Big changes at RISE!

Rise Special Services, that was, has become the Southside Services of Marion County and is apparently going to be under new leadership as of June 30th. Bill Dreibilbis, who has run the program for nearly a decade, has resigned his post.

Parents are hopeful on the announcement. As Rise, the school district faced multiple law suits, many state complaints, and much resistance from parents frustrated by the seemingly underhanded process of writing IEPs. Combined with the interlocal changeover, parents hope this signals a change in the way of doing business at SSSMC.

The Homeschool Adventure Begins

Image via WikipediaWell, it is finished. My husband and I have decided to pull our son out of Perry Township schools and teach him at home. There is a rumor of a Franklin Township group of parents, sick of the RISE Special Services failure, who are working on the starting phases of a charter school for our students. Anyone who knows this group, I'd love to get in touch and talk to them about the idea. This blog will continue as long as I continue to volunteer my time with families still in the system. It's our hope to move and find a program that works for Darrel.
If our homeschool experiment is successful, I may begin to blog about what we learn about that as well.

RISE Special Services Q & A

Image by 姒儿喵喵 via FlickrMay 12th seems to be the magic day for parents of SPED students in the four townships, Beech Grove, Franklin, Decatur and Perry, to get answers. Here is my submission to the RLC PTA for the event.

1. What will the top down structure look like?
   
2. What voice will parents have in policy building, such as parent members of an advisory committee? 
3. What steps will be taken to insure transparency in policy building?
   
4. Will parent education, including information on law, teaching methods and advocacy for their student be a priority for the interlocal? If so, what mechanisms will be in place to deliver this service?
5. If parents have a dispute with specific administrators, who will be the mediator in order to avoid the complaint process provided by DOE? Will you institute a formal process to give parents access to objective mediation which will help the schools avoid expensive due process proceedings?
   
6. How will the interlocal improve staff and administration training across all environments, classrooms, bus transportation, etc.?
7. The school has been given orders of correction this year for violations of the individualized education plan for several students. What system of checks and balances, staff training and administrative supervision will you put in place to avoid this in future?
8. What definitive standards will be put in place to determine teacher and administrative performance?
   
9. Who will be the administrative staff of RISE Learning Center?
   
10. Will Administrative staff in all the townships receive extensive training and professional development through the new Interlocal? If not, why?

 If you live in one of these townships, you can submit your questions to RISE Special Services at 5391 Shelby Ave. Indianapolis, IN 46227 . 317*789*1650 Time and Location to follow.

This morning, it just hurts.

Image by seiuhealthcare775nw via FlickrSo much was easy when I was young, even medical care, and I was thoroughly unaware. I get it now though. Especially, dealing with my teeth.

This morning I woke up with a swollen mouth. It's a tooth I tried to have pulled at a low-cost clinic a while back. For 45 minutes and forty dollars, they pulled, only to tell me in the end that I'd need an oral surgeon.  That means it stays, and I wait. But, for what?

For our family, it's become a waiting game. How long till the insurance? Just a few more hours and we qualify. We just have to make it a month or six. The jobs just have to be there, and they haven't been steady as any ironworker will tell you.   If you read my blog, then you know we have an autistic child.

Some of the political rhetoric has been pretty strong; war on the middle class, the plan is to die sooner, and on and on. They are strong words, but I get what those words mean at this moment. We did what we were supposed to over the years. We worked, and then one day, insurance was hard to get. It just wasn't there. We even did a tour in Iraq or two, to get it temporarily. We live in a city where I could walk to a dentist without breaking a sweat on a July day. If I could afford one. Even on insurance, I can't afford it, since most is fifty percent coverage. For me, that left $8000.00 on the bill. We can't. We just can't. When things get this bad, you feel like it's a war. It's as desperate as battle, and sometimes, like now, it feels like life and death. It is life and death. A tooth can kill you eventually.

I could write about how it's fiscally damaging to not provide health care for those on the poor end of the spectrum who are important to the workforce. I could tell you all about how when I am gone, when my husband is gone, we don't know where D will end up. I could wax eloquent on the subject of biblical truth and the qualities of mercy not being strained, but not this morning. Because this morning, it just hurts.

And I wish it would stop. It hurts that something as stupid as an infected tooth could kill me living in America, that living in these modern times nothing has really changed. I feel like a failure, and my jaw is sore. I'm tired and in pain. This probably just sounds like angst to your average boot-straps kinda guy, but life can't get more discouraging than this. Just. . . if you have it, be thankful for it.

In a perfect world, we'd all be lawyers.

Image by dbking via FlickrParents of disabled children already wear many hats. Since IDEA, we've had to don yet another and hang out our shingles whether we wanted to or not. At least, those of us who were able. It's the rest of that population that is our subject today.

As I've said before, Indiana's Article Seven and IDEA guarantee certain rights for the disabled student. Is that enough?

Most emphatically, NO.

In order to navigate the system, I had advantages. One, I had only some college, so my husband and I recognized my time was most valuable at home. Little did we know, it would be imperative. Two, I found training in the law fairly early on in our journey, and made a study of it ever after. Three, when I did get part time work, it was as a substitute instructional assistant in my son's school. The rest was history.

Our son has needed a lawyer almost from day one, and we couldn't afford one. We had to make do with my makeshift law degree. This gave us access to the complaint system, but it still denies us access to due process. Without access to the courts, our battle has had to be a political one. Squeaky wheel gets the grease.

The primary problem with that is that I didn't stop squeaking. I discovered a whole school of students without speech therapy and went to war alongside their parents to make the school do the right thing. One thing led to another, as our parent's group discovered violation after violation of the law and went to work on them. Now, I attend conferences and consult with parents on their IEPs in my spare time, and we still miss things.

Article Seven is a law with all the whys and wherefores that entails. It isn't easy for a housewife with some college to navigate, and, for some, it isn't possible. Many of my friends work a job, or a job and a half, on top of parenting a disabled child. They can't put in the hours that I have. Single mothers, forget about it. Many parents don't understand the law because it's a law, and that's why we have lawyers. A majority of us are broke what with all the medical bills.

A law without access is like a dance without music. It's missing something. When lines are drawn on a socio-economic basis, it's called disenfranchisement. Being unable to enforce your child's education because it's too expensive isn't much off the days before the wheelchair ramp.

So, families need a ramp. Teachers are a natural advocate for a student. They know the information and usually have the willingness (or did they pick the wrong job!). However, teachers answer to administrators who answer to superintendents who answer to politicians. You can see the problem. Our schools need to get back to the days when teachers were the advocates for families and let them make the recommendations that make sense for the child.

In the event this relationship breaks down, the simplest, second-best thing is to get the school, who failed to nurture the parent/teacher relationship, to pay for the family's advocate. The advocate doesn't have to be a lawyer.  Most often, it's a mom who did this on her own. Every advocate I know was the mother of a special needs child.

This would give all parents access, and advocates are more like coaches. Therefore, the training the parent would receive as a result could allow them to advocate for themselves in future. At the very least, it would put the parent back in the Case Conference Committee as an equal player and not a subservient.