Final Placement!

Since I have been so remiss with posting, I see that I never mentioned Miles' IEP meeting with our school district.  After all the assessments, which took forever to get done as everyone was on summer vacation, I got a phone call from the Special Ed. department letting me know that Miles was not going qualify for going to the county's hard of hearing preschool program.  This was a moment of both joy and panic as it meant that he was doing so well that he didn't need the program but it also meant that we now had to scramble to find a preschool for him.  Luckily, we were able to find a local program that we liked.  We had to take three days a week until they had a full time spot open up but we were able to coordinate with our daycare provider from the year before.

The IEP meeting caused me no end of stress as it started with the determination of whether or not he even qualified for special ed. services.  In my mind, I was screaming, "WHAT?!? Do you not see the hearing aids he wears in his ears???  Do you think we do this for fun???"  But finally someone said that he would not be able to meet his full potential without support, so he qualified.  Then the director told me that to receive speech services through the district, we would have to bring him to the school during school hours.

"Do you not understand that we are both teachers?  How are we supposed to do that?"

Happily, the speech therapist that would be working with Miles said that she would arrange a way to come to his preschool to work with him there.  And she has.  Miles loves her and has made enormous progress.

While I'm pleased with how things turned out, I'm annoyed that they couldn't work out the details any earlier.  When the whole process began, we asked that decisions be made earlier rather than later as Jeff and I had to be able to hit the ground running once the school year began.

All in all, Miles is thrilled with his new school, he is making lots of hearing friends and is doing great!