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Hope you can add some insight. We live in NYC and are hoping to move to Westchester. We have two children, the younger in our local public school and the older with a learning disability/high functioning autism placed in a private NYS-approved school for children with LD. We really need more space and want a good school district for our younger child, but we're worried that if we leave NYC we will have to fight all over again to get an appropriate IEP for our older child. Can folks make recommendations for good school districts that may be open to approving a private LD school placement? The upper end of our budget is probably $800,000. At the moment we are looking at Ardsley, Eastchester, Rye Brook, Bronxville (mostly out of price range), Scarsdale (ditto).
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Realize school districts make private placement assignments because they are not able to provide an appropriate education that meets the child's needs. I think you will be hard pressed to find a district that will just accept what NYC Public Schools recommended and go along with that. Anticipate having to go through the evaluation process again hopefully it is constructive an not "a fight" as you put it.
Good luck as you look for a house hopefully other posters can provide feedback on SPED education in the different districts.
Thanks for your thoughts. You are probably right that a new district will not just take the NYC recommendation, but I do find it amazingly inefficient that this process is organized on a school district by district basis. And I should qualify my prior post by saying that the first two years of my son's IEP services were a fight but now that he has been approved for CBST we have had three blissful stress-free years without any fighting or lawyers. I think (hope) the fact that he was at a public school program prior to the move to his current private school will help convince another school district, but who knows?
We're also trying to figure out if we should move before or after my son ages out of his current school. My son's school goes through fifth grade (he's in fourth now). One of the difficult choices is deciding whether to move to another town before this big school change or to stay put and accept a program and move afterwards not knowing if the new district will agree to the placement. Sigh.
Also, if anyone knows of school districts with great small classroom programs for kids with learning disabilities, we'd certainly be interested in checking those out, too.
What is your older son's LD? Eastchester does a good job on LD placements and Ardsley is very good with ASD placements. We are in Eastchester but our son goes to Irvington because they have a strong 'fragile child' program for kids with school phobia/anxiety and either LDs or G&T. We had to hire an advocate to get us through the process but it has been worth every dime.
How do you like the Irvington program? My son's learning disability is primarily in math, but he also has dysgraphia and so the school is teaching him to type. He also has issues with attention, pragmatic language, anxiety, and OCD symptoms that surface in response to stressful situations. Wow, when you write it all down it seems a little overwhelming.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by insearchofzen
Thanks for your thoughts. You are probably right that a new district will not just take the NYC recommendation, but I do find it amazingly inefficient that this process is organized on a school district by district basis. And I should qualify my prior post by saying that the first two years of my son's IEP services were a fight but now that he has been approved for CBST we have had three blissful stress-free years without any fighting or lawyers. I think (hope) the fact that he was at a public school program prior to the move to his current private school will help convince another school district, but who knows?
We're also trying to figure out if we should move before or after my son ages out of his current school. My son's school goes through fifth grade (he's in fourth now). One of the difficult choices is deciding whether to move to another town before this big school change or to stay put and accept a program and move afterwards not knowing if the new district will agree to the placement. Sigh.
Also, if anyone knows of school districts with great small classroom programs for kids with learning disabilities, we'd certainly be interested in checking those out, too.
I won't argue your observation but the obvious solution would be county wide districts that reduce the number of districts to only one or 2 in Westchester but I will be long buried before that happens.
Placement is determined base on what "the district" is capable of providing so a state/regional agency couldn't follow the 100's of districts. Very often it is more cost efficient to outsource to a local program other times the district is capable of providing the "appropriate education" the different views between school and parents is what often leads towards legal action.
If you can delay house hunting till later this year your son will be in 5th grade after that he would transition to another school anyway and that is a good time to make the change. Use the next few months to learn the communities and the schools, tour them and speak with them find out how they will accommodate your son for middle school. If you find a district that you like then move forward and switch school at winter break. Kids adjust far better than parents give them credit normally there are several "new kids" so yours aren't the only one.....
Thanks VA Yankee. Some great ideas. I also got a great tidbit in the Special Needs Children forum that the IEP will be transferred over and the school needs to follow it until the next annual CSE meeting. Has anyone had this experience? If so, this could help us a lot. If we could move this fall but keep his current placement, then we could work with the new school district to find the right placement for middle school.
How do you like the Irvington program? My son's learning disability is primarily in math, but he also has dysgraphia and so the school is teaching him to type. He also has issues with attention, pragmatic language, anxiety, and OCD symptoms that surface in response to stressful situations. Wow, when you write it all down it seems a little overwhelming.
It's run through BOCES and is self-contained but so far we love it and I come from it as a anti-BOCES snob based on what BOCES was when I was a kid. It's very different now.
The program is probably a little more self-contained than our son needs long term but it's both more structured and more flexible than he had. the teachers have a lot of flexibility in how they teach and there's a mix of LD and GT kids in the programs. He is learning more and retaining more and he's not worried about getting slammed into lockers and such.
NYGirl128 - Thanks for the information and the link! There are some very interesting programs here we will be sure to check out. I am more hopeful that this move can be actually happen
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