I’m wondering if anyone has any experience applying for prep school with a child with a disability. My son is visually impaired but is currently navigating his public middle school with very minimal accommodations (it’s actually always been a struggle to get any sort of services for him, as he’s very bright and has extraordinary compensatory skills). His older brother is at a fairly competitive prep school in our area and we’d like to send him too, for high school. I would think any school we would want our son at would be willing to work with us, and to a certain extent obviously we have protections of the Americans with Disabilities act, but also realize that we’re not guaranteed the protections he would get in a public school. Any insights or advice would be appreciated! And for the record, he will be fine at our public high school–but I do see him thriving in a smaller, more rigorous private school environment. Thanks!
Can you ask this question to someone at the prep school you are considering?
Visual impairment is less common than many challenges and while you can address some issues in the application itself you’ll probably need to reach out to the office of student support in advance. It is quite possible they haven’t had a student with visual impairment before and will want to know what kind of support tools he has used and what they need to provide, I.e. you may need to do a bit of teaching and then be specific about supports
When I was in college and working in the law school library, the library supplied a student “reader” whenever needed for a law student with vision loss. The law student mostly used adaptive software but the software didn’t work well on everything. The college students were trained to do quiet work, listen for the bell, and without comment start reading where he pointed and stop and walk away when he nodded so they didn’t break his concentration. If he shook his head, they would get a law librarian who would properly pronounce something and/or explain it. This is how a lot of law/medical schools handled vision issues.
Agree with @thumper1
Since you have a specific prep school in mind I would meet with them, be honest about your son’s needs, and see what they have to say.