Reply to The McLean School: ASD kids need not apply

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This co-head is an interim and is only there until the new head comes next summer. From my understanding, no one is happy about the co-head situation at the school.

I have no idea why she was speaking for the admissions director but please know that there are students at McLean with autism in their profile.[/quote]

My child is at a different school far away with a very similar profile to McLean. The past few years have a time of a lot of change in our student body. At some point just before the pandemic our K-8 school became known of being quietly good at accommodating neurodiversity. Unfortunately this was true for the then 2-3 neurodiverse students in each grade but it wasn’t scalable. As more families with kids with higher (and often undeclared) needs sought the school out during and after the pandemic, it didn’t have the resources for grades with 25% of students needing accommodations. Families of typical learners got mad because they sensed- possibly inaccurately- that resources were disproportionally going to neurodiverse students. By late elementary/middle school, there are now a lot of kids applying out to 5-12 and 6-12 schools because of socially imbalanced grades. When you have a grade of 35 kids and 5 kids of each gender are missing social cues or not interacting in the same way as others, middle school spidey sense is activated. Kids know, and middle school kids aren’t as kind or patient towards their different classmates as they were in 1st grade.

Our head of school hasn’t yet stood up and say “we can’t accommodate kids with autism” but that is probably the next step in terms of managing enrollment, retention, and resources. It’s a nasty thing to do at an open house that includes students, though. I’m sorry, OP.[/quote]

Interesting perspective. Sounds like you found a good school that’s trying to accommodate everyone. Unfortunately that’s almost impossible especially in the higher grades like you stated. Hopefully they can create a couple ND classrooms rather than denying their applications completely or chasing away the more NT kids. [/quote]

I’m the PP you’re responding to. I don’t think our school ever truly intended to accommodate anyone! I think that a few kids entered in early grades and as the school began to grasp their issues, they tried to find a way to make it work for that particular student. But soon they found themselves doing it more and more frequently and the accommodation that was seen as a one-off began to be something that happened frequently. It’s not sustainable and admissions has begun to be a lot more probing during visit days and family interviews.

No way is my kids’ school going to create a neurodiverse classroom! Unfortunately there would be a huge stigma of doing so at an otherwise generic independent school. Where we live, easily 50% of private non-parochial schools that serve elementary and middle school require students to test in with cogat/Wisc/etc. as “gifted.” Those schools are far more open to autism as long as it’s 2e/accompanied by giftedness, and their classrooms are essentially neurodiverse by default. But they would never, ever describe themselves that way, which is sad.[/quote]

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