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School battle update, incredible turn of events
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<blockquote data-quote="slsh" data-source="post: 350274" data-attributes="member: 8"><p>Farmwife- you are doing an excellent job advocating for your child. You have done an amazing job of educating yourself and getting the ducks in line. Keep it up.</p><p></p><p>I am going to caution you very strongly here about getting OCR (Office of Civil Rights - handles ADA complaints) involved at this stage of the game. I'm not sure from your post if you actually contacted OCR or if you got OSEP. You have more than ample grounds for a complaint to the state board of ed, and I would follow thru with that. If that doesn't get you the results you need, I'd then start working thru the Office of Special Education programs (OSEP - the fed branch that covers Special Education). It will take time but you don't want to start too many fires at one time. The goal is to get your child appropriate services. The problem with OCR is that if you get them involved, and they rule against you, it's basically game over.</p><p></p><p>Quick story. IDEA states free and appropriate education in least restrictive environment, with activities with nondisabled peers to the maximum extent possible, including lunch and nonacademic classes. My non-difficult child sped kiddo is severely physically disabled. Not a behavior problem, not a disruption, just has multiple disabilities. He is alert, aware, and I suspect far closer to normal cognitive function than anyone in our SD would like to admit. He does not require a single service that is not currently offered in our local HS. But... the practice up here is that severely disabled students are *not* served in their neighborhood schools. They're schlepped off to "co-ops", segregated programs that in my experience are not necessarily even in schools (Boo spent a couple years in an administration building where they were warehousing the severely disabled classes). This isn't based on needs or IEPs. It's driven by severity of disability, period. Blatant violation of IDEA, in my humble opinion. When Boo started HS, I put my foot down and demanded he be placed in our HS, not the admin building. Again, every service he requires is provided in our local HS. I filed an OCR complaint on behalf of students who were in the admin building (because I was getting a *lot* of flack from our SD over my demand). OCR somehow felt that segregation and exclusion based on disability was *not* a violation of civil rights. I finally bit the bullet and consulted one of the top sped attorneys in the city. We had an excellent case against SD, but he was very unhappy that I had filed the OCR complaint because since they had ruled they way they did, they had sanctioned the garbage the SD was pulling. He said OCR was the very last resort, ever. If we had had the $20,000 minimum it would have taken to hire atty, we would've eventually won, but my OCR complaint would have made his job that much harder. A year of this garbage, 3 huge binders filled with certified letters and documentation of the SD's garbage, and my son suffering at the hands of a very retaliatory SD... I gave up. </p><p></p><p>To this day, I do not understand how segregation based solely on disability *isn't* a violation of both ADA and IDEA, but we simply didn't/don't have the financial resources to fight this practice.</p><p></p><p>Keep working with- SD, keep on educating yourself. Get ISBE/OSEP involved. At some point, it might be well worth the $$$ to consult a sped attorney. But do tread cautiously in terms of how many complaints/agencies you get involved at one time because you may very well get blind-sided.</p><p></p><p>I don't mean to discourage you. I think you're doing a great job. But this is IL and in my experience at least, implementation of IDEA is haphazard and rather random, and the very agencies that are supposed to support our kids can do the exact opposite.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="slsh, post: 350274, member: 8"] Farmwife- you are doing an excellent job advocating for your child. You have done an amazing job of educating yourself and getting the ducks in line. Keep it up. I am going to caution you very strongly here about getting OCR (Office of Civil Rights - handles ADA complaints) involved at this stage of the game. I'm not sure from your post if you actually contacted OCR or if you got OSEP. You have more than ample grounds for a complaint to the state board of ed, and I would follow thru with that. If that doesn't get you the results you need, I'd then start working thru the Office of Special Education programs (OSEP - the fed branch that covers Special Education). It will take time but you don't want to start too many fires at one time. The goal is to get your child appropriate services. The problem with OCR is that if you get them involved, and they rule against you, it's basically game over. Quick story. IDEA states free and appropriate education in least restrictive environment, with activities with nondisabled peers to the maximum extent possible, including lunch and nonacademic classes. My non-difficult child sped kiddo is severely physically disabled. Not a behavior problem, not a disruption, just has multiple disabilities. He is alert, aware, and I suspect far closer to normal cognitive function than anyone in our SD would like to admit. He does not require a single service that is not currently offered in our local HS. But... the practice up here is that severely disabled students are *not* served in their neighborhood schools. They're schlepped off to "co-ops", segregated programs that in my experience are not necessarily even in schools (Boo spent a couple years in an administration building where they were warehousing the severely disabled classes). This isn't based on needs or IEPs. It's driven by severity of disability, period. Blatant violation of IDEA, in my humble opinion. When Boo started HS, I put my foot down and demanded he be placed in our HS, not the admin building. Again, every service he requires is provided in our local HS. I filed an OCR complaint on behalf of students who were in the admin building (because I was getting a *lot* of flack from our SD over my demand). OCR somehow felt that segregation and exclusion based on disability was *not* a violation of civil rights. I finally bit the bullet and consulted one of the top sped attorneys in the city. We had an excellent case against SD, but he was very unhappy that I had filed the OCR complaint because since they had ruled they way they did, they had sanctioned the garbage the SD was pulling. He said OCR was the very last resort, ever. If we had had the $20,000 minimum it would have taken to hire atty, we would've eventually won, but my OCR complaint would have made his job that much harder. A year of this garbage, 3 huge binders filled with certified letters and documentation of the SD's garbage, and my son suffering at the hands of a very retaliatory SD... I gave up. To this day, I do not understand how segregation based solely on disability *isn't* a violation of both ADA and IDEA, but we simply didn't/don't have the financial resources to fight this practice. Keep working with- SD, keep on educating yourself. Get ISBE/OSEP involved. At some point, it might be well worth the $$$ to consult a sped attorney. But do tread cautiously in terms of how many complaints/agencies you get involved at one time because you may very well get blind-sided. I don't mean to discourage you. I think you're doing a great job. But this is IL and in my experience at least, implementation of IDEA is haphazard and rather random, and the very agencies that are supposed to support our kids can do the exact opposite. [/QUOTE]
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