Reply to How is part day or full day school refusal handled in MoCo?

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "How is part day or full day school refusal handled in MoCo?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We went through this last year - my 7th grader had accrued almost 30 absences before the end of the 2nd quarter.  The school never threatened us (you can get the absences excused for medical reasons) and they were kind and tried to accommodate, [b]but tbh they failed pretty miserably.  Their sole focus was "get him in the building at all costs" without acknowledging or even recognizing the root of his issues (anxiety but also sensory overwhelm and possibly burnout) and IMO they made it worse.  Waiving some assignments after they were overdue was too-little-too-late when it was the classroom (and hallways etc.) that were the actual problem[/b].  Eventually they told me we had to stop allowing him to even call home (with no clear plan for how I was supposed to even get him in the building to begin with under those conditions); we withdrew to homeschooling and then Fusion and we are still recovering. I hope you have better luck.  [/quote]

And this has highlighted the issue that schools have.  Teacher can recognize that a kid has anxiety or some other problem, but what are you expecting an individual teacher to do about a kid when the problem is with coming to school or to class and completing the assignments?  All they can do is waive the assignment.  [/quote]

PP you're responding to here.  I wasn't expecting the *teachers* to do anything.  I did expect the counseling/admin staff to be more actively helpful, and to be willing to explore solutions beyond "just make him go".  Some of the other specialty programs within MCPS may have been a good fit to address the environmental issues, but our family was operating in crisis mode and I didn't have additional time to research them and do that legwork.  Their "nice/supportive" attitude was cloaking a layer of judgment that neither our kid nor us parents were trying hard enough when nothing meaningful was actually changing about the environment to make that manageable.  It would have been great if instead they could have made us aware of the alternatives and helped us start whatever processes were necessary to see if they'd work and if DC would qualify.

(We already had testing and a 504 and had been actively working with the school staff since 6th grade, so this wasn't completely out of the blue.)[/quote]

It sounds like you may need to get the testing updated. What does your kid's therapist and psychiatrist think?[/quote]

I'm not sure what makes you think I needed advice (I don't) or that we aren't already pursuing additional testing or working with a therapist and psychiatrist (we are).  I was specifically answering the question of what the *school* did vs what I would have liked them to do - which is provide more support for finding alternative programs that would actually address the issues at hand.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics