Finally had the IEP placement meeting for Holland last week. I haven't been able to update because I was sick last weekend. And life just moves too fast sometimes! The woman from the parent advocate group was there but wasn't able to stay for the whole meeting. Five minutes after she left, the school rep says, "Ok. Let's talk about placement." Arrrggghghgh! She was helpful, though. She wrote suggestions down on the IEP draft for me to bring up, or request to be included in the IEP. At one point, the school psychologist was going over behavior goals. One of the items said he would "use self-management techniques when frustrated instead of damaging school property 75% of the time." My parent advocate then asks, "So, it's okay to damage property 25% of the time, then?" I wanted to laugh out loud! Her point was that if the goal is written as anything other than 100%, he would become confused if sometimes it was okay to damage property and other times it wasn't. The district guy wants to see the paper and says "I don't think that was the intention of the goal." But she had a very good point and it made me laugh.
They've put in a request to a place in Beaverton called Lifeworks. It will be a 40 minute bus ride. That's just awful. There is nothing closer than is appropriate. At this school there will be the teaching staff as well as medical professionals available for his needs. I haven't figured out how I'm going to tell him. I just know it's not going to go well. Maybe they'll have a computer for him to take apart!
