lower than most of the other ES in the cluster and, from what I've heard from friends and family with kids at KP or Wyngate, focuses much more on prepping for the MSAs. Some of the teachers have been amazing and have bent over backwards to accommodate DC but overall, the culture of the school is punitive. Plus, it is horribly overcrowded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One school can be great for one special needs kid, terrible for another. Generalizations are not helpful.

Which is a ... generalization.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One school can be great for one special needs kid, terrible for another. Generalizations are not helpful.

Exactly. I have a friend with a dc with HFA. She is very happy with Wood Acres. A lot of it can depend on the individual teachers and your own dc and how he/she responds to a certain environment. I often bemoaned that I didn't know about Bethesda Elementary when we moved here from out of state. But I have learned that it is very crowded. It likely wouldn't have been a good fit for my dc as he needs smaller classes. He had a great IEP but ended up at a small special needs private. Our goal is to return to public (hopefully soon).

Glad this is working out for you. I know two children for whom the story was quite different.
And agree, BE a far better choice. Good friend went through process with DD last year and it was night and day from ours, at a previously mentioned Bethesda school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One school can be great for one special needs kid, terrible for another. Generalizations are not helpful.

Which is a ... generalization.

No, it's a proposition.

[Anonymous]

Go to another board if you want to be a jerk, ok? ok.

[Anonymous]

My friend whose child goes to Ashburton is in the L& D program there and she loves it. Her child also went through PEP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One school can be great for one special needs kid, terrible for another. Generalizations are not helpful.

Exactly. I have a friend with a dc with HFA. She is very happy with Wood Acres. A lot of it can depend on the individual teachers and your own dc and how he/she responds to a certain environment. I often bemoaned that I didn't know about Bethesda Elementary when we moved here from out of state. But I have learned that it is very crowded. It likely wouldn't have been a good fit for my dc as he needs smaller classes. He had a great IEP but ended up at a small special needs private. Our goal is to return to public (hopefully soon).

Id like to point out that private schools and non-public schools are not the same thing. I'm assuming you meant a non-public school. The distinction is very important and something that makes a huge difference when it comes to politics and funding.

[Anonymous]

Our child went to Rosemary Hills PS. I realize it is not a "Bethesda" elementary school, but since it feeds to BCC, I would still consider it part of the "Bethesda" schools.

We were not happy at all with special ed services at RHPS. Admin there constantly says everything is "fine" even when objective testing shows it is not. Since RHPS is a K-2 school, they can basically do this because there is very little that is "graded" in anything but a holistic way. (The exception to that is math).

We also found the administration at RHPS to repeatedly and aggressively ask us to waive IDEA timelines. Personally, I felt this was done in violation of the law, but practically speaking consulting a lawyer and fighting about it would have not gotten us anything useful. In the alternative, where the school wasn't required by the law to do anything by a deadline, we could wait months to get a meeting.

We also thought that a main goal of special ed at RHPS was to delay services until the kid ages out and it becomes a problem for the upper school to solve. They quite effectively ran the clock out on our child without doing anything constructive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One school can be great for one special needs kid, terrible for another. Generalizations are not helpful.

Exactly. I have a friend with a dc with HFA. She is very happy with Wood Acres. A lot of it can depend on the individual teachers and your own dc and how he/she responds to a certain environment. I often bemoaned that I didn't know about Bethesda Elementary when we moved here from out of state. But I have learned that it is very crowded. It likely wouldn't have been a good fit for my dc as he needs smaller classes. He had a great IEP but ended up at a small special needs private. Our goal is to return to public (hopefully soon).

Id like to point out that private schools and non-public schools are not the same thing. I'm assuming you meant a non-public school. The distinction is very important and something that makes a huge difference when it comes to politics and funding.

Not being snarky here: what is the difference between private and non-public? Fwiw, I did not seek funding from MoCo for my dc's tuition. I do keep his IEP active (although I believe it is technically called a service plan).