The boy is all smiles today, and to be honest we couldn’t be happier ourselves. Today is David’s first day of second grade, albeit virtual for everyone at this point.
We can smile today, but up until even this morning that wasn’t really the case. It’s taken one hell of a fight with David’s school administration to put the correct team in place that would best set him up for meeting the IEP goals for this year.
David had an amazing team last year for first grade. He had an absolute angel of a SPED teacher, that was so engaged and so supportive. He also had an amazing Speech Pathologist and Occupational therapist that worked with him on language and motor skills. Great strides were made and we were enamored with his team.
When we found out this summer that David’s SPED Teacher needed to take the year off, we became worried about how things played out. We received assurances from both her and school admin that we would be included in decisions regarding our son, who his team would end up being, and that he would be given the best chance to succeed. Unfortunately, his teacher was the only one that held up her end of the conversation.
We were left out of the decision making process regarding our sons team and he ended up with a SPED teacher that he had never met before.
Our concerns literally went ignored. All of the talk we’d heard weeks earlier and emails from admin that said “we will certainly work with you to creat”….blah blah blah.
We ended up having to force the issue. When I say force, I mean email, call, and email again, running up the ladder to the district superintendent, and all the way back down again, to the point we’d threatened pulling David from the system altogether.
And when we were finally heard, it was as if we’d never had a conversation at all. We were treated like we were crazy for being frustrated. Like we had no place inconveniencing the staff to make any accommodating changes for our situation.
We had to fight.
We fought for what WE KNOW is BEST for our son.
Not what was GOOD ENOUGH.
We fought with tact and tenacity to get him the best team possible, to put him in a place to not only meet but excel beyond his goals for the year.
We are beyond elated with the team that David has this year, and so grateful for each and every one of them. They’re amazing people.
The smiles you see today are the results of that fight, and they are worth every tear shed to get him there.
And we’ll do it over and over again. He deserves it.
And he’s worth it.
💙
Hurricane Heffners 