PM me, I have been in this situation and come out the other side.
I believe your school, however compassionate, is basically not doing what it is legally required to do, though by withdrawing her you let them off the hook. And for a withdrawal for this situation, with documentation (I assume) the university should not give her any W’s let alone WF’s. A medical withdrawal wipes the slate clean.
If you don’t have an organization to consult with, I would spend $150 to discuss this situation with a lawyer. Not in an adversarial way but for ideas. Schools often want to help but don’t know how. Once a lawyer or other advocate shows the way, and there is a road map, they get better at it.
There are many ways to deal with this, including GED and a diploma outfit I can refer you to, summer classes, online classes when she comes home (we like Virtual High School). Colleges will mainly be looking at the high school and dual enrollment classes. The wilderness program will even make her interesting.
It is only February. She may be more than ready to go in the fall. She can go and not stay too: it is not a disaster when that happens, it can be viewed as information Or she can take a year off but it needs to be structured and inspiring as you know.
Colleges love outliers by the way- the exact word we heard used.
ps National Outdoor Leadership School offers credit for some of their programs and might be a good follow up if she likes the wilderness …
I wish the very best for all of you. Your daughter’s health is the primary focus and I commend you on looking at options to facilitate a future path in completing her education. Perhaps a free consultation with a student advocate of special ed attorney may be helpful to help negotiate and suggest options.
I teach GED prep. That exam series is not easy and probably would take longer to complete than finishing off the two missing classes. My recommendation is that you continue to work with the school district to come up with a way for your child to get the high school diploma.
Each state has its own system for dealing with adults who have not completed their high school educations. In some cases the policies are set at the district level. For example, our school district only offers GED. Some states offer an Adult High School Diploma program in which the local school district or educational agency reads the student’s transcript(s), determines which courses are needed to complete high school, and then helps the student set up a plan to complete the missing courses. In some cases this can be by independent study or exam. In other cases it must be a class taught by a human being - maybe online, maybe only a live class. Whether the diploma is issued by the original high school, by another local high school, by a school district, area education agency, or state board of ed. also varies by jurisdiction.
So in addition to consulting with the high school, find out what options are available in your state.
My children’s high school offers I for Incomplete classes. These are given when there is a medical or other issue that prevents a student from completing work. I wonder if the school should have recommended that instead of accepting the withdrawal. There should hopefully be a person in the school district that can help guide your family.
I think the parents should try to reverse the withdrawal and reenroll the daughter. The school should be offering incompletes, but if that is too complicated, the school should evaluate online options or summer options for getting the credits to graduate. If the daughter does not go to college in the fall, she can work and do those two classes in the high school to graduate- I know kids who have done this. But the school should be working with the family to enable the optimal trajectory toward graduation. If an advocate or attorney can help design this, it is a worthwhile expense. Perhaps she could even get credit for the wilderness program (NOLS gives credit, as I mentioned before).
If I understood correctly, the two classes needed for graduation were being taken in dual-enrollment. So an incomplete might be harder to manage. That would need to be cleared by both the high school and the college/university where the student was taking the classes.
College-level incompletes vary quite a bit from institution to institution. In some cases they need to be finished up within a matter of months or will result in a failure, in other cases they can linger basically forever, and students can graduate with an I permanently on their record.
Or she can take a year off but it needs to be structured and inspiring as you know.