Ashley's Education

Sometimes it feels as if things just won't go right for Ashley. Her education has been a mess from the very beginning. She started in school at the age of 3. She was placed in a preschool program that was not capable of meeting her needs. Although the teacher was very sweet and knowledgeable, she was overwhelmed with several highly disabled children entering her classroom at the same time. It would be difficult for anyone to meet those needs. Three months later she received her official autism diagnosis and I discovered that she was getting no individual speech therapy and was usually being removed from the classroom because she was so disruptive. So the special education department and I came up with a new plan. A program was established just for Ashley. She was in her own classroom with her own teacher 5 days a week and we continued the same program at home on weekends. We hired and trained a woman to work with us at home. The teachers and I had planning sessions and made sure we stayed on the same page. Ashley made tremendous progress during this time. They even agreed to the same schedule during the summer. The following year her teacher had to split her time between Ashley and another school. So Ashley worked with two paras under the guidance of this teacher. It wasn't ideal but it worked. The only complaint I really had during this time period was that an uninformed OT made a decision to put a splint on her hand. It was an effort to make Ashley stop biting her own hand and it was not discussed with us. Unfortunately she had it on for 2 school days before I discovered it and had it removed. This was just enough time to teach her to bang her head. A behavior she didn't have before the splint, but has done every day since then. To this day she bangs her head and bites herself. The next school year several other students were identified with autism, so Ashley's program became the autism program. They moved her teacher to the other school full-time and brought in a new teacher certified in autism and pre-school. From the beginning we struggled with this teacher, although she was an expert in autism, she was very frustrated by Ashley. They made all sorts of changes to Ashley's program and Ashley did not respond well. At this same time Ashley received a new speech therapist who was also having problems with her. Jason and I began to discuss home schooling, but decided we would give it a try over the summer. In April of that school year we discovered the teacher was withholding Ashley's lunch as punishment. We immediately pulled her out of school and put all our energy into home schooling her. At this time, she was six years old. I don't know what else was going on at the school, but Ashley was so traumatized she would start crying if we just drove in the direction of the school. We continued to receive speech therapy from the school for the next two years, but Ashley was making no progress and the therapist told us she had no idea of what to do. At that point we pulled her out of speech as well. We started getting speech therapy at the local hospital. At the evaluation, this speech therapist recommended a computerized device. It took almost a year to get it, but was the best decision ever made for Ashley. I had heard that the autism program at the school had improved greatly and had a wonderful new teacher, so this past November we put her back in school. The new teacher was wonderful. She had been running the program for the last couple of years and had excellent ideas. Ashley really took to her and she was very willing to work through the adjustment of going back to school. Everything was going great until six weeks ago when they removed the teacher from the classroom due to allegations. We were not allowed to talk to her and things rapidly spun out of control. The classroom was largely being run by paras. Other people have been coming in and making decisions for our children, even though they don't know them. The kids and parents are all upset and we just want our teacher back. During this time period Ashley's talker worth $7500 has been broken, her IPOD has been stolen, her morning para has been let go. The school has not taken any responsibility for the things that have gone wrong. She is upset and her behaviors have gotten worse. There has been no consistency in her school life. She has been sent home sick. The school told me she was running a fever and I needed to get her and she couldn't come back the next day because she has to go 24 hours without fever. The funny thing is I got her immediately and she did not have a fever or act the slightest bit sick. Now we have been told all allegations against the teacher have been dropped and she will return to this class next year. That doesn't take away the damage the last couple of months have done to Ashley, the other kids, and the teacher. We just want Ashley to be treated with love and receive the best possible education. I think all parents understand how difficult it can be at times to make decisions for our children. That is particularly difficult when you are raising a child with special needs. Bad decisions no matter how small can have lasting consequences. Some decisions are easy: no my child can't play in the street, they can't go places with strangers, etc. But other decisions can be very difficult and we just have to rely on prayer and the wisdom of others.