Anyone have experience with an IEP in FCPS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We’re relocating and I’m trying to figure out the best fit for my DS who is in elementary school and has an ASD-1 diagnosis.

And yes, I’ve checked in on the Special Needs forum, but am hoping for feedback here.

Stay away from Region 5

[Anonymous]

Stay away from Region 5

+1

[Anonymous]

We have also had a terrible experience in Region 5

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We’ve had to advocate hard to get the support we needed in FCPS.

One important thing to keep in mind: both administrators and teachers can change frequently. A school that’s great for IEP support one year might be very different the next, depending on leadership and staffing. So a positive experience today doesn’t always guarantee the same tomorrow.

Class sizes are also on the larger side, at our school, it’s around 25 students per class and that makes individual support limited. We’ve been told to expect class sizes to grow even more next year due to budget cuts.

Private school isn’t financially an option for us, so we supplement heavily outside of school. That’s been more manageable cost-wise, and I know we’re fortunate to be able to do that.

This tracks for us. It varies so much depending on which admin we deal with and teachers. Classes were quite large, but team taught was a good fit often despite class size. There were some great classes that were not team taught where the mainstream teacher just was a good match and managed everyone well. I do not recommend things like speech services for pragmatics. Get any supports for social skills outside of school-higher quality. Lunch bunches at the school in elementary can be great, but group work to address specific skills is rarely done well in our experience because they group together kids with such diverse needs that it's nearly impossible to address them together. We also get outside tutoring rather than use the online tutoring provided by FCPS. There are office hours but the teachers are overworked and rarely get breaks in the day and have too many students so we did not have our kids rely on that as the main way to get extra help.