This guy just won the lottery, and intends to start a Wiccan religious school. Seeing as how my wife* has a special ed practice, and when people start schools, they frequently forget that there are special education needs in their community, I’ve just given her a heads up on this.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
There is no precedent, as this was a 4-4 split decision, with Kennedy recusing himself for undisclosed reasons.
The basics are as follows: Tom Freston has a child with learning disabilities, and the New York school system evaluated him and placed him at their Lower Laboratory School for Gifted Education.
Freston refused the placement, and placed him in a private school at significant expense, and then went to court for reimbursement.
I have a child in a non-public placement, Charlie, a human metronome and remarkably erudite 8-year old. He has Aspergers.
He is in the private placement, at county expense, because the local school was unwilling to make the necessary accommodations to deal with his disability.
Had the (thankfully now retired) principal at Timber Grove, Charlie’s school, been willing to make some relatively inexpensive accommodations, he would still be there, at less than one tenth the cost to the county.
Basically, if the aid assigned to him had been competent, or even willing to do the necessary training, he would still be there.
So I am in a very similar place to Mr. Freston. The difference is that we attempted to make the system work. The placement could have been appropriate, but the school administration was unwilling to make it so.
Mr. Freston did not give New York City Schools a chance. This is the part that I object too, as does my wife, who is a special education consultant (click here for her web page).
The environment in place at the Lower Laboratory School for Gifted Education would most likely have been adequate to this child’s needs (a reading delay), and the local school system must be given a reasonable chance.
I have a personal stake in this, my son, Charlie has Aspergers, which is either mild Autism, or a condition on the Autism spectrum with is less severe.
Let me be clear. I do not rule out that there may be environmental factors, but there is no connection it inoculations.
When Thimerisol was dropped, there was no change in the increase of Autism cases, there have been multiple mechanisms, and they have All been debunked.
The doctor who made the original claim has been so dishonest that he has had his ticket pulled at the hospital he was working at.
The connection to vaccinations is bullsh$#. Period, full stop.
Furthermore, by allowing junk science to pollute public health debates, it has created a vast reservoir of the unvaccinated, who serve to undermine herd immunity, leading to epidemics in some areas.
These people are endangering not only their children, but the communities in which they live.
BTW, in Charlie’s case, my wife, a trained special ed professional saw signs of something on the Autism spectrum about ONE WEEK after he was born.
Autism Debate Strains a Family and Its Charity
By JANE GROSS and STEPHANIE STROM
Published: June 18, 2007A year after their grandson Christian received a diagnosis of autism in 2004, Bob Wright, then chairman of NBC/Universal, and his wife, Suzanne, founded Autism Speaks, a mega-charity dedicated to curing the dreaded neurological disorder that affects one of every 150 children in America today.
The Wrights’ venture was also an effort to end the internecine warfare in the world of autism — where some are convinced that the disorder is genetic and best treated with intensive therapy, and others blame preservatives in vaccinations and swear by supplements and diet to cleanse the body of heavy metals.
With its high-powered board, world-class scientific advisers and celebrity fund-raisers like Jerry Seinfeld and Paul Simon, the charity was a powerful voice, especially in Washington. It also made strides toward its goal of unity by merging with three existing autism organizations and raising millions of dollars for research into all potential causes and treatments. The Wrights call it the “big tent” approach.
But now the fissures in the autism community have made their way into the Wright family, where father and daughter are not speaking after a public battle over themes familiar to thousands of families with autistic children.
The Wrights’ daughter, Katie, the mother of Christian, says her parents have not given enough support to the people who believe, as she does, that the environment — specifically a synthetic mercury preservative in vaccines — is to blame. No major scientific studies have linked pediatric vaccination and autism, but many parents and their advocates persist, and a federal “vaccine court” is now reviewing nearly 4,000 such claims.
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I never figured that she’d play the GOOD cop in a meeting with school administrators.
My wife is a dear sweet lady. She is also a Special Ed consultant with a practice, SEDRA where she supplies Educational Evaluations, Classroom Observations, Advocacy, IEP Process Workshops, In-School Tutoring for Individuals with Special Needs, and Service Referral.
She spent half of her childhood in the Bronx, and one of her clients affectionately referred to her as a “Pit bull”.
Both of our children are on IEPs, but did not need a lawyer for our eldest, a turning 10 years old in a week girl, Natalie, for the past 3 years. We found Mark Martin for her.
Natalie has a visual perception and motor planning disorder, that results in dyslexia and dysgraphia (her hand writing is worse than mine, which means that her handwriting is the worst ever).
Our lawyer for our son, 7 and a half year old Charlie, Wayne Steedman said that it would be best if we went with another lawyer for Natalie, because having to focus on more than one child at a time tends to diffuse the lawyer’s effort.
Well, lawyers are sharks or piranhas. Wayne is more of a shark. Mark is more of a piranha.
Both are far more pleasant than one would imagine when they are YOUR carnivorous fish.
The shark glides, silently and unnoticed, until it strikes, while the piranha is a flurry of teeth, reducing a cow to bones in under a minute (why is it that they always use a cow as the unit of measure of ferocious appetites?)
While Natalie’s school, Timber Grove Elementary is a good school, it has a profoundly negative attitude towards special ed kids.
I think that it’s primarily a function of the Principal, who has been nicknamed “The Scorpion”.
There are a disproportionate number of children, who are either at special schools run by the county, or in private placements paid for by the county who are in this school’s zone.
This seems to be particularly noteworthy with regards to the male special ed students.
Considering all the costs involved in private placements, I wonder if the principal has a picture of the superintendent getting freaky with a goat.
At Natalie’s meeting, the occupational therapist (kind of a misnomer, it’s about things like writing, tying shoes, and other fine motor operations) had a report suggesting that Natalie’s services be pulled. The first time any of our side saw it was at the meeting.
I was conferencing in via phone, but even I could tell that Mark Martin, esq., was not amused.
I think that the OT might end up with a diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder after Mark was through with her.
It put the fear of god into the rest of IEP team, so while we do not have OT goals yet, we will be doing a follow-up meeting to take care of that, it looks like Natalie will get the services she needs.