Dealing with too much to include anymore

It's a good thing I thrive on stress and adversity. I wage wars while hubbie sleeps in.
I got a letter from a teacher at the daycare requesting a parent-teacher conference. I left with it in hand and only read it when I got to a redlight on the way home. I only needed to skim it to recognize the educational jargon.

I don't think they realize that I understand that stuff. I have a master's in education and twelve years of experience, most of which has been in violent schools and special education assignments.  I understood every word and every implication. Basically they accused the school district of not being able to meet her "scheduling needs" whatever that means. And said that if she doesn't get more interventions they will let her go.

I parked the car in the driveway and thought and sat. I thought about making phone calls and then decided just to drive over to the high school and give the letter to the pupil services department. They would probably want a copy of the letter. When I got there they were very interested in the letter and photocopied it. Eyebrows rose over the "scheduling needs" comment. Apparently another parent and child had gotten the same treatment a few weeks earlier and they decided to pull their kid out and find another place. The director of the daycare had called the director of pupil services three times in the passed two weeks wanting to know "how she could approach me" about it. I did not get even one phone call or anything. The letter was a total surprise and not even handed to me by the director herself but by one of her teachers. Passive aggressive as fuck.

I'm not afraid of a fight and I am not intimidated by five syllable words and educational jargon or cloaked threats. I told Amy, who seemed to think I would do the same as the other parent, lets get her tested, evaluated and see if she qualified for a one-on-one aid.

I remember earlier in the year I overheard a teacher say, "Wait until Brigid leaves and then we can do that." And that little girl I already wrote about who exclaimed, "Brigid's here, Again! Ugh!" She didn't learn that attitude from her parents. They don't even know Bri. She must have learned the eye-rolling from the TA and teacher.

It makes me happy to get her a personal TA trained in special ed. They will make sure she doesn't get excluded or treated differently than the other kids as she is apparently doing so now. Maybe that's where her recent temper tantrums have come from. She's developing a more forceful personality in response to being skipped over and ignored. Besides the fact that she has trouble expressing herself verbally.

She needs time-and-a-half like those kids in high school. She needs extra time to process verbal directions or questions, especially when a verbal response is required. She needs questions repeated to help her process and keep the vocabulary low and speak a little slower.

I know that I have seen amazing improvement over the passed 6 months with her therapy. She's gone from only saying letters and numbers up to ten without any baby babble (under 50word vocabulary) to the point of 4-5 word sentences. She's doing really well. I'm very impressed. She's started recognizing written words as well. Like go, up, and box. Beginning stages of reading.

I'm not going to let them discriminate against her because they want to be lazy. I'm certainly not going to let them try to convince me she is autistic. The first time I was pulled in to her office days after she started there they asked me about her eye contact. That's an autism question. I've even come right out and asked her evaluaters if she could be. All of them said absolutely not.

I'm going to do everything they ask and make it impossible for them to say I'm not cooperating. I want to back them into a corner where if they want to get rid of her they're going to have to come right out and say they just don't want to work with special ed kids. They want to only work with mainstream "normal" kids. Be lazy if you want to but fucking admit it. Don't present yourself as an all-inclusive daycare and then push out those kids you just don't like because they need a bit more attention.

Speaking of attention, the other day that I picked up Bri, there were three kids acting up not wanting to share and whining. Bri was calm and focused and doing exactly what she was supposed to without any fussing. She even finished before the other kids and this was a skillset that required fine motor skills (putting beads on lines of glue). I really think they are just focusing too much on her issues and not enough on the other kids because she has been diagnosed with a delay and the others haven't.