What a difference a school makes
Changing schools was a difficult belabored family decision - and the right one for us. While it represents losses it also landed our son in a place that we are grateful for everyday. But as often happens in life, I wish I had all the lessons from that journey up-front instead of hindsight. Sometimes being a mom means you have to let your inner voice guide the trail you blaze, even when it feels like perilous shaky ground. In case your trail is similar, here are some humble guard rails.
Early on we’d been told by numerous specialists and teachers that our son was intelligent, but different. We struggled to find him the right preschool and pre-k fit(s). After that, he made the lottery into the district’s math and science focus elementary school. He loved science and we understood that focus/lottery schools were obliged to the same special needs services as other schools. With an only child we’d had no previous experience with the special needs support of our district, so of course we didn’t have a framework for what that looked like.
I wish I’d known to ask
Feeling beholden to the team that has my child everyday, I wanted to convey trust. But there are many questions I wish I had known to ask (even if only of my-observer-self) to help me be a better advocate: Is the school delivering on all that is in the IEP and how are they doing so? (If not all, then at least the important stuff and do that know what that is?) Does the school leadership expect the team to address a gap in service or unmet IEP need of a child? Are teachers encouraged to obtain the additional necessary training to support kids who learn differently? Does the school have a history of demonstrating they can support kids who are different? Are the teachers getting the support they need in order to deliver on the IEP? Does the district provide the same level of support at our school, as all the other schools in the district (which is already minimal)? Could this team articulate how the IEP is benefiting my child in class? Is it a school that expects the teacher and special ed to collaborate on services and solutions - and what does that look like?
When to cut your losses
Fast forward to third grade and feeling desperate that our son was losing out on his education because he wasn’t getting the support he needed. By the time we’d wasted months waiting for additional school evaluations and then resorting to attorneys to find the best possible IEP for our son, we came to realize it wasn’t going to change things. The team that had unnecessarily drawn out this process while continuously demonstrating a failure to deliver on his IEP would remain intact; Nothing new was going to happen to hold the teachers accountable to deliver on any new IEP in place; teachers would continue to be allowed to overlook accommodations.
The principal factor
Based on our experience in our district the school leadership has a more significant impact than any one teacher. I’d been told by one of the Special Ed Teacher-Parent Association officers that the principal is ultimately responsible to make sure that the teachers are doing their jobs and delivering on an IEP. The principal was dismissive and mostly absent from our process to seek appropriate support for our child. He allows teachers to do what they want, which results in loyal employees, but an elitist sink-or-swim environment for students. Sadly, students like my son are the ones who suffer in that scenario. From what we could tell, teachers are not held accountable. It is also the principal’s duty to manage class-size and support and advocate the student, teacher and school needs to the district.
Super-mom glue should not be required
I had spent oodles of time volunteering with the intent of giving back since schools are so underfunded and our family requires extra effort. Regardless, it turned out that large amounts of my time and energy were essential to be the glue (super!) between the special needs team and most teachers because they weren’t connecting. I thought that was due to the understaffing issues our schools are having, and how extra hard our teachers are having to work, but I now see it is much more than that. There were teachers who did not recognize or discuss how our son was different; teachers who told us they had no special needs training and provided inappropriate solutions, making things more difficult for my son; classes with almost a third of students dis-regulated with no additional teacher support, where special needs teachers did drive-bys to basically just plug the holes; teachers who arrogantly taught they way they always had, quietly boycotting teaching differently to our son and ignoring IEPS, tools provided, and special needs experts.
Acceptance
The school was fundamentally broken when it came to kids who had different needs. Sadly, it took us too long to realize that as much as we wanted to affect change there, not only for our son but for the greater community, not a lot was going to change. Once realized, we decided to switch schools. I only wish we’d realized and accepted it sooner. (I’ve heard this from other moms in similar scenarios by the way.) This meant leaving behind the community we had been a part of since kindergarten to join a school-community where we didn’t know many; leaving the benefits of a k-8 school; leaving the focus of science. Transitions can be hard for kids like him. I was understandably bitter that my son had to give all this up because the school was unable to be inclusive.
Every student matters
Before making the change to our neighborhood school, I interviewed families who had received special needs support at what would become our new school (our neighborhood school). The one thing I heard repeatedly was that “they paid attention to the needs of every student”. I didn’t really know what that looked like given where we were coming from. I couldn’t imagine anyone saying that about the school or the principal we were leaving or for that matter, feeling like our situation there really mattered to him.
What improvements look like
We managed to switch schools for the last few weeks of the school year. We told our son it was a trial and based on what we all thought, we’d decide what to do for the next year. It was big-time hit. Our son’s anxiety reduced almost immediately as they were more supportive and flexible. Now we are back at school this year a couple months already, and I’ve had a chance to further experience how differently this school operates. The teacher we got assures me they keep in touch with the special needs team and resources - OWNING it. Not a single teacher did that at the previous school - I had to do that on my own or risk that the support was not happening. Here, the special Ed and teacher team work fluidly so far. I welcome the fact that now I am just the regular mom-level glue. When people do their best to do their jobs, I’ve also noticed that the amount of time our family draws from the system is also hugely reduced. It is astounding how much less time it requires of everyone. This also seems an important point since our schools are so anemic these days, and every hour is accounted for on a spreadsheet.
I have a number of mom-friends, all who have their own stories about what a difference a school has made for them. (Hint: I would love to help share their lessons also….) Additionally, I’ve run into special needs parents who fear that bringing up these challenges will drive some to conclude that different kids should be more separated. This is a blog post for another time, but suffice it to say that would be doing ALL our kids a disservice. But so is ignoring the fact that people are not doing their jobs and that our schools are insufficiently funded to do what they are legally obliged to do. The weight of caring for higher needs children is plenty for moms like us, and our system does not seem to easily facilitate input from families like ours. While we gave up on impacting change for my son’s situation at that one school, we’ve not given up on continuing to push our school system to make the necessary corrections when and where we can. And clearly, I’ve not given up on parents like you and I.