Special Abilities - Growing Up in Santa Cruz

Schools Help Find Solution for Child with ADHD

growingupsc — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 20:15:07 +0000

Jeanette Prather knew she faced an uphill battle getting help in school when her son was diagnosed with ADHD. This series documents her struggles and the help she received, and yes, it has a happy ending. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here. Short of forfeiting or strongly amending Luke’s Individualized Education Plan plan, my search was not being met with much success. He was on the waitlist of every charter school in the area, with principals and directors of programs expressing empathy towards our situation but also explaining that their hands are tied. “There are too many kids in this district with IEPs now. We just don’t have the resources to accommodate anymore,” they would regretfully tell me. Thank goodness that one of the principals of an alternative program, Ocean Alternative, went out of her way to help me. She spent an extended period of time on the phone with me mid-summer while I was on a shopping trip in Target. “I’m sorry that we can’t help you, but I do think there’s some sort of independent studies program offered through the SVUSD. Don’t you and your family live in Scotts Valley?” She asked. “Yes!” I replied. She was at her computer so she told me she would look up the program and let me know if it’s still offered. When she confirmed that it was, the first thing I did when I got home was pop my computer open and start the research.At this point, it was July 2022 and time was not on my side. I reached out to the SVUSD immediately and was met with prompt responses. HOW SVUSD IS SUPPORTING LUKE’S NEEDSLuke attended the in-person meeting with me, the Director of Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment, Alexandra Friel, and the Director of Special Education, Amy Churchill. After I riddled off the past six years of struggle that I’ve witnessed and experienced as well, they told me about the independent studies program. None of us were certain that we could pull off an educational model that would support Luke’s pretty extensive IEP requirements while in some sort of independent studies program, but they understood that I was a “hard no” on putting Luke in full-time, mainstream middle school. I didn’t feel strong-armed like I had in previous meetings, and in fact, felt like they were putting Luke and his needs first. Especially Churchill, who emphasized the importance of helping Luke succeed in whatever model that looked like. “Our top priority is that whatever model we come up with, supports Luke’s needs as best as possible,” said Churchill.After Churchill and Luke’s former IEP team connected for his transitional IEP meeting, almost less than two weeks before the start of school, I heard word that his former IEP team didn’t think he would do too well in some version of an independent studies model. Needless to say, I was freaking out a bit. When the time came for a final meeting with Churchill to go over her proposal for this year, I was nervous that they were going to pull the plug on the entire thing and he would end up at his default neighborhood school full-time, Scotts Valley Middle School. Not to say there is anything wrong with that middle school, but a full-time mainstream program in any form had failed us on multiple levels in the past. That last meeting was pleasant, however. My husband and I sat at our dining room table on a zoom with Churchill waiting for the inevitable news of Luke not making it into the independent studies program, only to find that Churchill was able to draft a sort of hybrid model for Luke that provided in-person services at SVMS that meets the number of hours he’s allotted in his IEP, as well as participate in the independent studies program. It was the best of both worlds! In just a little over a month into this new schedule we had developed our flow. The SVUSD has worked tirelessly to help accommodate Luke so that he’s no longer the kid falling through the cracks. A hybrid model is not something offered to the masses, but they dove into a very personalized education approach for us, which is exactly what Luke needs. This overt accommodation of Luke’s needs by the SVUSD may be an indirect influence of a current California lawsuit ruled winter of 2021 that lifted some restrictions placed on students with special needs not having access to independent studies nor in-person educational support. According to EdSource.org, Assembly Bill 130 was past July 2021 that required California schools to offer in-person classes and services to all students except the few who qualified for independent studies. “Some students in special education — such as those with severe cognitive or developmental disabilities that prevent them from wearing masks, or students who were especially vulnerable to Covid — could not attend in-person school for health reasons, but were shut out of independent study because it wasn’t specified in their individualized education programs,” wrote a November 5, 2021 article titled, “California Students with Disabilities Can Enroll in Independent Study, Judge Rules” by Carolyn Jones. “As a result, those students have been at home, receiving little if any formal education.” While this situation didn’t apply to my family, the result and subsequent fall-out of the ruling has provided Luke many more options that were not available to him in the past. The SVUSD does not offer this hybrid model to every child, but they have been very clear that they will do their best to accommodate and make arrangements per child, per situation. And the fact that they took so much time trying to curate the best educational fit for Luke, was refreshing. He works with his independent studies teacher and me in the morning doing math, science and social studies, which he happily completes each morning. His sense of accomplishment and self-confidence has increased exponentially because of this. Then midday, he attends his in-person Resource Specialist Program class and Physical Education at SVMS. Every 30 days we have a zoom check-in to make sure that things are still working out well for him after wrapping the first one at the beginning of September. The feedback from Luke has been like night and day compared to the O.G. full-time in-person model of mainstream classroom education. He says he actually enjoys school now (a first!) and walks with a little pep in his step. “I felt like I was trapped at my old school, and it was not that fun because we had to do a lot, a lot of work,” said Luke. “How I feel about my independent studies and in-person school situation is great. It’s a good mix for me and I feel successful now. I actually understand what I’m learning!” Do you have stories about how to handle special needs and special abilities students? Have you found successful alternatives you can share? Please write to editor@growingupsc.com

The post Schools Help Find Solution for Child with ADHD first appeared on Growing Up in Santa Cruz.

How did public schools help a student with ADHD?

growingupsc — Sun, 04 Dec 2022 00:00:11 +0000

Mother Jeanette Prather knew she faced an uphill battle getting help in school when her son was diagnosed with ADHD. This series documents her struggles and the help she received, and yes, it has a happy ending. You can read part 1 at growingupsc.com/how-to-help-your-child-with-adhd-in-school. I addressed the school issue with this knowledge by reaching out to Alternative Family Education (AFE), who confirmed they had a resource teacher available to work with Luke that year. With some desperate negotiations from his mainstream resource teacher, I decided to keep him in school. Shortly after that, he was invited to a 12-person cohort for students who really needed that help. This was fine for a while and an incredible break from the otherwise hectic Santa Cruz school traffic that I faced every morning on my commute from Scotts Valley (we moved summer of 2019 and let Luke decide if he wanted to stay at his school or change, and he wanted to stay). But then the second shoe dropped; spring 2021 invited all students back to school, full time. I mistakenly thought that since Luke had been attending school since the November prior, that he would have an easy transition back full time with everyone. Nope. It got so bad that first day as we approached his school, that I thought I was going to have to pull over before he got sick. After we parked, I couldn’t get him out of the car and in a desperate attempt for damage control, I scrambled to the school seeking the school counselor, who happened to know Luke very well. She followed me, as I was nearly in tears, to the car to try and coax Luke out and into his class. The most success she had that morning was a long walk with Luke around the school, an excused tardy and my cell phone number in case I needed to come pick him up. Heartbreak again. It went on like this for a couple of weeks before he eased into the new routine, right before school let out for summer break 2021 (I still don’t understand why they opened schools in April of that year, then let the kids out at the end of May). Anyway, after recovering that summer, he was ready for his fifth and final year at that school. That was the year met with the most success, like his second grade year, although I was not so convinced that mainstream would be our path forward. In fact, I had already been “school shopping” for Luke since his late second, early third grade years prior to the pandemic. I was not convinced that we could pull-off middle school with our elementary school track record, and so I began searching for any alternatives I could possibly find. Restricted by not having the finances for private school, yet every fiber of my being, every cell in my body screaming not to go mainstream again, I began digging and digging and digging… NOT TOO MANY OPTIONS FOR AN IEPI would spend Zoom sessions in my Dramatist’s Guild certification class secretly searching for alternative middle school options in Santa Cruz County. I didn’t know about charter schools at this point, but I found a few alternative programs fall of 2021 that looked promising. As a journalist, I know how to follow leads. So, I spent that fall following one thread and then another until I thought I had found the best solution; an alternative program formerly called Phoenix Academy, presently Santa Cruz Community School. In my research I learned that this was the school for middle school expulsion students and those who’ve accrued too many tardies. The program director had a very innovative, new age approach to middle school curriculum where he would have the kids read classic literature and discuss the books while sitting on their desks; listen to TED talks; create an incentive, community approach to his grading; and offer project-based learning opportunities. He didn’t know who would be in attendance during any points of the year because the program was really created as a fluid launching-off educational platform and not really a stay-and-learn model. I was desperate so I didn’t really care, just loved the director’s approach to learning. So there. That’s it. October 2021 and I was ahead of the game. I was convinced – and thusly, convinced everyone around me – that this was the program for us. Bonus: It is a seven-minute walk from Luke’s grandparent’s house, so he would just walk there when he was done at 1 pm. Perfect. Reality check: Nothing is perfect. When I floated this idea to Team Education Luke that year, everyone was sold except for the County Office of Education (COE), who mentioned how early it was and suggested that we wait until after spring break in 2022 to really finalize details. So, we waited. Spring break came and went, so I eagerly emailed the COE. We set up a meeting with Luke in attendance, and most of the hour was spent emphasizing their hesitation with putting Luke into Santa Cruz Community School. “He’s a really youthful 11-year-old,” they said to me. “We wouldn’t want him to get exposed to too much.” Heartbreak again. It was May 2022, and I still didn’t know where Luke would attend school in the fall. But knowing that I couldn’t give up on him, I picked myself up by the bootstraps and continued my search. Do you have stories about how to handle special needs and special abilities students? Have you found successful alternatives you can share? Please write to editor@growingupsc.com

The post How did public schools help a student with ADHD? first appeared on Growing Up in Santa Cruz.