input on benefits of private schools....

So much depends on the individual school.
An important criterion is whether they feel that students should feel privileged to be attending, and that it’s the student’s duty to figure out how to learn there and meet the demands of the teachers, or whether they feel that students should feel privileged to be attending… but that it’s their job to enable their students to learn and at least *help* them meet the demands of teachers — and of course there’s occasionally the other end of the spectrum where everybody’s happy whether or not the students are learning, but that’s not too common.

It certainly can be a different experience. Whether it’s better or not depends on what you’re looking for. Have you visited any private schools? I would certainly do that and see if you like what you see.

Private schools are usually much smaller. Each private school though is different from the next. Some emphasize rigor, others emphasize personal attention, still others emphasize athletics. As to fewer behavior problems, again I’d encourage you to observe in their classrooms and see if that’s so.

I’m just thinking of a private school for my 5th grader, too. Thanks for starting this thread.

I’m looking at a school that is just for kids with learning disabilities and gives them one on one OG tutoring everyday. But, it’s quite the drive!

Has anyone out there enrolled their child in a private school just for kids with ld’s?

nt

I moved my son from public school to a private school for kids with LD when he was going into 3rd grade. It has been well worth the incredible expense. He is in an ungraded class with two teachers and 8 students and gets group and private speech/language and OT within his regular school day. I would recommend that you visit the school with your child a coupple of times and see if the school is a good fit.

I placed my daughter in school for LD students when she was in 5th grade. 5th grade was fine, small classes, excellent teachers. However, 6th grade at the same school was a nightmare. More behavior problems, more sex talk, subjects taught only one way.

Another LD school that I looked where the directors (husband and wife team) were both LD and ADHD, didn’t want my daughter because she bickered with a student during our one-day visit. There brochure mentioned how social skills were intergral to their program.

I second the idea that you look closely at the school. Ask about there behavior issues, teaching methods and look at the next grade too.

I have thought about this with regards to middle school. Almost every boy I know with or without identified LD has had trouble at out middle school. Ours is really big and organizational skills are emphasized to the max.

I have considered actually looking for a job at one of the private schools that start at 6th. That way I could get him in and maybe have some of it payed for.(I could be their school nurse) I have to see how my son progresses.

My dyslexic son is in 3rd grade in a regular college prep, private, developmentally focused, school. This means they mean well, but are not obligated to provide any services so we provide them privately after school. Its incredibly expensive but getting the services thru our local board of ed. poses many other problems we’d like to avoid. Public school is out of the question where we live - we’d have to move.

We are looking at other schools and they fall into 2 categories:
- other regular private schools that are more equipped to handle his needs either because the class size is smaller or they actually have a better remedial staff. So he might still need private tutoring.
- private LD schools that range in what audience they choose to serve. Some only serve bright dyslexic kids, others have children with a much wider array of needs . They all say they don’t take kids with emotional problems but I’ve spoken with enough parents to know this isn’t true.

Nothing looks like a perfect fit, and I do believe you have to talk to as many people as you can to get the real picture of what goes on at a given school. If we don’t get him into a school that we feel will really work for him we may opt to keep him where he is now in a familiar setting with his friends.

Often the schools who “don’t take kids with emotional problems” give a hard look to see whether the kid will likely have fewer problems in a successful, structured environment. OFten, just “not being daily humiliated” isn’t enough (you don’t undo the damage by just taking it away) — but sometimes it is. Sometimes just having predictable consequences for behavior can make a huge difference

I would add- not only visit the school- ask whether you can contact parents of currently enrolled children.

The school my son goes to now (private LD) does not really appeal during the visit. Once you read their discipline contract (that needs to be signed by student and by parents) you will think you are sending a child into a booth camp…, but- I have never heard a parent complaining about it once the child is a student.

We waited until high school to make the move from public to private for our gifted/ld son. He made it through middle school because it was the school where I teach and I could make sure he had supportive teachers. These teachers provided him with many good experiences that built his self confidence and academic skills in some areas. Now at a private, college-prep high school he is much more relaxed and taking on challenges that never would have been available to him in a large public school. We all hve our scars from our public school days, but I’m not sure I would go back and change everything. Still we breathe a sigh of relief daily that we found this private school. We researched, visited and our son did a two-day trial visit.

Of course. My son had tremendous anxiety last year and was looking like he might have an anxiety disorder . But we are pretty clear now that his primary issue is his learning disability - the anxiety is secondary. He was never a behavior problem either.

3rd grade was the start of a downward spiral that got pretty scary. We pulled our son from public school during the 4th grade. Homeschooled for a bit because things had gotten so bad.

5th & 6th grades were in a non-public school for ld children. Great environment academically, but too $$$ for our abilities. This was the place we were origionally begging for him to be able to attend. We were requesting that public school release his funding so he could attend here.

Things had leveled out a bit, so we tried a non-public parochial school that was real small. 2 room school house with 4th-8th grades being taught in the same room by the principal. He was a Godsend, and those 2 years were probably the best years, without any special ed help, just a small, close environment, good structure and a caring teacher.

9th-12th was a small parochial high school. Smaller sized classes and a structured enough environment that all went as well as we could have dreamed of. Probably not as great a sports environment as our son would have wanted, but the right sized pond for him to swim in academically.

Just 2 classes left to take at local junior college and there will be someone in this house with an AA DEGREE!!!!

Go back in time to when we pulled him from school during the 4th grade… it was a nightmare… the last “agreed upon IEP” was the 3rd Grade year and it was questionable… we battled with the district for 6+ years, and he never had an IEP again… because we could not come to agreement with them. They got what they wanted, but so did we in the end. (They eventually got rid of us, but we got our son).

I know I haven’t been so consistant lately on this bb, but I still love coming back and checking in. Our battles took place before there was access to the www, bb’s like this one and it has been so helpful to vent here and exorcise past demons over the years here.

I’m going to attach a letter I wrote years ago to the LDA (Learning Disabilities Assoc.) where, at that time, I expressed my opinon and told our story. For those of you who read it (numerous postings, sorry), for those of you who haven’t, it’s a history lesson of what can happen to at least one family. I post it again because you asked for opinion here. I feel like our battles with our district was done in a different era, with far less sophisticated battle tools, and with way less awareness as to the situation. Some things you will find are still quite relevant today. My opinion (and my wife’s) still holds, it’s better to save your money, time, emotions and family by pooling your resources and finding the appropriate placement (non-public) than it is to sacrafice your child to the system in hopes that the system will do right by your child.

That’s all. Good luck with your decision.

Andy

–––––––––––-the letter follows–––––––—

Attn: LDA, State of CA

GRAM PUBLICATION OPEN LETTER TO PARENTS

Re: What was learned from the nightmare of a Learning Disabled Parent of a Learning Disabled Child attempt to obtain a FAPE in our local district.

To Whom It May Concern:

First, I ask your patience, because I, like my son, have a learning disability. I have difficulty with handwriting, so I always type. Typing makes the words legible, spell check makes the paper presentable, however, unfortunately, they have yet to invent the program to unscramble the word processing of a dyslexic mind.

Anyone who has lived through / survived the hellish experience of help seeking within the public school system for a child will know that this letter has the capacity for a 1000 page novel; I will do my best to be brief.

Our son was diagnosed with “LD” by the public school Psychologist in the 1st Grade. He was given an IEP, which was to begin his 2nd Grade year. By the 3rd Grade, with minimal and no provision of the services specified on his IEP, our son was floundering terribly. His areas of deficit were dysgraphia, dyslexia and other assorted invisible disorders, which clearly affected his performance in school.

By the second month of his 4th Grade year, having no RSP (as specified on his IEP), and no Counseling (as specified on his IEP), our son tried to slam his head through a window at home. He told us, with tears streaming down his face that he would rather die than go back to school, “where the teachers did not understand, and the kids were so mean about this handwriting”. He was 9 years old.

My wife and I sought help from the school; and the rest is documented history. Of course, it is also documented that the school claimed he was doing fine in class, the problems were coming from the home.

We (my wife and I) attended countless IEP Meetings (with and without advocates), we have attended Mediation Conferences (with and without advocates), I have represented my son in State level Due Process Hearings, and I have represented our son, alone, in Federal Court.

I know what it is like to be a learning disabled parent, seeking protection for our learning disabled son from a system that allows a school district to hire the representation of a “consultant” whose sole purpose is to keep the district from providing those services which are due the child by law. (I could go on and on about this one extremely unfair practice that is tolerated, the fact is, everyone knows this happens, and the child is still left without help, unless the parents can afford the services of costly consultants or attorneys).

I know what it is like to have an inexperienced advocate intervene and represent our son at Due Process Hearing, and have to sit back and watch an absolute kangaroo court in progress, while the Dean of the McGeorge School of Law presided.

Perhaps I need to digress for a moment and explain that during this time I was working, and unemployed at times, in the construction industry here in Southern California. It is common knowledge in the business world for sub-contractors to be loyal to the general contractor; the reason is simple, future contracts mean more guaranteed income. Even in the blue-collar world of construction, it would be abundantly clear that if the “inspector” worked for the General Contractor, the quality of homes could be jeopardized by the “partial” decisions made by a biased inspector. How obvious must it be for a law school like McGeorge School of Law to be a contractor with the State Department of Education to side in behalf of school districts whenever possible?

In June of 1991 McGeorge’s Year to Date Statistics show that the total number of Due Process Hearing Decisions rendered, parents did not obtain the services they fought for in Due Process 70% of the time!

If the hearing Officer finds the district to be within compliance, then the State does not have to enforce any “laws”, because there was no violation! This is absolutely ludicrous. The burden is entirely on the parent, and the power is entirely in the system.

I speak from experience. I will gladly provide a list of all the names and numbers of “protective agencies”, government employees, political figures etc., who were well aware of our son’s predicament. This is not limited to, but includes Chief Liaison to President Clinton, the Federal Dept. of Ed, State Dept. of Ed., Protection and Advocacy, the Governor’s Office, Congressmen, Assemblypersons, Senators, local agencies, OSEPS, OSERS, Office for Civil Rights (the list is endless)… The bottom line is there is no help, only a terribly tangled web of beaurocracy the feeds off of our taxes, and is simply impotent, inept and incapable of enforcing the laws that were written to protect children. The blatant and total failures of these public officials to enforce protections is disappoint, to say the least; corruption of this magnitude would not go on, if it were not tolerated at the higher levels.

I have scores of letters I sent to attorneys and agencies (and their responses) from across the country, begging for help for our son. My only request was to either enforce the law and provide him the FAPE he required, or release him from the system, and provide us with the funding to ensure he be educated and not destroyed.

One of LDA-CA’s past presidents, Joan Esposito, had written a GRAM which clearly outlined the problems parents like us have experienced. She is one of the only ones who understood the frustrations of what we were going through. (I can only imagine that she has an entire file cabinet with our son’s name on it!) I continue to thank God for her strength and compassion for our kids. The gauntlet is excruciating, the retaliatory actions of a school district are disgusting, and designed to exhaust parents. Our son’s last “active IEP” was his 4th Grade IEP, which was never enforced. He is currently going into the 10th Grade!

After 6 years of attempting to “right the wrong”, and taking both the local school district and the state dept. of Ed “to task”, I have only learned that I could do the impossible for our son. That was to survive the stress of war, stay married to his mother, see that he finally get an appropriate education (outside of the system), and move on with our life.

I have since passed on my “law library”, a virtual war chest of cases, laws and protections for learning disabled children to a local (San Diego) advocate. She has my permission to copy and pass along any and all data I compiled; including phone numbers, addresses etc. My hope and prayer is some other parents may get the help our son never received. It was quite a paradox to find all the protections, and rights our child had, yet been completely incapable of finding any authority to enforce the law!

My wife and I went to a leading “special education attorney and we begged for her to help; she felt to “untangle this case at this stage” it would cost an estimated $70,000.00, at least. It might as well have been $70,000,000.00, if you can imagine the devastating news to hear such a proposal. The up front money was to be a minimum of $15,000.00. I don’t know about anyone reading this letter, but that is a substantial amount of money which we did not / do not have! It is probably noteworthy to mention that there are not very many lawyers who specialize in the highly complex field of special education law; and those that do, usually work for school districts and the states, those that don’t are extremely expensive!

Out of necessity for our son, I virtually became the closest anyone will probably come to being a lay-lawyer in the highly specialized field of Special Education Law. For over 2 years, I stood alone, as a parent, in Federal Court, without an attorney, and did the best I could. With my wife’s help, we won some Motions, lost a few, and even had Court Decisions OVERTURNED, without help from attorneys! Truly, I will admit that the damage and suffering of such battles was more psychological and detrimental to peaceful family existence, and the fall out was financial, emotional destruction. It was as close to divorce and stress that I will ever hope to experience for the rest of my life.

Ultimately, the Federal Court Judge Ordered me to find an attorney for our son, because, if I did not, he said that our son’s case would lose at the Appeals level, due to the child not being properly represented in Court. What an irony, even if we could have won at the first level, they would have had it overturned because of how he was represented. Again, after an exhaustive search, we finally located a young, fresh out of Law School attorney, who offered to represent our son “pro bono”. Remember, we had been in Federal Court for over a year prior to her having even graduated from Law School! Within 3 months, our son’s case was closed, and the State Dept. of Ed and the local school district were absolved of any responsibilities.

I believe it is important that you understand the following, which is of public record in the Federal Court system in Southern California:

The District admitted to not providing services on our son’s IEPs.
The District could not provide original copies of documents where my name was added to agreements. (Reviewed by a documents fraud examiner).
The District failed to properly diagnose our son’s disabilities.
The District contracted a Dr. (for $14,000.00, on record)) to diagnose our son during the pending court case, to determine “what would have been appropriate 3 years past; when this same district had tested him 7 times within 12 months during the time in question.
State level investigations were useless.
OCR findings were biased and inaccurate.
McGeorge School of Law hearing transcripts are of record, and the Hearing Officer’s failure to acknowledge or address blatant violations of Special Ed Laws are abundant.
Numerous other violations of Education Law were proven clearly on Court Records.
Our son NEVER had another “active” IEP from the time when we filed for Due Process; the two parties (parents and district) could never come to agreement, so…

Our son’s case ended over a year ago. The scars my wife and I carry may never go away. Time is the healer and seeing our son doing well as a soon to be 10th Grader is the soothing ointment to assure us we did the right thing. He has no IEP, he gets no special help, and he is working very hard. He is alive, healthy and we are grateful. We stood by our child and did what we thought we had to do, protect him at all cost.

Adding insult to injury, after the case was closed, we received legal documents from the school district’s attorneys’, attempting to bill us for the legal costs they incurred! Some of these costs included the depositions they took of our son’s “expert witnesses”, a document fraud examiner and a Neuropsychologist; both who are highly qualified specialists. These testimonies clearly demonstrate among other issues the district’s blatant failures to diagnose our son’s disabilities, their (district’s) inability to explain how my signature ended up on a copy of an education contract that I had refused to sign. The irony is the district DID NOT enter these depositions as evidence after their attorneys deposed these witnesses, I DID!

My advice to anyone who will listen. If you are an advocate, thank you for your strength, courage and perseverance, and for trying to help protect our children. To you parents, until there are drastic changes in how the laws are enforced, do what you have to do to save your child. Our experience dictates that it might be wiser to pull your child and put him/her in a safe non-public environment as soon as possible. The money will be more effectively spent there, and less stress placed upon your family.

You see, for those of us who do not have a lot of money, we need to determine where best to spend the limited resources we have on what we find to be most precious to us, our kids. Moreover, for those who have enough money for attorneys and consultants why would they spend it on fighting a system? They can afford the tutoring, counselors, private educations…

Absolute power corrupts, and all the laws in the world are useless, until they are enforced. God bless you Joan, Mary Ann, Chris, Sandy, Adele (retired), and the rest of you advocates who fight for our kids!

Sincerely,

Andy

Ps/ Everything we experienced is of public record; I wish (pray) to God somebody had the time, money and courage to look at what clearly was the “Anatomy of a Public School’s Failure”. What has happened to my family, and specifically to our child, is the story of one; however, it will clearly show what happens to all who get involved and try to help a child (anyone’s child).