The long and winding road to educating David

A short time ago, a friend asked if I wouldn't mind speaking with her sister, who had a child with a different learning style and was about to embark upon the long, difficult journey of trying to get the New York City Department of Education to educate her son. I was happy to and in the end, sent her some helpful hints which I compiled from my "Useful Numbers" and "Tracking Document" (which currently was 14 pages in length) to both help her learn what to expect and what she needed to do in the coming months to get Ruben what he needed.

Not two weeks after, I ran into a mom from David's former school, who asked if I could prep her and share with her what I'd experienced to help her daughter secure a spot in a school that better suited her needs.

I am in no way an expert or a professional. I am just a mom who set out on a quest to get her son educated in a way that worked for him. I had no clue what an IEP was. Or how to get an IAP. Or how to ensure that David received the "free and appropriate education" that he was promised, that was his right. But little by little, I learned. I'm happy to share it with you and hope that it helps.


Helpful Hints

I hope you find the information below helpful. I pieced it together from various tracking documents I’ve kept during our long, hard battle with the Department of Education to educate our dyslexic son David.

IAPs:
Jeanine Pollack, independent IAP/neuropsychologyst, Neuropsychological Arts, 26 Court Street, Bklyn, NY 11201, 718-237-2333, ext 11, a private evaluation is done over two full days and she writes a detailed (ours was 27 pages) report. Janine is great, very gentle, personable and capable.

The NYU Child Study Center, 212-263-6622, also does evaluations, shorter waiting time. http://www.aboutourkids.org/

Attorneys:Neal Rosenberg, 9 Murray Street, Suite 4W, NY 10007. 212-732-9450, one of the top 2 attorneys whose offices solely handle disputes against the Dept of Education. (The other is Regina Skyler, who specializes in autism) Neal gives a free consultation. After you sign with him, a certain amount is due and you have to keep suing the Dept of Ed each year. The team in Neal's office works together, they're all very capable, very accessible and supportive, real pros.

Schools:
The 4 schools that are Bd of Ed funded (they take $$ directly from Bd of Ed):
Churchill (E 29th, NYC)
Lowell (Queens)
Community School (Teaneck, NJ)
Gateway (W 61st St, NYC)

Open houses at various schools start as early as October for the following year. When you file admissions application there’s an application fee, usually between $50 and $100. You also need to provide copies of various school reports. I would contact a school at any time of the year, though, as people move out of state, change jobs, school status changes and openings can occur.

I’ve visited two of the above during open houses in early 2007. They are:

Churchill School, 301 East 29th Street, 212-722-0610, http://www.churchillschool.com/
I loved Churchill. We sent in an application but they said David didn't meet their profile. They said he has the skills but couldn't access them. (But isn't that exactly the type a child this sort of school would benefit?) Anyway, it has a big, beautiful campus, each floor was color-coded so students wouldn’t get lost (people who reverse numbers and letters often have a hard time figuring out what floor they’re on…2, 3, 5…all look the same.) Churchill goes from grade K-12.

The Gateway School, 211 West 61st Street, 6th floor New York, New York 10023 , 212-777-5966
http://www.gatewayschool.org/
Gateway was the first school I looked at and I didn’t like it. (However, I looked at it when it was located on Second Avenue, between 14th & 15th Street, so things could have changed since then.) In retrospect, I think I was shell-shocked that my child wasn't "normal" and might actually need a place like this. Maybe I was a bit judgmental and wasn't looking at the school with an open mind. Or maybe it was the icky parents at the open house who were most impressed with the school because of the beautiful renovation! I just wanted to find a place that would teach my kid to read. A good deal of the students seemed to have sensory issues; they called an assembly so we could see the student population, which wasn’t very ethnically diverse.

Private Schools:The Sterling School, 299 Pacific Street, Brooklyn NY 11201, 718-625-3502, http://www.sterlingschool.com/
Ruth Arberman started the school seven years ago for dyslexic son who’s now in 11th grade. She also teaches there and runs the whole shebang. The staff is Orton Gillingham-trained in multisensory educational tactics, a very successful reading program for kids with dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities. The first time I called, Ruth spoke to me for an hour or more. She's a dynamo, full of information, extremely knowledgeable and very willing to help anyone who has a child with LD's. The school is tiny, in the ground floor of a brownstone, with less than 30 students. David was accepted here but we decided to go with a larger school with more on-site amenities (like OT, a gym). It was a difficult decision because Ruth is such an incredible woman.

And finally, David's school:
The Mary McDowell Center for Learning, 20 Bergen Street (lower elementary), 135 Summit Street (middle school), 23 Sidney Place (upper school), Brooklyn, NY, 11201, 718-625-3939- main number, Susan Krim, admissions. http://marymcdowell.org/
An independent Friends school for children with learning disabilities, has a little more than 200 students total in grades pre-k to 10 (they are adding a grade a year in high school, so in 2013 they will have 12 grades), the staff is very supportive, understanding and caring, and really wants your child to succeed. At parent-teacher conferences, the focus is on what your child does right, not what they do wrong. They follow the Quaker tenets of acceptance, community and fellowship, and also practice group moments of silence. It truly feels like family.

Important tip:
Keep a written record/tracking document with dates of meetings, what was discussed, what changes were implemented, etc., just in case you have to sue the Dept of Ed in the future. It’s more ammunition for you since they are shoddy with their record-keeping and the burden of proof rests with them, not you. In other words, they have to prove that they are providing your child with a “free and appropriate education” (their catch phrase).

Also, when a change is implemented by the Dept of Ed/your child's current school, it must be in place for 30 days to determine whether or not the new tactic is working. But hold them to the time frame (they easily lose track and often things fall between the cracks). If you’re not happy with the results, tell them so and ask for something else to be implemented.

Hang tough and be a persistent. It’s a long, hard road but well worth it in the end. Good luck!

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Reading in Bed

Last night, David and I were reading in bed. A sight I never, ever thought I'd see. Well, we'd also gotten an air conditioner in the trailer upstate, another sight I never thought I'd see, but we relented to the horrible heat wave and put one in our living room/kitchen. So David and I were camping out on the uncomfortable sofabed. I glanced over at him, above my book and there he was, reading a "Smokey the Bear" comic book he'd gotten many years earlier on a trip to New Mexico. He smiled at me and gleefully said, "Let's read our chapter books," and picked up Bunnicula (which is on his summer reading homework) while I reached for "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." It was a great moment. One I never thought I'd see pre-Mary McDowell.

So, never lose hope...
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Saturday, July 3, 2010

Weird Al as Teacher

I never thought I'd be grateful to "Weird Al" Yankovic, but I am. David went though a faze of being fascinated by his videos and sought them out on YouTube. First it was "Yoda" to the tune of The Kinks' "Lola," and so on.

This might not be a big deal to you but to me it was astounding. David had to figure out how to spell, was reading, practicing his keyboarding (fine motor skills), and so on. He was memorizing the lyrics and sharing them with others, including his teachers, who let the class watch these videos during "pack up time" at the end of the school day.

So, don't underestimate the power of video. Even Weird Al can be a teacher.
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"Stevie just didn't get the right life."

We just spent the weekend with David's older cousin who has ADD and other issues. Stevie made his way through the public school system with an IEP, wasted years in the Resource Room which did little good, and was socially promoted. At 21, he is struggling to graduate from a two-year program in four years and counting. Stevie is despressed, awkward socially, terribly immature and understandably, without a girlfriend. But we love him dearly. He's the older brother David never had.

Driving home from dropping Stevie off at the bus station (a big deal traveling alone--his mom thought he would get lost, his dad thought he would get cornholed in a Port Authority bathroom), David and I had the following conversation after I sad Stevie could be a bit silly:

David: Do you mean another word?
Me: Like stupid? I would never call another person stupid. Do you think Stevie's stupid?
David: I just think Stevie didn't get the right life. He didn't go to a school that knew how to teach him the right way.

There was Stevie's life in a nutshell from a 10-year-old with dyslexia and ADHD. I went on to tell David that he had a knack for seeing this clearly and for describing them plainly, for understanding people other sometimes didn't. "Thank you," he told me.

The moral of this story. Fight, fight, fight to get your child what they need, to get them in a school that's right for them. Yes, it might cost more than $40,000 a year. You might have to fight tooth and nail with the DOE each year to get partially reimbursed and hire a lawyer besides. But it's worth it. If we ever are forced to have an impartial hearing with the DOE (which I pray we don't!), I will gladly tell them Stevie's story.

I'm glad David got the right life.
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