Well interesting day. I started out last night (all night and morning) with the stomach flu and today was the 2 orientations for the kids. Not ideal. I went to the high school orientation and met the teachers. They are starting him out a half day with classes he should do well in : PE, an art class with sculpture and clay, and a reading class for kids that have low fcat scores. They use the Lexia software which I've heard great things about, and let them choose from different books to read. It's geared toward improving their standardized scores, but the teacher says he really wants to just work on their reading and has good intentions. That's temporary and then they will be getting him into their special ed classes asap for the rest of the day. I think it might actually work out for S15, and I'm surprised, b/c he is very autistic, but luckily he's big, like 6'3" and 160 or 170 pounds, so I think that will help socially too hopefully. I'm feeling good about that sitch for him.
Not so happy with D9's. Apparently she has to experience failure in the regular classroom before they will pull her out for the math, reading, and writing special ed classes that they say she does qualify for with testing. They said last year they would have pulled her out right away, but they have new procedures this year. Apparently some schools were using the special ed process to weed out kids doing poorly in the standardized testing, but not really special ed. So poor D9 has to suffer apparently. I told the assistant principal and H that I would agree to no more than 2 weeks without the special ed she needs. (H said something to me about how bad that I was issuing demands to her by saying that, and he thinks not political, but gee tough.) I plan to pull her out if they don't come through by then. She is so sweet and enthusiastic and self-confident, and I would hate to see that ruined.
