Before I started this thread, I had already exhausted discussing all options with our school district and reached a point of frustration.
So I did ask for Home Instruction from Special Ed director and kept district nurse in the loop. They are updated with doctor’s notes and all symptoms we notice at home. However, they don’t want to move forward (they are quiet, no response to my email request).
Instead they sent an IEP assessment plan to go through the 90day cycle with their standard process, which will delay starting HHI.
The district website says that HHI will be administered by Special Ed if a student is qualified for IEP, or otherwise the student services will manage HHI.
The CA dept or education says that Home and Hospital Instruction program is implemented differently in each district at their discretion.
In our school district, HHI does not include tutoring, no online learning tool provided ether. The assigned educator will deliver work from school, gather finished work back to teacher and can administer tests. There was no mention of how tutoring/learning occurs, it appears the student has to self learn. Because they don’t answer or clarify questions, it makes me think there are gaps in services which they do not want to address.
The medical condition itself is such that he is unable to tolerate learning new things, triggering symptoms at various levels of tolerance by subject. The injury has caused new acquired learning disabilities that we don’t understand how to deal with. I have explained this to the district and said that a special education teacher may probably understand and be able to provide learning solutions that actually might help him study something rather than putting it all on hold until he fully recovers, which we do not know when, although hoping he recovers soon. The district is mum!
I found out about and asked to provide details of 504 and then the district nurse agreed to initiate it. Soon after another staff took over claiming he was 504 coordinator for the school and restarted the whole thing saying he needs to first determine eligibility! Then he went on to schedule a 30-minute meeting with all required parties for a typical 504 and said everything will be concluded within that 30-minute meeting from determining eligibility to sign-off. We have thin meeting next week. Although other parents and education specialist have said that this is odd that htey want to close it all in 30mins, which would not allow us opportunity to even discuss the accommodation needs, or to understand what accommodations are available to request.
The school district’s intent is messed up. This is because the injury happened in their premises, under their responsibility but they were negligent, provided defective equipment, no safety instruction, no formal coaching on Badminton, allowed competitive Badminton players into PE Tennis class because PE Badminton class got full. The school has a strong Badminton varsity team and 50% of class wanted to try out, and be part of PE Badminton. The teacher reluctantly allowed Badminton free play saying he will not coach them because the course syllabus included coaching for Tennis only. My DS15 plays Tennis only and found Badminton challenging. The teacher did not group them by skill level and put the students at risk. There are major negligence issues in the way my child was injured. While my family was aggrieved and dealing with the grave medical issues, the school went on to cover-up the incident with lies upon lies. This indicated to us that something was amiss or why would they lie! They are since doing everything including talking through their lawyer, in meager words. They think a lawsuit is up. The reality is we cannot sue them, especially with all those cover-ups in place and them being a government entity with several immunities, no lawyer wants to take up the case, it very hard to prove that the school was at fault. The PE teacher was not supervising either. This was a new school for us this year, the student body is made up of newly imported immigrants, the culture here is such that they have no idea about safety instructions, nobody reported my son’s injury as he sat out of game dazed and disoriented, my son lumbered along after class and came to pick up area to go home (this was the last period of day; so the school got away saying my son did not inform the teacher)! I called, emailed, immediately after pickup and informed school that something is wrong and that he looks very unwell. But that does not count. My heart wrenches to think the way my child is wronged many folds. First with the injury, then with denying him the dignity by not acknowledging truth about his incident, thirdly denying timely and appropriate education services he needs.
This country is messed up, all institutions are run by lawyers, there is no soul, not even in education business. I came from another. Though my country of birth is not half as prosperous, yet the ethics upheld in schools and medical is far higher there. So yes, moving out of this country is probably a good idea, because as a commoner, I can’t do anything here to bring about justice for my child!