Change of plans..

Oh I do hope this change will be much better for Carly. Some of you read our care page and may know that Carly will be attending summer school this year. We now have a change in plans as of this morning.

A couple months ago, I checked with our school district, just to see if there were any programs in our area, that Carly would qualify for. To extend her school year. My fear was, that she would regress during the summer. I was told that the only thing offered was a school for children with special needs. This school had severely disabled children. Much more so than Carly. However, that was our only option.

I had many concerns about sending Carly to this school. One was, I remember back to preschool. Carly's teacher was a special education major and told me that Carly did not need to and should not attend this particular school. That had me concerned. The other thing was the severity of the other children. I went to tour the school and saw several who I know would have really frightened Carly. However, I had resigned myself to the fact that this would be a good thing because they had the professionals there to work with Carly. Such as speech, OT and PT.

This morning my phone rang. It was the special ed director of our school district. She informed me that there was a change and she thought it was better suited for Carly. Our school has contracted with a pre-school/daycare in our home town. They will be bringing the kids that need the extended school year into the pre-school and actually do a summer school program. The school believes that Carly, and the other kids who need extended school year, should be around typical kids more so than severely disabled kids.

I do have one big concern with the change. There will be no one other than OT there to give any therapy. Oh, that's not true. There will be a para pro there to give Carly her speech therapy. I'm not to thrilled with that. The whole reason Carly even qualified for an extend school year is because of her speech. Am I wrong to want an actual speech therapist working with her?? Oh the challenges of having a child with special needs.

Our special ed director does think this will be better for Carly. They always point out to us just how "high functioning" Carly is. Also, "it's mainly her speech that labels her disable"! I really don't like the high functioning remarks. Not sure why, but it just bugs me. Hopefully, this summer school set up will be a better situation. Time will tell.

Oh, and my baby has her last day of kindergarten tomorrow....*sniff*