I left off with the fact that the district had decided to initiate settling out of court. This is exactly what we wanted. And that started the ping pong ball of negotiations. Back and forth. A lot. It was stressful. But our attorney is a hard ass and always always had Emma’s best interest in the forefront. In the end, as time went on and I got more nervous (and consequently the attorney told me to “calm down”), it was getting down to the wire. I kid you not, we signed one day before our court date. I don’t know if that happens all the time or not. But holy cow. Stress! But it was done. And, as luck would have it, I had to put it in the hot little hands of the director of special ed myself. Not something I looked forward to, but in the back of my mind I was chanting “VICTORY”! And it helped that 3 of my closest girlfriends were coming over that morning. 2 of them didn’t know, one of them brought orange juice, and I popped some bubbly. We toasted with mimosas to our success! The journey was over! (we just wanted to see our money back!)
It felt good. We were relieved. We could breathe easier.
It was so sweet. On Thursday at Thanksgiving, my mother-in-law had everyone say what they were thankful for. Emma was the 1st one up. What was she thankful for? School.
And here’s where I need your help. During this whole process is when I decided to start my Etsy shop. I wanted to channel all of this stressful and angry energy into something creative. With the help of (said) friends, I decided to take some of my photographs and turn them into note cards. I wanted to sell these notecards to raise money to give to people in our situation. People who aren’t able to hire the advocate they so desperately deserve. There are so many families out there that need the help like we did. These advocates (the experienced ones) have so much more knowledge about the system, laws, rules, then we could ever hope for. And I truly believe that in most special ed situations, they are necessary. Unfortunately, while they are necessary, they aren’t necessarily in everyone’s budget. We were fortunate enough to be able to afford our advocate, Kristina, but I know there are many families who can’t afford one. And so it is my hope to gift “scholarships” to families who desperately need the help of an advocate but can’t afford it.
These are my ideas. I have a lot of ideas swirling in my head! I just want to help. I have ideas on how to carry this out, but haven’t put forth any actions, with the exception of starting my Etsy shop and I am beginning to see money come in.
Right now I have my note cards as well as my mom’s jewelry. 100% of the proceeds of my cards and my mom’s Jumping Waves jewelry collection will go to my Jumping Waves charity. I don’t keep any in my wallet. I believe the items on my Etsy shop are perfect for the upcoming holidays. I will be gifting my children’s teachers a set of my note cards. And I have friends doing the same. I even have teacher friends gifting their room moms with my cards. They make wonderful and affordable gifts for so many people. I would love to see the story of Jumping Waves spread.
Please go check out my shop and let me know what you think! Right now (celebrating Cyber Monday) you can save 25% on your order by entering ‘CYBER25′ upon check out. I would be so honored if you took a peek and passed on the word. This is my passion…to help people who are in the situation we were in.
These are just a few of the newer cards on my shop. Thank you, in advance, for taking a look!
I have been mulling over in my head, how do I even begin this story? How much do I even share? My attorney advised me that less is more. I agree in some aspect, however, I really want to encourage people in our situation to fight for their child…doing whatever it takes to see that they’re in the best place. To educate parents on their options once the district denies their requests. It’s not an easy road ahead. It’s taxing on everyone. Everyone. But our story is proof that it is all worth it in the end.
During the spring semester and summer months, we had meetings with our advocate and the district to discuss “options.” I chronicled all of those meetings because they are important to our journey, and I knew that at the time. You can read about our meetings starting here. Our advocate, by the way, is amazing and she will continue to accompany us to our meetings for quite awhile. I don’t see us ever dealing with a school district without an advocate. You can learn more about our advocate on her website.
I had a wonderful trip to Paris, which seems like a dream. It honestly doesn’t seem real anymore. It was a wonderful “dream,” though!
Ten days after I came home, we had our meeting with the district to determine where the most appropriate placement for Emma would be. It didn’t go favorably, remember? To have to endure a meeting like that one day before a huge surgery for your daughter is something that no one should have to go through. Too many emotions going on in such a short amount of time.
Emma had her hip surgery the following day and it went well. We had 3 nights in the hospital and while we had ups and downs, things went really well. We came home in a state of mind not unlike new parents have bringing home their newborn baby. Will I break Emma? How fragile is she? How dependent is she? We had to learn about the new (and temporary) state of our daughter. She was immobile for 6 weeks. It was tough.
From leaving a meeting that did not go as we had hoped, to surgery barely 15 hours after the meeting, I dropped the subject on my blog. But deep down we knew we had decisions to make. Do we press forward? Are we so certain of the district’s wrongdoing that we were willing to take legal measures? Are we so certain of Emma’s placement that we would personally place her at this private school and take her out of public school? It’s a huge risk, that if it ended poorly, would mean Emma would have to return to the district, due to lack of finances. This is definitely not a decision to enter lightly. The only time we had hired an attorney was to draft our will and all that legal “shtuff”. This was different. It took many discussions, and they weren’t easy. There were tears and uncertainties. Ultimately it was a discussion that we had with a very close friend that helped clarify the decision. She encouraged us to press forward. We had come this far. We were this passionate about doing the right thing for Emma. What did we have to lose (minus a nice little retainer)? Brett was (understandably) nervous about the finances. How would we juggle attorneys fees with the monumental cost of a private school? In short, we couldn’t. We couldn’t swing those bills.
We are so fortunate to have the family that we have. We are truly blessed. We had family that told us that Emma needed to be in the right setting. The district wasn’t worthy of educating her. And therefore we had family that helped pay for her tuition while we ultimately decided to proceed with legal action.
That day after the meeting (which was the day before the surgery), our advocate immediately gave us the name and number of the attorney she recommended. She warned me: she’s a tough ass. She doesn’t mince words. And she’ll tell you exactly what she thinks. Perfect! I don’t want some soft cookie representing us. Oh yeah, and she’s undefeated.
I have to tell you this story, not because I want “revenge.” Not because I want to “expose” anyone, though I have visions of that. I am telling this story because people need to be aware of situations with the districts. We need to be aware of our kids progresses they make. The evaluations that they undergo. And when things don’t work the way they should, I want people to be encouraged to know that there are options out there.
Everyone has experienced that, right? It’s just called “life”. Well, let me tell you, it’s pouring over here. And not only is it pouring, it’s pouring sh!t. I feel like I’m being pelted by sh!t. Sorry for the graphic nature, but this is how I’m feeling right now. And it’s my blog. I’m tired of this school situation. I’m still really bugged by my evaluation. And regarding that, if I don’t get answers soon, I feel like I have no choice but to move forward legally. I got an email today from the director at the district. She removed the part in the Parent Input plan that had to do with my employment. Because it didn’t have anything to do with Emma’s placement. Um, can she really remove parts of my PARENT input document? I wanted it in there because it does pertain to Emma, and more-so it pertains to their lack of attention to our situation. And I wanted it in there because an IEP is a legal document. This will be documented legally. I’m bugged because I feel like I have a huge fight ahead of us. I’m bugged because of <stupid> jury duty. I hate jury duty. And because of that I feel like I get pulled every 18 months. Without fail. Lottery my ass. I could go into many more reasons why I’m perturbed (great word, no?) but I won’t.
I just feel like I’m being taken advantage of right now. And I also feel like I’m swimming upstream. While other (bigger) fish swim downstream obstructing my path. Visual enough?
Brett and me swimming upstream.
Anyway, I’m ready for a little normalcy. A little boredom. Just for a week, maybe? Where I have no drama. And, more importantly, I don’t perseverate on said drama. Brett says I think about it too much. I stress over it. I totally agree with him. But how do you not?
My good friend got me this notepad:
Not that I’m a lush, but it’s fitting the bill right now. And I need a pedicure.
I’ve almost caught up to the present! Last Friday we had another meeting. This was to rewrite Emma’s goals. Because, per my advocate’s words, the old ones were “crap”. Nicely said. Brett and I let her do her thing and she came up with very specific goals for Emma. And a lot more than the few that Emma had. When she wrote these goals for Emma, she reviewed the Arizona Early Learning Standards. And she made it very clear that these goals needed to be reached using ABA principles, with staff trained in ABA and PBIS using multi sensory teaching strategies. What, you don’t know all of these acronyms? It’s okay…neither do I. I’m learning, slowly but surely.
Because my advocate rocks, all of Emma’s new goals were accepted, with some tweaking of wordage here and there. And after about 1 ½ hours of running around the subject, we finally started talking about placement. Where will Emma be next year? As you can imagine, the district and my family have very different ideas of what is best for Emma. It’s the district’s job to tell us why their own self-contained program will work just fine for Emma. It’s our job to tell them why it won’t be good enough. They’ve screwed up FAPE for her (Free And Public Education) and we’ve lost our faith in them. Obviously more was said. Kristina went over lots of data to tell them why their program wouldn’t work, and why this (predetermined, by Kristina and Brett and myself) private school would be the best placement. Of course district doesn’t want to hear that.
Here’s where we stand: We’re waiting to get another meeting to (hopefully) conclude this. We have provided our Parent Input (again, something Kristina wrote up beautifully). And, by the way, Kristina was able to subtly slide into this Parent Input the “unwarranted and false evaluation by the principal” that I received. I told you, she’s good. I think the district would be stupid to fight with us on this. Especially with that little bombshell. However, they could. We will meet. District will bring in two employees who have visited the private school we’ve chosen. We will bring in the director of the private school we’ve chosen. And we will hash this out, hopefully without going to mediation or due process. But if they push us there, then we’ll fight with everything we have.
And….the biggest and best news…Emma is at this new school as I type as a shadow student for a day. This is to make sure that this school is the best fit for Emma. Can I just tell you how excited Emma was today to try a new school? She immediately made a new friend and practically ran to the gymnasium without giving me a hug or kiss. She couldn’t wait to start her day at this new school!! This goes to show that Emma has a passion to learn. She loves school. She just needs to be in the right placement.
