Yesterday was the final ARC meeting with the local public school, pertaining to Helana’s evaluation. We began this journey in an attempt to get her qualified for speech services. I agreed to a full evaluation and to listen to a proposed IEP in the event I decided to enroll her.
Yesterday was the day that the evaluators gave their reports and an outline of the IEP handed out. The overall report was a little distressing, but not shocking. We’ve known for some time that Helana has a learning challenge, but since Weisskopf was unable to acquire an actual IQ score, we were unsure to what extent her challenges took her. The school however was able to acquire a score. Obviously I am not going to share that here, but a certain amount of relief comes from having this bit of insight.
Although I am not going to enroll her at this time, I find the suggested IEP very helpful in my own endeavors. Their plan to help her transition also gives me peace of mind. Their outlined academic goals are not unlike mine, so I am relieved to know that I have not been hindering her by spending so much time on certain concepts/tasks. In fact, I was surprised to learn that their goals for her are actually a lot smaller than my own. While I could suggest they tweak it, and they probably would, I still feel it is best to continue her education at home. I feel much more confident now that I know what she WOULD be learning in public school and honestly feel we could be more productive at home. The only real advantage I can see from sending her would be on the social level: working among a group, following directions given by others etc. By choosing to home school her, she will still receive speech therapy once a week in the classroom in a group. I think this is the perfect opportunity to see how she would function in a group/classroom setting. If she does well and seems really excited about her sessions, then I will give heavy consideration towards enrolling her in the fall.
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