Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Zero Tolerance strikes again...

I would certainly like to get Michael away from that teacher. There was another incident today. They were all supposed to be writing (typing) an essay. Michael didn't know how to start, and the software was apparently acting up on him. So he decided to play Pokemon on the web, instead. Bad choice on his part. The teacher noticed and according to the school, she gave him a warning and another five minutes before coming back. Michael doesn't remember the warning. When she came back and saw him still playing, she told him to stop and immediately yanked the laptop away. Meltdown time. In the ensuing fracas, she says he slapped her on the wrist. He's been suspended for another two days.

(Not that I'm complaining, but I find it interesting that this incident -- including an allegation of direct contact -- was treated less seriously than the one two weeks ago, with the piece of paper. As far as I know, the police haven't been called in on this one.)

Anyway, not only is she his homeroom teacher, and his language arts teacher, she *also* teaches 1st period health class! Which is where the incident happened this time. I seriously want him out of that situation. Before he even goes back to school I want to have a long talk with that teacher. According to school officials, she's had training on autism. I told them it didn't work. My advocate/friend thinks we need to see documentation of said "training." And in any case, I don't know that training would help, since she seems pretty rigid. I wonder if she gets into shoving matches with any of her other students.

Wendy, I think I found that page through wrightslaw.com -- good site. We don't live very near Charlotte, I think it's a two hour drive. I've been in contact with Disability Rights, NC, although at this stage they're sticking with dispensing advice. I've also contacted the Duke Children's Law clinic, for low-income families, and they say they'll be in touch. They won't touch the justice-system side of things, but I really do want to have a lawyer at the next IEP meeting. And the sooner that meeting is held, the better.

PJ

I'm so sorry I was so late to see this. This is such a ridiculous situation, Pam. Sorry to hear about it.

Any news?

I'm late to this thread (per usual) but I just felt the need to comment on this situation.

As someone who works with people who have developmental disabilities, while I've never directly worked with someone who is autistic, I can certainly comment firsthand on how difficult and frustrating it can be to interact and try to connect with someone who's brain is wired differently than yours. In my opinion (and I should think this would be obvious), the key is to have some clue about what you're dealing with and how to handle it, and to have patience.

Clearly this teacher is not qualified to work with special needs children as these concepts seem to elude her. It sounds like Michael is doing extremely well if he's been mainstreaming for so long, but she still should have taken the time to educate herself on the subject and to talk with the rest of the school administrators to find successful ways to work with him. It must be so frustrating because really, the whole situation could have been avoided with a little effort on the school's part.

My heart goes out to you, and I hope this whole thing gets resolved soon.

We've had a lot of progress this week. On Tuesday, we drove to Durham to meet with the Duke University children's law clinic... (4th year law students take on issues in children's law, for low income families in the area, under supervision of a professor) We wanted to know what our legal options were. Bad news is, the previous IEP was written vaguely, so we didn't really have any grounds to sue. But the law student interviewed us, and the law professor paid attention, and then gave us some really good advice. This woman obviously knew about IEPs and autism, and pointed out problems with the existing IEP (when you take the language apart, it's written as if Michael is perfectly capable of behaving, but isn't choosing to do so, which is *far* from the truth). She then outlined some things to ask for in the IEP meeting; we took notes and basically used that as our game plan.

--We wanted a new analysis of his functional behavior and a new psychological analysis as well, focusing on his emotional maturity/social skills, etc.
--We wanted to talk about the "specially designed instruction" -- the way it was written, it didn't have to be direct one-on-one services.
--We wanted to plan to rewrite parts of the IEP, after the new analyses are done, and
--We wanted some specific accommodations -- modified assignments & classwork expectations, a second set of textbooks so he doesn't have to carry them around, and provision for visual, non-verbal cues for when he's upset.

So, we wrote those up into a two page document, printed 15 copies, stapled them, and took them along to give everyone their own copy. I'd also written a sort of "user's manual" with information on Michael, since every kid with autism has their own quirks, and we distributed those, too.

We had done a lot of homework (obviously; this has been occupying a lot of my time for weeks) so when we got in there, I was able to speak out confidently and lay out our expectations and concerns. In the past, we've mostly gone along with whatever the teachers suggested -- they're the experts, right? We're not making that mistake again.

It went pretty well. We were there for over two hours. The teachers were all there, along with the stupid jerk, I mean, ass't principal and two specialists that we'd not met before. The autism specialist for the school had some very good points, and we had some good discussion. It was all very civil (just to help the atmosphere stay friendly, I took along muffins, which they appreciated) and I think we educated them, to some extent, anyway.

So, they're going to have a point sheet for Michael to carry around, and teachers are going to prompt him for it, so they can give him a rating. Good behavior gets a 1, horrible behavior gets a 5, although they were all keen on heading off the really awful behavior if he seems to be heading in that direction. Good behavior wins him some free reading time; if he loses it he gets "pulled back" into the behavior support teacher's room the next day, where he can do his work, and talk about the stress and how he can deal with it better in future.

He's going to go to the behavior support teacher first thing every morning, to get direct social-skills instruction. Which is what we've been asking for since March, so yay! they're finally doing it. This will make him late to gym class, but I told them this wasn't a bug, it was a feature

They'll hold a textbook for him in the classroom, as well as give him one to keep at home (if appropriate, some classes don't use textbooks that much). He'd been carrying his social studies book everywhere, since he's afraid that if he goes to his locker, he'll be late to class.

They agreed that long written assignments can be modified/reduced/broken down into smaller sections. His algebra teacher said she'd be happy to get any homework out of him.

They said they wanted him to try to take notes -- he doesn't need them at the moment, but when he gets to high school, they'll be more important so we need to work him up to that. His social studies teacher said she'd give him credit for any attempt he makes, but he has to try. We decided that was fair enough.

We had wanted to ask if we could get them to contact us before handing Michael over to the cops. The idiot jerk said he couldn't agree to that, and if certain things happened, it was board policy to be referred to the police. I was so tempted to call him out on that, since he's acted inconsistently so far, but decided not to.

His language arts teacher -- the one who's provoked the two incidents -- mentioned in passing that she's been very careful of how she interacts with Michael. Better late than never, chickie.

So they'll be working on a new assessment and evaluation -- one of the specialists even volunteered that they could do an 'assistive technology' eval on him. They may decide he needs a laptop, for instance, so that he can type his notes. We learned last week about a girl with dyslexia, who was provided books and lectures digitally, and an mp3 player to listen to them with.

We're going to try all the things we talked about, see how they work, and then get back together in another meeting in early November.

We were pleased they agreed with most of what we wanted, and had some good ideas of their own, and most of all we're happy to have it in writing. If they screw up again in future, we want to have a paper trail.

Now all we have to do is go downtown and talk to the juvenile court counselor tomorrow... any prayers and good wishes will be greatly appreciated.

I'm exhausted. One more day to go. And then all I'll have to do is... take my final accounting exam over the weekend. Shouldn't take longer than ten hours altogether, with studying... my sociology final, I took this morning. And my english course doesn't have a final exam; we turned in research papers a week and a half ago.

PJ

Sending good thoughts your way for tomorrow and the weekend finals!

Baked goods are always a great icebreaker. :p Best of luck with the new program. It's super that several of the teachers are finally trying to implement some programs and skills for Michael.

JD

Whew, I'm glad the meeting went so well, and it sounds like it was very productive! I hope the other meeting goes just as well.

So, we went downtown to the courthouse -- had to go through a metal detector to get in, which Michael thought was cool -- and then up to the 7th floor. The juvenile court counselor (JCC) was really nice & understanding. I'd made copies of lots of paperwork, so I gave her all that. She interviewed Michael (he shared that he liked his sister "sometimes") and we told her about the IEP meeting we'd had Wednesday.

One thing was clarified -- upon Michael's second incident (the laptop grabbing thing), the school actually did contact the SRO (cop on campus) who consulted with the JCC, who told him not to do anything about it, since there was already something underway. Which explains the inconsistency in treatment; I had been assuming that the second incident hadn't been referred to the SRO at all. Now I'm glad I didn't try to make an issue of it in the IEP meeting.

We mentioned thinking about trying to educate the SRO... the JCC indicated that would be a good idea.

We told her about the new & improved BIP, with the point sheet, and social skills training, etc. We said that we were going to request a new psychological evaluation of Michael, since it had been last done in 2003, but the school wasn't too keen on that idea. We told her about taking Michael to the neurologist to work on his insomnia & panic attacks. We explained that once he gets to a certain point, rational thought disappears and he only reacts; a big part of the school plan is focused on stopping him from getting to that point. She took lots of notes.

At one point, Michael asked for a blank sheet of paper. She asked if he liked to draw, and he said he liked to fold. We watched him turn one piece of paper into a little kite and a cube.

She said she didn't think this should go before a judge. Instead, they have what they call a "diversion contract" which is a plan to be followed for up to six months. Kind of like being on parole, but not quite as binding. The terms of the contract are that Michael should work with the plan we'd agreed on with the school two days ago, that we should check in with her from time to time, and that Michael needed to make her a piece of origami art. He said he'd email it to her

She asked us if we wanted to add anything, and we said, well, the school doesn't seem too eager to do a whole new analysis on him. She added that recommendation to the contract It's not court-mandated, but it's court-highly-recommended. And if we have any problems with the school not living up to their side of the bargain, we should call her, and *she* would pressure them. God is so good.

We had worried so much about this... but it's all good. And I love the idea of being able to use the court against the school... should the need arise. Maybe the next time, they won't just wait to "see what happens" with another autistic kid.

So, we work with her and this contract for up to six months, and if things are going well, she declares the contract completed, and then shreds all the documents, so this won't be coming back to haunt him later. He's not been convicted of any crimes.

We went out to dinner to celebrate!

PJ

Pam, I'm so glad to read such good news about Michael. It seems as if he and you have found the proper track, and that you're finally getting through to the folks at his school. And I'm glad the counselor and Michael seemed to connect with the origami. Those are the kinds of things kids like Michael remember way longer than you'd think.

And yay for you! It's not easy being the parent of a child with any kind of special needs. I think you're doing a marvelous job and you are all to be applauded and lauded and feted and fed!

I hope you had ice cream.

Terry, yes, I'm very pleased that things are working out so well... a couple of weeks ago I'd started to suspect that this would all turn out to be a good thing (God is sneaky like that), and I think I was right.

Being a parent isn't easy, in general, and I always say that every child has challenges.. but this nonsense just might be a bit more than a lot of families ever have to worry about. I'm just glad I had my friend Angie, and the support of my church. (Just today, I used the church's photocopier to make copies of about 60 pages to give to the JCC, and they're covering the parking garage fee for our trip downtown.) We've been blessed with all you wonderful friends, too, to give us encouragement. Thank you, everyone!

PJ

I'm really glad to see both these updates, Pam! And congratulations, too, both on the outcome and on managing to stay calm and reasonable in a situation where most people would have found it hard not to lose their cool. Great idea with the muffins, too!

And let's hope that this new agreement holds and the school does their bit. Definitely sounds as if the juvenile court counsellor knows what she's doing.


Wendy

Pam, I'm glad things seem to be working out. I'm sorry I didn't comment before, but I just now saw your post, so my apologies.

I can relate. I don't have a kid with autism, but my second son had a severe learning disability, which he eventually managed to beat (if one can ever really "beat" such a thing) and we had to battle it and school officials over it from kindergarten through eleventh grade, before he finally managed to graduate to a regular curriculum. There was one incident where he and his sister got into a knock down drag out physical fight at home, and the next day the school was calling me about physical violence and numerous other allegations (sister had a bruise on her cheek) and was threatening call in the authorities and to force him into counseling. I pointed out that they apparently hadn't looked at *him* -- he was clawed up so badly that he looked like the victim of a bear attack. I had to face down the school counselor and make myself very unpopular with them before I could convince them to leave my family alone, and that we had dealt with the problem ourselves (yes, I know -- a mere *parent* dealing with something that the school wants to horn in on? Unheard of!) Evidently it worked, however. He is a law-abiding citizen of thirty today, albeit looking for a job because of the current recession, and she is a staff sergeant and CID officer in the Marine Corps. Somehow we muddled through it without a bunch of officious persons who had their own ideas of how we should do things.

Anyway, congratulations on working things out, and welcome to the messy world of officious nitwits and zero-tolerance nonsense in the current school system. Although I'm sure this isn't the first time you've encountered it.

Nan

Pam, I'm glad things are going (looking to go) better. I know this is many years down the road, but I wanted to tell you to keep all records and get evaluations for the future. With a Drs evaluation Brian was able to get to work with the disabilities office at college. This all had to be approved with the state to make him eligible. Through this office he gets letters for each of his teachers each semester telling them what help he has been approved for. He mostly only uses the one that allows him to take tests at the disabilities office and is allowed extra time. He is supposed to get 50% extra time but they don't monitor this. He has spent hours and hours in there on one test. He just keeps going over it and over it. He also gets to register for classes before everyone else. This has been the greatest!

Another thing that has helped in college has been a handicap sticker for the car. It's a commuter college and this has help greatly. Takes a lot of stress off him.

I am glad for the help he gets at the college but I do worry about the future and working. But I guess I need to just take one day at a time.

I'm glad things are better and I hope they stay that way.
Sue

Thanks, guys.

Wendy, revenge is a dish best served cold

Nan, they were idiots, but then you already know that. No, it's not our first encounter with the problem.

Sue, you bet we're keeping everything now. I've got a big binder that I've carried everywhere for weeks. It's got copies of the IEP, the BIP, the FBA, the school discipline reports and the school safety officer report, and every other official form, along with all the notes I've made, talking to all sorts of people. They're keeping copies of some of our papers, too because we printed things out and asked for them to be attached to the minutes.

The fight's not over yet. We still have to see how well they perform, and see if the modifications are actually helping. We want him re-evaluated, with an emphasis on his emotional, social, and functional behavior. We definitely want to rewrite sections of the IEP -- some things are way too vague and others are just plain wrong. And that's all before Christmas

They still fundamentally misunderstand autism, as evidenced by an email I received this morning. That's printed out, with the relevant section highlighted, and notes jotted in the margins. We need to get them educated.

We'll be watching them closely from now on.

So the war's ongoing -- but I think we definitely won this last battle.

PJ