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My ASD/ SPD boy has been attending a small, church based pre-school two mornings a week along with his NT twin sister and younger sister. It was great to have the two mornings "off" for me, and the socialisation for him (and being away from his sister who talks for him, as he is severely speech delayed). But it just not working out anymore; he is in a class with 1 year younger kids but still talks much less than them, and has difficulty with nose and siting still/ group activities..
Looking into our options, the only ones are a special needs pre-school or stay at home for the year, until he is kindergarten age. The SN school has a great reputation, but kids must attend full-time, and get therapy there (he gets 2 hours each of speech/ OT/ PT a week). We would rather our son stay with his current therapy clinic, which he is used to and are excellent, and it doesn't make sense with me being home for him to attend full time. On the other hand if he stays home, he gets little interaction with other kids (he has no friends, though is not aggressive, thankfully), and he really needs to get used to social interactions, and be prepared for kindergarten (his psych thinks he can be mainstreamed by then, as once his speech catches up, he will deal better with his social issues).
Question..is the special needs preschool just for children with special needs or with all children? Also, is it as a public school or one you have to pay for?
Why are those your only options? Would a regular preschool not take him? Will the special needs school not allow you to have him there for only a half day?
Question..is the special needs preschool just for children with special needs or with all children? Also, is it as a public school or one you have to pay for?
The SN school has 12 kids per class, 3 NT and 9 SN (all kinds of SN), with two fully trained special eds teachers per class; then they get one-on-one therapies as prescribed. They also have separate sibling classes for NT kids. The SN kids are free via the state's disability pay, the NT kids pay a reasonable fee (about the same for full time as we pay now for the church playschool part time). If we send him, we would probably keep the girls at their current school, as it's only a year and my boy's twin sister has made good friends there. Plus it would mean I have only the girls for three days a week and could do stuff I couldn't really do with my son around, such as concerts, cinema etc (he doesn't do well in big crowds or loud noises).
Quote:
Originally Posted by nana053
Why are those your only options? Would a regular preschool not take him? Will the special needs school not allow you to have him there for only a half day?
His regular pre-school has been very accomodating so far, but just can't support his needs anymore. I doubt any other school could; they don't have the staff ratio or training or equipment. I have a post up on our therapy center's FB page asking for recommendations if anyone knows of a regular pre-school good with ASD kids, and his therapists are asking around also. We have some time to decide; school lets out next week and doesn't start again till mid August.
The SN school will not allow half days, or only certain days. Their day is 7.30am to 3pm and all kids must attend 5 days a week full time, with being taken out of the regular classroom for one-on-one therapies within the same building. I guess they don;t want to disrupt the class?
With children this young, I would think they would have children who might need to nap in the afternoon. I don't see how it would disrupt the class if these children were picked up early - say around lunch time?
If he has an IEP, I would see if you can't get that written into the IEP. I know that in many schools, parents are allowed to get kids early.
We didn't need this as we didn't put my grandson in their classes until he was older. He went to an ABA center and he did go all day and it worked well as they could mainstream him for half the day in the PreK class of the school whose campus they were on.
Hello. I am a retired Early Childhood Special Needs Teacher. Although most of the students attended full time (either four mornings or five afternoons per week) by law we needed to provide for students where this was not appropriate. Some students attended only 2 half days at first and then in six months or a year were able to attend more half days. Other students started later in the session or left early or both depending on their individual needs. I had one student who only attended an hour and 15 minutes each day during his first few months and over a year or so built up to attending the full 2 1/2 hour class session. Yes, it can be a hassle for the teacher and school. It may also be much more expensive if a special bus trip needed to be made for that child (however usually parents transported in these situations).
If the child needed a special schedule due to their handicapping condition (not just because the parent wanted it) the public school would make the appropriate scheduling arrangements.
It is possible that is true at the Special Needs School as well but they don't advertise it because parents tried to "take advantage" of the system in some way. As an example, about 10 years ago our regular kindergarten program did the academics in the AM and the "enrichment" part with specials, art, music, extra playtime, gym class in the PM. This allowed children of parents who wanted a half day program to leave at noon, before lunch, without missing any "academics". This was acceptable to about 98% of the parents. However, there were a very few parents that insisted that their child attendhalf days and get the "full academic section" but also wanted the "full enrichment program" as well. Obviously, you can't fit 7 hours of school into a 3 hour school day. It ended up being a huge mess.
The school district ended up changing the whole system and now kindergarteners are required to attend the full 7 hour school day. There is not any option for regular education kindergarteners to attend half day at the public school. Unless, of course, the child has special needs and it isn't appropriate due to their handicapping condition (which is very rare).
Last edited by germaine2626; 05-12-2012 at 02:23 PM..
Well, I don't think I can claim he cannot attend full days. His current playschool day is almost as long (until 2pm), but only two days a week. And while we really like his current therapy clinic, they do provide therapy at the SN school, so it's not as if he would miss out on therapy.
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