Tomorrow is yet another IEP meeting, to discuss the fact that we think there are additional adjustments that need to be made to the Monster’s IEP for the 2014-2015 school year.

In the current IEP, the Monster is being transitioned back to his home school – Mount Washington – and put into a mainstreamed first grade class with some push-in and pull-out services specified.  There’s a nice list of the supports he needs for success in class… but one that’s not included in the document is an aide.

I’ve mentioned a few times before that I think that the Monster clearly needs an aide in the environment they’re talking about tossing him into – there’s going to be about two dozen students and only one adult, and I think that’s a recipe for disaster when you’re talking about a child who is easily distracted and led off task.  When we last met about the matter, we requested an assessment to find out if that’s really a good idea, and Early Learning was called in to do said “technical assessment”.

It occurred to my wife last night that we’ve not heard anything back regarding information for tomorrow’s meeting, so I reached out to the IEP coordinator at his current school, Ms. R, to ask if we were missing documentation.  We’ve already once this year sent in a violation report for the fact that we’ve not gotten documentation with five business days’ notice… and we don’t really want to go through that a second time.

Her response, this morning, was that it’s an “informal” assessment and that there’s no document being generated.  I then pointed out that we’re then being asked to accept a verbal report in person, with no preparation, and asked that we get some kind of forewarning as to what the assessment is going to contain.

In short – I’m now wondering what Early Learning is trying to hide.

I’m trying very hard not to jump to conclusions… but it’s hard to not do so when we’re talking about a situation like this.  I can easily imagine that they think that not having a formal report means that we’re going to be unprepared when we arrive and simply “accept” their conclusions.  They’re dead wrong about that.  They might think that without a formal report, we’re going to have a harder route to protest if we think that their conclusions are wrong.  They’re equally wrong about that.

Maybe I’m just weird, but I think that if you’re going to do an assessment, you should have a report.  You should have a clearly laid out path that says, “This is how we investigated, this is what we found, and this is our conclusion on what services are required.”  Anything shy of that smacks of playing games with my child… and as we all well know, I don’t take kindly to people playing games with my child.

Further, we’re also dealing with the department that stripped the Monster’s ESY, and that apparently was none-too-pleased that I filed the IDEA Part B violation with MSDE.  I’ve been watching, waiting for some kind of retaliation as a result of it, and while I thought that perhaps everyone was going to be grown up about the matter, I’m getting the impression now that I’m the only one who resolved to be an adult.  I hope I’m wrong.  If I’m not… so be it.

So now, with about 27 hours till this meeting, I’m already riled up and keeping my powder dry.  This is not a Good Thing.