I have been mulling over what to say about our recent 12-hour IEP marathon with the Atlanta Public Schools' Program for Exceptional Children team assigned to our little boy Vance. Since my mother taught me to always try to say something nice about someone, I'll say this: the 13 people assembled to try to figure out an appropriate way to educate our autistic son never once complained about the length of the meetings or the unconscionably hot temperature in the SPARK conference room. (Really? It's not enough to subject us to the Meetings That Never End; we also must have them in a sweatbox?)...
There is no question some (not all, but some) of the PEC people in that room are dedicated to jobs that provide many opportunities to receive criticism and few to receive praise. But as I often say, none of us is being graded on intentions. It's a given that we all really want to help special-needs children. Nobody gets extra credit for having a super-empathetic attitude.
We're being measured on performance and execution, and on that score, the PEC employees assigned to our child have performed poorly and in some cases disastrously so. I now count thirteen separate serious incidents (in three years) in which PEC employees have willfully failed to comply with the IDIEA law specifying what they're supposed to do for our child. I'm not talking about little missteps here--I'm talking about major screw-ups.
But this posting isn't going to be a rant about that. What I want to do now is talk directly to all of you parents whose children are in the PEC and who have a feeling in your gut that despite the pleasantries you've exchanged with your child's IEP team members and their many little speeches about how hard they're trying and how well they think they're doing by your child, you are still deeply anxious. Something doesn't feel right.
The answer, more than likely, is that your gut is telling you the truth. So trust your gut. Get an advocate. (Ours is the excellent Rachael Barron with the Zimring Law Firm). Rachael has quite literally plucked our child out of the Maelstrom and helped us put him in a private program, the Summit Learning Center, where he is now doing much better and un-learning some of the horrible behaviors he had adopted in the chaotic special-ed classroom at SPARK, under the supervision of an untrained, inexperienced young male paraprofessional who had no qualifications, skill or enthusiasm for the task at hand.
Either PEC employees will willfully try to steer you away from the resources your child needs because of their own budgetary targets, or they'll deny your reasonable, appropriate requests because they don't have adequate personnel (not enough speech therapists, for example) or they'll say no because they don't understand the IDIEA law requires them to say yes. It doesn't matter if their motives are pure or dirty. What matters is that you are not gonna get what you need for your child unless you bring muscle to the meeting. Trust me, going in there with a forceful attitude and with a binder full of research on IDIEA is not enough. I tried it.
Take my advice. Get an advocate for your child. You're going to be up against some really difficult obstacles (and again, I can only speak about the Atlanta Public Schools' special-ed folks; the people in your district may be more trustworthy).
Good luck, and stick with it.
