Navigating the Special Education System Part 2: As A Parent

Last time we talked about my experience with the special education system as a student, today let's talk about my experience as a parent.

When my 8 year old was about 2-2.5 years old, she had a speech delay. She was very clearly not talking, had very few words, and was showing other pretty classic signs of autism. There's autism in our family, most of it was diagnosed much later in life, but I knew what to look for. I knew it was genetic, and it was very possible I could have a child that was autistic. In the meantime, we had family member who is a school psychologist in the county we lived in suggest we go to Child Find because she knew we were already worried about the speech delay.  We lived in Virginia at the time, but every state in the United States of America has a program for children from the ages of 18 months to three years of age specifically designed to have them evaluated to see if they have any disabilities under IDEA and then to provide services if they do.

In October 2019, my daughter was evaluated and she did fall under the autism category, which meant she would be provided services from the county. The services provided were very limited. There was no speech, occupational or ABA therapy, it was basically just being put into an autism classroom, which I knew was not sufficient for our daughter. She started in her autism preschool classroom in January of 2020. After about a month, we got a call from her team asking to discuss changing some of her goals in an IEP meeting because she wasn't thriving in the classroom she was in. She was trying to engage with her classroom, but wasn't getting anything reciprocated so they suggested moving her to a general disability classroom because it had kids that were more social and it was a better fit for her. She officially switched classrooms in February. Then March happened and we all know what happened in March of 2020. Everything shut down and we started doing virtual school/ homeschool. We had calls with her special education teacher on a weekly basis, she would send me things to work on and we did our best to work on them at home.

At the beginning of May, our daughter had her medical evaluation for autism, which where we live is separate from the county evaluation. The team evaluating her kept asking us if she was receiving speech, OT or any other kinds of services outside of just being in this disability classroom. When I said no they were very concerned. They assured us she needs to have at minimum speech and OT to succeed. At this point, everything is still virtual and it didn't look like we were going back to school in person anytime soon. That same week, we decided we were going to move to Tennessee.

A big reason for moving was because the services were much more readily available in Tennessee versus Virginia. We found an inclusive preschool that was split evenly with mainstream kids and kids with disabilities. The classroom sizes were small and each had two teachers. This school also provided services and therapies in the building. It was also part of a whole building of developmental pediatricians with private services and therapies as well. The county had a contract with the school for roughly 20 students with disabilities to be placed there, meaning the county would pay the school to have the kids to attend. I knew I wanted a house in the county so we could take advantage of this and in the meantime, I put her on the waitlist to be placed privately, which just means we would pay out of pocket for the preschool. After we bought our house, we had an IEP meeting with her new special education team in Tennessee. They gave us the option to go to another school but we moved to Tennessee specially for this inclusive preschool so we opted to go there. We pushed for that and the county placed her there, which was the ideal outcome for us.

So, now she had an IEP, she was in a school and we were in constant communication with her teacher. The preschool teacher she had our first year was impeccable. I just cannot say enough about this amazing woman. She would call to give me updates about how things were going with my daughter and would constantly advocate to add more to her IEP goals to help her succeed and get more resources. I know that is not the norm, so I cannot express enough how grateful I am to this teacher because she was so focused on making sure the kids in her class received the services and the accommodations they needed.

The next year the preschool terminated the contract they had with the county for a lot of complicated reasons, but we were able to keep our spot at the preschool because we were already there. Because of the shift, our daughter's IEP, Individualized Education Plan, turned into an ISP, which is an Individualized Service Plan. These are for students who reside in a specific county, but go to a private school. This ensures the county still provides services to that student at the private school which meant she was still getting speech, OT, and ABA therapy which was great. I know most people associate school choice with vouchers. While, as of a month ago, that is the case now in Tennessee, it wasn't the case at the time. School choice meant you could pick and choose where you send your kid to school instead of sending them exactly to the school they are zoned for. There's a lottery system for different private and charter schools as well as the public school. We had a lot of options and no idea where to start. We met with the administration from her preschool who were amazing and very invested her her success. They walked us through every school within 20 miles, private and public, and weighed the the pros and cons of each. With their help, we narrowed the list down to a few schools and started touring them. We went to both private and public schools and narrowed it down to one private school and one public school, both very close to our home. My husband and I both went to public schools and I am a big proponent of attending public schools. We know that even if your public school isn't a great public school, you can do what you can to better your public school. We really wanted to go with the public school option, if possible. We had a tour of the public school and the assistant principal was incredible. We had such an amazing experience doing the tour with her. At the end of the tour, she suggested we bring our daughter and part of her therapy team back and we will do another tour and make sure we have everybody's questions answered.

I was pretty floored at how accommodating she was. She has a very extensive education background including special education and a behavioral specialist within public schools, so she knew what she was doing. She is still at the school, as our principal now and is still incredible. We did select this school and it has been an incredible fit for our daughter. They have been very very accommodating with adding things to her IEP, making sure that she has what she needs, and even doing things that aren't even in her IEP. They're consistently so thoughtful about which classes they place her in and even take her into consideration when placing students in classrooms this year, even though we weren't here at the beginning of the year. They knew we were going to be in Argentina at the beginning of the year and had her all set to come back in January.

We have had an excellent experience in Tennessee, which I know isn't always the norm. I will say looking back, I'm not impressed with what they were doing in Virginia which was actually the same county that I grew up in/had my special education experience in which makes me even more grateful we moved to Tennessee.

Now that you know my experience as both a student and parent in special education in two different states, I want to continue this series. I'll address how to start advocating for your child if you believe they have a disability, getting an IEP/504, what happens when you need to add a diagnosis to an IEP/504, as well as directing you to other creators that are experts in the field. I'm hoping this series will be as informative as possible, so stay tuned!