My difficult child was tortured at his old school by the principal, who kept suspending him and telling us that he needed to be in a school where teachers were trained in restraint methods and where they had a secure facility! We refused the ED classification and insisted on OHI, due to his speech delays.
Finally, the SD forced us to see their shrink. It was the best thing I ever did. He was better than our shrink and told me that my son's main problem was a mismatch between him and his school. He gave him a diagnosis of school based anxiety disorder.
We immediately moved him to a different school in our SD (we own a rental property so we had a valid address and did not need to seek a variance). He was placed in a class with a first year teacher who has an ODD daughter with a substance abuse issue, so she understood our son. However, she was new and had a hard time with the class in general.
The new principal asked if we would consent to an ED classification from the OHI as that would allow an aide to be assigned to my son. We agreed on the condition that nobody disclose to my son that the aide was for him, he was to think she was there for the entire class. Apparently, we could not get an aide with an OHI classification of speech-language (other subcategories such as blindness or deafness would get one, even under OHI, but speech alone would not). In fact, my son was in grade 3 then and had not even had or needed speech therapy since grade 1 and at the beginning of grade 3 jumped up 4 reading levels so he wasn't even language delayed anymore.
In any event, the aide has worked out nicely. She moved with difficult child to grade 4 this year (we told him that last year she worked with a brand new teacher and this year she is working with a man teacher of 30+ years as part of HER training and it was just a coincidence that they are together again!). Don't know what we will do in grade 5 as the aide decided she liked teaching so much, she will be working as a student teacher next year and is guaranteed a spot as a teacher the year after that. This girl worked on Wall Street and decided after 9/11 that she did not want to do that anymore, that she wanted her life to have meaning. She has helped my son so much.
So, although husband and I fought against the ED label, it has actually helped our son, at least to this point. We are hopeful that he can be declassified by middle school and will use grade 5 as a transition time to see if he can function. He is very bright and scores gifted in both math and verbal, but has a writing refusal.
Michele