mental health for LD student vs HS school attendance policy

Parents Forum
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<p>(I also posted this in LD forum, but seems like this area is more active)</p>

<p>I am in a big bind with my LD son, a sophomore in high school. He is involved in an extreme sport at the professional level. He has achieved so much social-emotional growth through this sport...maturity, responsibility, goal-orientation, learning to advocate for himself with adults/coaches, self-confidence, organization..the list goes on and on.. it is the only arena where he is a success. It is also his only motivator to work hard in school, as we require him to have Cs or better to participate.</p>

<p>however, at this level he has needed to attend tournaments which involve travel and missing school for a few days at a time every month or two...</p>

<p>He has an IEP and we have been mostly happy with support at his current high school.</p>

<p>We have been excusing his absences with the school. I did not take that lightly but saw no other choice. This sport is his passion and he is very ambitious about pursuing it.</p>

<p>Now the school is taking a hard-line and saying he can't have any more absences this year unless he has a Dr's excuse. There are two tournaments coming up that he was already committed to. He is afraid of losing the spot on the team he has worked so hard to attain if he doesn't make these tournaments. One is more important than the other, maybe he could skip one of them.</p>

<p>We are not in a position to homeschool him. I asked the current school if they could give him an independent study contract for the upcoming tournaments and they said they don't do that. They lose money if the kid isn't there and it's too hard for the teachers to keep track of. I asked the administrator what other parents do when the student is this involved in a sport and she wasn't much help, other than referencing a student who was a pro golfer and that her parents put her in a charter school.</p>

<p>The only option is a private learning center that supports kids with IEPs and has a flexible schedule, but it is really not affordable for us. I really don't want to change his placement anyhow, as he has already switched schools a lot and it takes months to get the new school up to speed, and it is costly to change because I have to pay an educational advocate to oversee everything....</p>

<p>Does anyone have any ideas??? What I would really like is if his current school would give him an independent study contract to make up the work when he is out. I think it is justified as meeting his social emotional goals, but they don't see it that way.</p>

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<p>Is your son under the care of a mental health professional who could support this? Can you take it to the district office person in charge of LD services and accommodations and skip the school's one size fits all approach?</p>

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<p>well, he has been under the care of various mental health professionals at various times, but honestly, since he has been involved in this sport, he hasn't needed that...I could take him back to one of them though, because i do fear for his emotional state if we can't get this figured out...</p>

<p>district office is a good idea...but of course we wouldn't want to step on anyone's toes at the school, they have their ways of retaliating..but I will give that some thought and talk to the advocate about it</p>

<p>in fact, we think a subtle form of retaliation is the whole reason his case carrier decided to make an issue out of this, as a smokescreen for some mishandling of things that he was responsible for..but that is another post..</p>

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<p>A couple of suggestions. My son has a couple of friends who had similar cases.
One of them did an alternative high school through the district. I think he went to school several days of the week but most of the work was done on his own.
Another finished up with independent study through a charter school.
Another did a program called Middle College. It is a joint program with the high school district and the community college. The classes are taken at the CC but you graduate with your high school class.</p>

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<p>You are really going to have to make plans for 11th and 12th grade. Don't think this will end with 10th if your son plans on staying with this sport. Our high school is one of the very best in the nation and is in a rather well off area and the school was very close to being a failing school by gov measures due to the number of absences. Each student now gets 3/quarter that are excused(teacher must let student make up missed work) any more than 3 and the student is failed and has to withdraw from the class! The kids now think very long and hard about taking a day off for any reason. As a parent I can understand. I wouldn't want to pass a student that was missing all of the time. I know that I wouldn't want to have to stay late or get to work early so kids could make up labs and tests. Think about how many kids have to miss class each day due to illness alone! Let alone all of the EC that take kids out.</p>

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<p>How might the head of the phys ed department, in your school or district, view this? With pride or resentment? If pride, then perhaps you could approach him/her to be a partner with you, to help solve it appropriately. He/she might know loopholes in the policies, creative solutions, etc. </p>

<p>In other words, who could be your best advocate from within?</p>

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<p>What's your state's law on absences? I know here in the northeast, if a kid has too many absences, excused or not, the kid cannot be promoted. So it may really not be your school district's issue. </p>

<p>Most of the kids we know who are involved in sports or the arts to such an extent are home-schooled or placed in an alternative placement (such as a professional children's school). Unless your son's EC on a professional level can be factored into his IEP, the school isn't required to accommodate excessive absences.</p>

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<p>wecan: I would totally encourage you to find ways to accomodate the EC if your son is truly performing at a very high level, that adds so much to his life enjoyment and his self-esteem....any kid that can find their passion early would seem to be onto a good thing!</p>

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<p>I have a little different perspective on this, as my daughter has a LD and I was also a resouce room teacher for years.</p>

<p>Is this a sport that has the potential to lead to an adult career or college scholarship? If it is, making it the determining focus of your child's life may make sense. On the other hand, our neighbor's son, also a very talented LD athlete, was injured last year and now can no longer play his sport. A friend in his thirties in a similar situation was a corporate sponsored professional skateboarder as a teen until he discovered-at a competition-that he had a major heart defect. He's very lucky to have lived and now is a Certified Nursing Attendent at the nursing home where my mother lived. The point is no one can count on making a living as an athelete and it's best to have skills that give you some flexibility later in life. My Mom's caregiver is clearly very bright and a wonderful guy. He is wonderful to the people he cares for and having watched him I have nothing but admiration for the work he does, but this is not a family wage job and his choice of focus as a youth has somewhat limited his options in life.</p>

<p>I can't tell how much of an impact your son's LD has had on his school work but if he has an IEP at a public school, I think it has to be at least a two year delay (This could be out of date or out of state) With most work requiring at least functional reading and writing skills these days, your child's school may be trying to protect his future.</p>

<p>When I was working with kids in the resource room, they really needed a huge amount of consistency and practice on a daily basis to get their skills up to speed. It's generally not a problem with comprehension or intelligence but skill building, which=practice, practice, practice. Much like any sport.</p>

<p>Obviously there are lots of alternatives out there but try to understand why the school might be reacting this way-other than just being mean and ornery. If your son still has big delays or problems with basic reading and writing, you need to figure out a way to build daily skill practice into his routine. </p>

<p>Knowing what I do about public school funding and policy I don't think the school will back down. It might help you to better understand their position to know that special ed is hugely expensive and without the funding based on daily attendance can put a district in a deep hole. The teacher must be there to serve all the students whether they are all there or not. So there are a whole set of reasons for the school to react as they are.</p>

<p>Maybe your son is almost all caught up with himself at this point and can afford to miss lots of school. If so I apologize for the pep talk, but I really worry about these kids. It's so easy for them to fall through the cracks. I do understand how very important it is for them to experience success and to stick with something they are good at. You have a difficult needle to thread. It's been a while since I was a resource room teacher as I changed careers several years ago, but if I can answer any questions in my out of date way-I would be happy to.</p>

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<p>Futures HS in San Diego is an option but it isn't cheap.</p>

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<p>Have you explored any kind of online high schools? I know there are some around the country, but I don't have any details - do a search for one in your state.</p>

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<p>Consider homeschooling and supplement with an educational therapist or a tutor.</p>

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<p>well, when I saw how devastated he was about not being able to attend the next tournament with his team (all expenses paid, to the East coast) I started re-thinking things. We met again with his advocate and brainstormed some more about options. She hasn't had concrete experience with this exact situation, but gave us some things to follow up on.</p>

<p>After a lot more research and soul-searching, we are considering a private independent study option. (Bessie- yes, it is Futures, now re-named Halstrom High School in our area.)For each subject, he would meet with a teacher 1:1 for 45 minutes per week, and then complete on his own about 5 hours of work, then return for another meeting with the teacher. He can go at his own pace and choose from three levels of difficulty for his classes. The cost is fairly reasonable. We are visiting there tomorrow.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, the public independent study option is not good here..it is basically the last stop on the way down the tubes.</p>

<p>Thanks so much for the great feedback, everyone. It's nice to know that there are others who <em>get it</em>! </p>

<p>Erlinda- thanks for your insights on the inner workings of the school system. </p>

<p>There is another private option, but it is very expensive. There is more class time involved, but the attendance policy is flexible. We will try to visit there too.</p>

<p>It is just very scary to remove him from the support system he has had at his school. </p>

<p>Interesting that if it was a sport that the school supported, there would be no problem missing classes...for example, the baseball team often leaves at 1 pm for games. It was also an eye opener to me that even if a parent excuses the child's absences, the legal system can still step in and dictate "punishment" if they deem that there are too many absences.</p>

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<p>Friends sent their son to a boarding school in NE that specialized in snowboarding.</p>

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<p>Hello Wecandothis,
I think reading is the really critical skill that you don't want your son to be without. If you are thinking about some kind of home based schooling there are some programs that work well for most kids-although without knowing what the LD is my advice is a shot in the dark and could be wrong for him as an individual. There used to be a program called "Corrective Reading." It is based on very serious phonics and "direct instruction" better known as "drill and kill." I am as liberal as they come and when I first encountered this program I thought I would hate it-except it works very very well. Because the initial stages are deadly boring I rewarded my boys (whole class of middle school dyslexic boys 13-15) by reading aloud to them from age appropriate boy tested novels. For every minute they stayed "on task" I would add a minute to my reading aloud at the end of their session. Because it was rural Montana and all the boys hunted, we read "Old Yeller" and "Where the Red Fern Grows," but you will know what your son might like to hear. I think this plan also showed them that there was something wonderful to be found in books, we all cried together at the end of "Where the Red Fern Grows" and my macho somewhite racist white Montana ranch boys found they had lots in common with the African American farm boy in the story. The "drill and kill" in Corrective Reading got all my non readers operating at a level of "functional literacy" and a couple of the boys went on to high school without need of any further special services.</p>

<p>These kids often have such a sense of failure-and school can be a painful place for them. Are you confident that you will be able to keep your son on top of his work enough to continue to make progress? I would make any participation in his sport contingent on meeting very specific daily and weekly goals that you set together with his tutors. You will need to have those goals
listed on paper in your own hands to monitor his progress. These kids have often been hurt by school and who can blame them if they want to avoid school work. I think as kids mature they step up to the plate more, depending on their environment and if they have found some sucess and motivation to tackle their challenges. I was able to get my kid caught up in reading pretty fast because I resorted to the primary school version of "drill and kill phonics" as soon as it became aparent she wasn't keeping up with where she should be, but writing was another story and she avoided it like the plague. Luckily she was in a private school where the peer pressure was to do well in school-so she struggled on until she got it, which took many years to get to "mastery". I think boys are a little harder because the culture is telling them school is nerdy and any sign of weakness or vulnerability is to be avoided.</p>

<p>I don't know where your son is in his progress, whether we are looking at a small delay that makes him a B- instead of an A student or real delays that will impact his choices later in life. </p>

<p>There are programs and teaching methods that can make a huge difference in these kids' ability to make progress. I'm way out of date but even when I was in the classroom there were things that really worked.</p>

<p>Any reading method based on "The Spalding Method" or "The Gillingham Method" works for many many kids in the hands of the right teacher. They are not trendy, warm and fuzzy or politically correct but they work. The Spalding Method is also called "The Writing Road to Reading." There used to be a Spalding Center in Beaverton. Oregon. I'm going to see if I can find some links for you and add to this message in a minute. I had a whole class of boys like your son and his story is pushing my mother hen button.</p>

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<p><a href="http://www.spalding.org/index.php?tname=home&p=accreditation&PHPSESSID=b5c6ac0b3c049453976ba4d32fe9bc21%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.spalding.org/index.php?tname=home&p=accreditation&PHPSESSID=b5c6ac0b3c049453976ba4d32fe9bc21&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://www.iser.com/riggs.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.iser.com/riggs.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="https://www.sraonline.com/products.html?PHPSESSID=c8dfb0505f7e2738d52474b5bf3ec&tid=14&sid=2713%5B/url%5D"&gt;https://www.sraonline.com/products.html?PHPSESSID=c8dfb0505f7e2738d52474b5bf3ec&tid=14&sid=2713&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://www.dyslexia-parent.com/mag33.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dyslexia-parent.com/mag33.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Spalding may be more for little kids. Corrective Reading is not as creative as Riggs or Gillingham, but it is easier to learn to teach. I think a parent who was determined could do it.</p>

<p>Gillingham is wonderful and deep. A kid who learns through Spalding as a tot or Gillingham later is deeply literate, but I think they are complicated methods to learn to teach.</p>

<p>One of these links is to a Resource Room teacher using Gillingham-no doubt she is WAY more current than I am and seems passionately devoted to helping LD kids. She may be able to steer you to a Gillingham trained tutor in your area. It is the "Dyslexic Parent" link.</p>

<p>I realize making the sport work for your son is what you were looking for advice on. Maybe these reading programs are old news for you and your son but if you haven't looked into them they might be worth a look.</p>

<p>When I worked in rural Montana the first grade teacher used Spalding. I taught kindergarten in the morning and resource room in the afternoon. I had a kindergartener one year so LD that she couldn't percieve how to bounce a ball. If you showed her how, standing directly across from her, she would bend down and touch the ball to the floor instead of letting it go. I worked with her both in the resource room-using Spalding and in the classroom with our Spalding based reading program, for two years of kindergarten. When she got to first grade my friend poured on all her wonderful Spalding teaching knowlege. (she was a Spalding Master teacher.) At the end of first grade that little girl was a fluent reader.</p>

<p>There are programs out there that work in the hands of the right teacher. If your son has been frustrated in the past I hope you will keep looking for a program that will get him over the hump. Somehow these phonics based programs have become associated with more conservative communities, which is a shame because they are somewhat tied up in "the culture wars" in education land. There is nothing inherently conservative about them and they really work. Something to think about is that in Italy-where the language is 100% phonetic-there is virtually no dyslexia.</p>

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<p>In Ohio students cannot miss more than 18 days of school or they have to be listed as withdrawn. A charter school recently got into trouble for not doing so with a bunch of students yet still collecting the state/federal dollars.</p>

<p>I realize you are looking for advice on keeping up the sport b/c it is important to your son's mental health, but I would figure out a way to make school just as important, which it is, in the long term.</p>

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<p>In many public school districts, the schools are punished financially for failing to meet attendance criteria (and under most systems, the district is punished -- it's just a question of whether they push it down onto the individual school). So I don't think you can approach this as mere bureaucracy on the school's part. I am sympathetic to your feeling that your son's athletic travel is important to his mental health but . . . if I were a school official and were considering incorporating that into his IEP, I would be very, very skeptical, and would want a lot of professional-advice backup. </p>

<p>Most of the athletes of whom I am aware who have competed at a high level in sports that are not high-school-centric have ultimately had to go to private school or be homeschooled/tutored to make things work. Musicians and actors, too -- same deal. One of my nephews essentially got kicked out of his public school in the NYC suburbs when he had a role in a play on Broadway.</p>

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<p>My daughter also worked in a play on Bdwy, and her NJ school advised us to withdraw her from school and re-enroll her when rehearsals were done in 3 weeks. They were nice enough to provide her with all of her materials for her set tutor. They were also very understanding when she had to leave early every Wednesday for matinee performances. Apparently they did the same thing for kids who traveled out of the country for extended periods. I think if my D had to continue out of school, though, they would have advised her to do a homeschooling program. Most professional kids end up doing that.</p>

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<p>I would also suggest homeschooling--there has to be a way, and it doesn't have to be costly. But first I would try to negotiate with the school district--you'd think they'd make an exception in the case of a national/international competitor. (My D is active in a competitive sport and all the serious athletes are homeschooled). Or could he get a GED so he wouldn't be required to attend school?</p>