Small classes and special ed support?

[Anonymous]

This is what's available in MCPS. https://xminds.org. I don't know what's available in PG County. You already have the neuropsych, now you need to request an IEP.

In MCPS, once you have an IEP in place, the home school will implement the agreed upon supports and accommodations. If that is not enough support, then you can request to have your child evaluated for placement in one of MCPSs discrete programs---some are wholly self contained while others have both a self contained and a gen ed with support component. If that is still not enough support, your child can be evaluated for non public placement (NPP)

One of the biggest issues at the moment is that there are not enough seats for the kids that have received NPP in the NPP schools. These are private schools and MCPS cannot require them to accept a child. Once your are approved for NPP, you start the process of having your file sent over to each school where it is evaluated and the parents and child are interviewed. Then they make a decision. If you are lucky, you are accepted. If not, rinse and repeat until a school is found. Some parents have been waiting over a year for placement. In the meantime, while you wait, your child may or may not be allowed in their previous placement. MCPS responds to this by offering homebound education where a teacher comes to your house for an hour or two a few times a week. A parent much be home when the teacher comes to the house.

Like you, I had a neuropsych in place when I started the IEP process. The IEP took about 3 months to obtain. Then it was another 3 months before it was decided that a self contained program was the most appropriate placement. A year later we went for NPP and while the NPP was approved quickly, placement took 9 months.

Start with obtaining an IEP and see how things go. This is a long, trying, exasperating process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is what's available in MCPS. https://xminds.org. I don't know what's available in PG County. You already have the neuropsych, now you need to request an IEP.

In MCPS, once you have an IEP in place, the home school will implement the agreed upon supports and accommodations. If that is not enough support, then you can request to have your child evaluated for placement in one of MCPSs discrete programs---some are wholly self contained while others have both a self contained and a gen ed with support component. If that is still not enough support, your child can be evaluated for non public placement (NPP)

One of the biggest issues at the moment is that there are not enough seats for the kids that have received NPP in the NPP schools. These are private schools and MCPS cannot require them to accept a child. Once your are approved for NPP, you start the process of having your file sent over to each school where it is evaluated and the parents and child are interviewed. Then they make a decision. If you are lucky, you are accepted. If not, rinse and repeat until a school is found. Some parents have been waiting over a year for placement. In the meantime, while you wait, your child may or may not be allowed in their previous placement. MCPS responds to this by offering homebound education where a teacher comes to your house for an hour or two a few times a week. A parent much be home when the teacher comes to the house.

Like you, I had a neuropsych in place when I started the IEP process. The IEP took about 3 months to obtain. Then it was another 3 months before it was decided that a self contained program was the most appropriate placement. A year later we went for NPP and while the NPP was approved quickly, placement took 9 months.

Start with obtaining an IEP and see how things go. This is a long, trying, exasperating process.

It took two years for my kid to move through the pipeline of IEP->gen ed placement with supports->self-contained placement->approval for non-public->actually getting a nonpublic spot. And he had significant issues that made getting the district to agree to non-public easier than it typically is.

I will say that if you think your kid may need a non-public placement, I would get a lawyer involved sooner rather than later. You don't need to bring the lawyer to your initial IEP meetings (in fact, you probably shouldn't). But it REALLY helps to know up front what evidence you would need to prove the need for nonpublic, so that you can work on gathering the appropriate data from day one. Maybe your kid ends up thriving in a public placement and you never actually need that data--but if you do, you'll be very glad that you started collecting it early.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for these comments. They're really helpful. I genuinely don't think my child will qualify for a NPP because I think he can be accommodated/supported to struggle through scraping by in a regular classroom. I just don't want him to be miserable his whole academic career kwim? But I also understand that the public school doesn't have the ability or the funding to ~maximize the potential~ of each special snowflake in the system lol.