Reply to APS Kindergarten Help: Anyone have a tutor recommendation?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My DC is currently in kindergarten and starting to show signs of becoming further behind, according to the school and their teacher. We work with our DC at home (there's no homework at their school) on sight words, reading beginner books, writing, and K level math/numbers. At home, DC seems to be doing well and knows their stuff, however, we constantly receive feedback from DC's teacher saying they are not "at grade level" with a lot of skills and they are behind their peers in all areas. We have asked for an evaluation, next steps, what can we do at home, but we are still waiting to hear back. Up until now, we always get a phone call back and the school or teacher is unable to respond to us in writing. Whenever we call directly to speak to someone we get the "we'll take a message and someone will return your call" line. We are not able to just move to another area of Arlington or even outside of Arlington to change schools, which, a friend did suggest.  We are more than willing and able to advocate and push for help for our child, however, it seems to be falling on deaf ears. Yet we still receive the same feedback about our child who is behind. Does anyone have a recommendation for a tutor or a program we can use on the side at home that would benefit someone in K? Has anyone else experienced this and maybe can share some tips? [/quote]

Are you willing to share what school you are at? We received similar vague but, concerning feedback from our DC's Kinder teacher. However, the school's special ed team was responsive and we did have my DC evaluated. No learning disabilities detected, but, I think our kiddo is just not academically inclined, and will always sort of struggle. It sounds like you are doing all the right things at home, which, makes the mismatched narrative even more curious. I would email the teacher/vice principal/principal. APS makes me nuts in that they WILL NOT respond in writing to anything. It is always a call back, but, when we have had a few issues we've had to elevate and have put it in writing, the school admin has been responsive when they should be. [/quote]

It really is frustrating and sadly, your response makes me feel better in that we are not alone. Ha! We have emailed the teacher multiple times, the principal and vice principal but have not heard back other than a "your email has been received and we are looking into it" type of response. Or we get a phone call letting us know they saw the email and are determining next steps, but those next steps just never come. I'm going to try and do another round of emails this week. At this point I think we need to seek tutoring or some sort of outside program and see how things go for the rest of the year and then reassess and game plan our next steps.[/quote]

Sorry to hear that. It sounds like you may benefit from also looping in any of the SPED staff at your school and explicitly requesting a student support team meeting with all parties copied on your email in order to discuss your DC's challenges that have been identified by the teacher and how the school can support your DC or if they recommend any sort of evaluation based on what the teacher is flagging. If you continue to receive no response, I'd consider pushing up the chain to Kim Graves or the admin SPED leadership for APS. [/quote]

This is great advice. If your kinder teacher is flagging issues that suggests a student support meeting is in order to rule out or in specific learning disabilities.  Also with conferences coming up, ask teacher if summer school (academic strengthening) would be appropriate for your child. If you do engage a tutor and your child starts responding to that intervention, make sure to document what you are doing outside of school and what you see in your kid.  If your child does have SLD, you don't want to undermine the supports that school would/should provide because they will likely need support even if you drop tutoring. [/quote]

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