I am new to this, although I have been reading some of your posts since I found this site a couple of weeks ago. My difficult child, Kyle, is 16 and is driving us insane. His problems started when he started school and he has been evaluated and diagnosed several times. The school psychiatrist had him down as "behaviorly impaired" when he was in the the 2nd grade. Since then, he has been diagnosed with ODD and ADHD. I absolutely agree with the ODD diagnosis, but I am not convinced of the ADHD and neither are any of his past teachers. None of them could believe that he had ADHD and they all say he doesn't act like any of the students they have had in the past that had ADHD. But, on the advice of the psychologists, we have tried him on adderol, once when he was in the 3rd grade and then again this past June, when we had him evaluated again. When he was in the 3rd grade, the adderol did nothing for him and more recently, it made his behavior about 10 times worse than it was before. So, I brought him to a psychiatrist, and he put him on Stratera. Again, doesn't do anything but give him a stomach ache. Then, my difficult child, refused to keep taking it. Said that if anybody needed to be medicated, it was me and that I only wanted to make myself look good by making him take the medication. I'm straying here I know, but thought I needed to give a little back ground info. Anyway, over the years, Kyle's IEPs have gone from one thing to another. It's like they can't decide what to do with him, so they are making stuff up. First he was getting help for language arts and reading, then it went to giving him help for behavioral issues. Then it went back to language arts. Just as suddenly, they switched gears again to math being his problem. I've tried to tell them countless times that he doesn't really have a problem academically, that his problem is that he doesn't want to do any work period. On to what my questions are. Kyle was expelled from school last fall for bringing a knife to school. Of course, he claims he forgot it was in his pocket and didn't bring it on purpose. He was living with my mom and stepdad at the time because his relationship with my husband had deteriorated so much at the time. When he got the initial suspension, my mother called me up and said to come and get him because they had, had enough. So I went up to Maine Thanksgiving weekend and brought him to Virginia to live with us. I was totally honest with the school here in VA and told them he had the 10 day suspension and why. They said that since their policy was an automatic 365 day expulsion for bringing a weapon to school, that they had to get his previous school's recommendation. The school in Maine recommended the expulsion and that's what they were going to do and that I could appeal to the school board to not to expell him at their next meeting. Which, of course I did. They upheld the expulsion. The next thing I know, the assistant superintendent calls and says that they will be providing tutoring services at home because Kyle has an IEP. At this point, I suspected something weird was going on, so I went searching on line to find out what services they were required to provide to a Special Education student that was expelled. That is when I discovered, to my dismay that he shouldn't have been expelled at all, according to the Parent's Handbook for Special Education Rights. To make a long story short, I went to see a lawyer about what could be done about getting him back into regular school. Basically I was told that it would be a $5000 retainer with no guarantee that he would get back in. The school board meeting was the first or second week of December 2006. I had to fight with them to provide the tutoring that they had promised. The tutoring did not begin until June 14th. They did the entire ninth grade language arts curriculum in 7 days at an average of 45 minutes per day. Did geography in about the same amount of time. She managed to stretch algebra out a little longer as she has had several days she couldn't come and vacations. They will be finishing algebra on Thursday this week. That gives them 8 days to do the Earth Science curriculum, as the tutor never comes on Friday's. In February, we met to do the new IEP. I asked about the expulsion then and was told by he assistant principal that the school board's decision was final and nothing could be done. I pointed out that a manifestation meeting had never been done etc. The assistant principal got on the phone with the assistant superintendant and they said that we gave up our right to due process by taking him out of the school in Maine. I pointed out that I wasn't a resident in Maine and couldn't make them do anything, and that my mother didn't even know what the due process was at the time because she was never informed of her rights. My fear at this point is that they will stop tutoring him again once school starts up because they don't have anyone available. The issue was that my husband and I work and don't get home until around 6PM and they didn't have anyone that could come that late and they wouldn't send someone if there was not a parent present. I told the assistant principal that we couldn't quit our jobs so that we could be there. His response to me was "....as parents, we all need to make sacrifices sometimes." Again, I was stunned. I don't think I even had a response for that one. So, what do I do from here? Incidently, we were going to take $5000 out of our savings and hire the lawyer. I told my difficult child, that we were willing to spend all that money to get him back into school but if he messed it up and got himself in trouble "accidently" again, he would have to pay back every dime of it. His response to me was, "don't bother then." Any advice anyone can give me will truly be appreciated. Thanks!
Kellie
Kellie
