Raise your hand if an administrator has ever lied to you or used gaslighting...

[Anonymous]

Son hit another kid, not hard (per the administrator). First incident in years for a kid with documented social challenges, provoked by a week of daily bullying by the other kid (all this info was relayed to us by the administrator- not my son). I challenged the punishment by email, and 5e administrator emailed that the punishment was required because the school “has a clear code of conduct when it comes to physical altercations”.

I did ten minutes of research (school handbook and district regulations), sent him an email saying that I saw x,y,z in the handbook and regulations about mandatory punishments for bullying (unsaid was that the bully here received no punishment) but the only resource I found on punishments for physical behaviors was x, and it shows a wide range of punishments for a physical incident, starting with a parent phone call, and could the administrator kindly direct me to the appropriate reference that required the punishment he applied. He tersely wrote back that he had discretion, but he generously didn’t report it to the state, which was also within his discretion.

Wtf. What a dick. For a kid who has some significant challenges that are obvious when talking to him, who literally hasn’t had a behavior problem in four years and is a straight a kid.

I wanted to escalate but our therapist wisely reminded there was no upside to this battle..,.

[Anonymous]

Honestly I would almost prefer that at this point. "We are making a fortune off of her!" This was actually said out loud at my 2e kid's iep meeting.

[Anonymous]

Do you moms mind giving the names of these advocates? Everyone lists positive reviews on their websites, but I'd like to know who truly is effective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly I would almost prefer that at this point. "We are making a fortune off of her!" This was actually said out loud at my 2e kid's iep meeting.

They get extra money for diagnosis and aren't required to provide services in return. Its terrible.

[Anonymous]

Our public high school disability head could not stop talking about her son the doctor and her daughter the PhD. In front of us at IEP meetings, in front of our son who was struggling, in front of other SN kids. It was so painful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nope. But we moved to be inbounds for a school cluster that had a great reputation for caring with students with IEPs. Got the IEP in K without a hitch, and accommodations as needed.

The issue is that resources are stretched thin and even though everyone is willing to do what it takes, there just aren't enough special ed teachers, SLPs, etc, to see to everyone's needs. And that's where it gets dicey, since the most needy students get the most resources, and parents of students who are less afflicted feel either forgotten or worse, deliberately lied to. In our elementary, middle and high school systems, where I volunteered for years, I saw it wasn't a question of purposeful stonewalling at all, but a systemic lack of resources, despite great efforts by the administrators to hire more people.

The caveat in my rosy description is dyslexia. For some reason I cannot fathom, dyslexia is not well addressed in public school. It should be the one BEST addressed, since it's so common! The Principal of our elementary school has dyslexia, and despite the absence of that learning disorder in the IEP system, she did what she could for these students, which included bundling them in "Other Health Impairment" and hiring an excellent SLP, the best one my son ever had. But I've heard horror stories of students with dyslexia not receiving desperately-needed services at their home schools, with less-informed administrators and IEP teams.

I think you characterized the problem well - but the schools in the DMV are multi-billion dollar enterprises. It cannot be resources alone. We actually did a few years in Catholic school with a dyslexic kid and it was remarkably better than MCPS W district school. This is flat out corruption. Also they get even MORE money for disabled kids but I think this was the principals slush fund for his promotion to another (bigger) school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you moms mind giving the names of these advocates? Everyone lists positive reviews on their websites, but I'd like to know who truly is effective.

I’m the poster who mentioned selecting an advocate after receiving the advice here. We went with Liz Capone and did so specifically for her experience with FCPS and her free consultation. She spent close to two outs on the free consultation and I was able to use that advice the next day.

From everything I’ve read on here, it’s super important to go with someone who has experience with your county and who is responsive when you call for an initial (free) consultation.

[Anonymous]

Of course. Admin and teachers lie all the time to cover up for not meeting our kids' needs. Once you understand that you can't trust them, it's easier. They try to say lovely things about your child and try to get you to believe that their abilities are far above what they actually are. It's all a deception to try to deny your child services.

The most dangerous things that parents can do to their SN kids is to think the teacher is on their side.