• Disclaimer: if you’re sensitive to a few choice words, or have an affinity for this district and their special ed team, you might not want to read the rest.  I am infuriated and this is the only outlet I have.  Consider yourself warned.

Today we had our meeting with the district.  It was for the “team” to decide the best placement for Emma.  For the record, they consider the IEP team all therapists, teachers, district rep, principal, psychologist, and parents (and in our situation, our wonderful advocate Kristina) all part of the team.  For the record, I consider the team us vs. them.  There are clearly sides to this story, as the “education team” (again, a term I use loosely) already knew what their decision was.  Basically it goes down like this:

We discuss various services provided by each school.  This, of course, is made up by the directory of the district.  Let’s call her M for now. (I’d like to call her other things, but I’ll refrain).  The director for the private school, who generously offered to be there at the meeting, had the opportunity to see this district vs. private school for the first time and had to “fill in the blanks when need be.”

The pro’s we have for the private school:

• small setting.  1:1 or 2:1 ratio of student to teacher.
• small setting in general: 15 students in the school.  total.
• less anxiety on Emma’s part due to a multitude of reasons: smaller setting, not trying to “live up” to the abilities of her peers, complete change of environment, the fact that she couldn’t stop talking about this private school for days after visiting, and still brings up the “new school”.
• the unending approach to creating success in Emma.  They don’t try 5 times or 10 times.  They try until

I flat out told M that I have lost complete trust in the special ed department of this district.  Last year was a complete loss.  Nothing was mentioned about a new placement until the very end of the school year.  There are multiple (and documented) cases of lack of supervision for Emma.  How am I supposed to trust them with the care and concern of my daughter now?  Oh, and especially when she’s even more medically fragile then she was.

The thing that really pissed us off was that this decision was primarily made by M.  Oh, and she had the “vote” of 6 other participants, none who have worked with Emma to any academic capacity.  The only attendant of the meeting was a student PT who was with Emma for one quarter.  But that was PT…like only her favorite “subject”.  Not one of them knew Emma.  And again, I flat out asked them…you’re taking a vote about Emma’s placement based on 7 people who haven’t hardly met her?  And that seems fair how?

So the next step?  We file for due process.  And hire an attorney.  Here’s the thing.  We don’t have this kind of money laying around.  At all. But we’ll make it work.   If they don’t think we’ll stick with our guns, they have another thing coming.  They could back down and agree to settle this once they see a letter from our attorney.  That would be best case scenario.  Actually, best case scenario would be for M to call us and want to settle.  But I think she’s too stubborn and pig-headed to do something that would be morally correct.  Heaven forbid she actually work toward the best interest of my daughter and not for the best interest of the district’s wallet.

Are Brett and I crazy in thinking how wrong and ludicrous it is that we have to fight this hard only to get what’s right for our daughter?  She’s fought enough in her short life.  She’s experienced more unfortunate circumstances (physically) than most people do in a lifetime.  When does she get a break?  When does she get to take the easy road?  To say we’re sick and tired of the bullshit is an understatement.  To say that we’re ready to throw in the towel is completely false.  Game on.  Bow down, bitches.

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