School Supplies
Aug. 29th, 2018 11:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutThis year, my daughter will be going to a different elementary school than the one she went to K-3 in. This is not because we moved. This was not a change we initiated. The change occurred because the school she _was_ in only provided the program she was in through 3rd grade. After that, the theory was she would go to the school that my son was in so unsuccessfully for kindergarten, and which we hadn’t exactly been hearing great things about from other people whose children have the same or related diagnoses as my two children.
I asked for a second choice. I toured both choices. I was like, this isn’t even a question. Of course we’ll pick the one my son didn’t go to. Also, why were we never offered this as an option earlier? No answer.
It’s in a really new school building — several decades newer than the two choices I had been provided. What’s up with that — not offering the special needs kids the squeaky clean new building. With the special needs program which will fit her needs.
I went to the orientation yesterday. At the orientation, someone asked a question I’d been wondering about. Where are the school supplies lists? Teachers at my daughter’s other school in district, and the school that my son went to in kindergarten both sent detailed lists of what the kid had to bring for themselves, and then a detailed list of even more things to bring in “for the classroom”. I thought this was squirrelly — we live in a town that is quite well-off, in a state that is quite well-off — but shrugged. I don’t argue with really large bureaucracies if the argument is avoidable. I have enough unavoidable arguments to satisfy my basic urge to defy authority.
No supply lists. The school provides everything. What to bring in the backpack? Lunch and snack. Really? Really. OK, if you want, you can bring in tissue, wipes, hand sanitizer — we run out of those.
*crickets*
My town has 5 elementary schools, 6, actually. And full school choice — every kid has the option to be bused to any school. There is a bit of a lottery for when a school has more applicants — kids who were there last year I think get first pick at a school, then their younger siblings, then kids who can walk. But I’ve been tolerating a severely abbreviated list of choices due to my daughter’s special needs, and I’m just now discovering that there were apparently choices in this district that would have fit her, and put her in the nice new building where you don’t have to scrounge up supplies.
WTF?
ETA: One of the major issues for my son in kindergarten involved bathroom access. Being in an older school meant being in a school with a shared bathroom down the hall even for kindergartners. The newer buildings all have bathrooms connected to the kindergarten classrooms. This would have drastically improved many, many things about my son’s school experience in kindergarten. He would still have needed a different school placement. Probably. Altho hard to know for sure, because the other issue with his placement involved a probably simultaneously phoning-it-in speech therapist who was also inexperienced, at least with providing speech therapy for kids on the spectrum. And this was the school with the spectrum program.
I know people still go out of their way to pick Conant’s autism program. I can’t figure out why.
I asked for a second choice. I toured both choices. I was like, this isn’t even a question. Of course we’ll pick the one my son didn’t go to. Also, why were we never offered this as an option earlier? No answer.
It’s in a really new school building — several decades newer than the two choices I had been provided. What’s up with that — not offering the special needs kids the squeaky clean new building. With the special needs program which will fit her needs.
I went to the orientation yesterday. At the orientation, someone asked a question I’d been wondering about. Where are the school supplies lists? Teachers at my daughter’s other school in district, and the school that my son went to in kindergarten both sent detailed lists of what the kid had to bring for themselves, and then a detailed list of even more things to bring in “for the classroom”. I thought this was squirrelly — we live in a town that is quite well-off, in a state that is quite well-off — but shrugged. I don’t argue with really large bureaucracies if the argument is avoidable. I have enough unavoidable arguments to satisfy my basic urge to defy authority.
No supply lists. The school provides everything. What to bring in the backpack? Lunch and snack. Really? Really. OK, if you want, you can bring in tissue, wipes, hand sanitizer — we run out of those.
*crickets*
My town has 5 elementary schools, 6, actually. And full school choice — every kid has the option to be bused to any school. There is a bit of a lottery for when a school has more applicants — kids who were there last year I think get first pick at a school, then their younger siblings, then kids who can walk. But I’ve been tolerating a severely abbreviated list of choices due to my daughter’s special needs, and I’m just now discovering that there were apparently choices in this district that would have fit her, and put her in the nice new building where you don’t have to scrounge up supplies.
WTF?
ETA: One of the major issues for my son in kindergarten involved bathroom access. Being in an older school meant being in a school with a shared bathroom down the hall even for kindergartners. The newer buildings all have bathrooms connected to the kindergarten classrooms. This would have drastically improved many, many things about my son’s school experience in kindergarten. He would still have needed a different school placement. Probably. Altho hard to know for sure, because the other issue with his placement involved a probably simultaneously phoning-it-in speech therapist who was also inexperienced, at least with providing speech therapy for kids on the spectrum. And this was the school with the spectrum program.
I know people still go out of their way to pick Conant’s autism program. I can’t figure out why.