My wife and I have been married for nearly 15 years. We have four children with Autsim. But not just Autsim, they also have several co-morbid conditions along with their main "different ability." They are blessings in our life! I wouldn't have them any other way because I wouldn't know them otherwise. Every small success is a mountain overcome. We have learned so much in the last 10 years with our children! We have known great sadness and because of that great joy!
Their perseverance in the face of so many challenges is inspiring to us both! We have had our ups and downs with our school district as does any parent with children on IEP's (Individual Education Plan). We have generally been able to defend our position and work with the district in finding common ground utilizing various techniques I've learned through various trainings and research.
We have recently come to a head with the district where they are not truthful about what is going on at school, in our opinion. We have had multiple evaluations through insurance but that only gets you so far unfortunately. Most recently, the Special Education Director in an email threatened that the district was prepairing for hearing if we did not accept their proposed IEP's for two of the children.
Upon a brief evaluation of those children with a World renowned Neurologist specializing in Autism, she was agast at how our children were presenting and has requested several evaluations and recommended we bring our older two children in for evaluation. These evaluations will be performed by Neuropsychologist, PT, SLT, OT, etc.
The cost above/beyond insurance is $1,700 per child not including $100/hr to evaluate the placements proposed as well as potential placements, as determined by the evaluators, that may be a more appropriate placement for our children in district. This is daunting but it is what is needed to fight off the district from removing services through hearing from our children who are in need of these services. We are and have exercised stay-put rights but that will all go away if we cannot successfully defend our position with testing independent of what the school is saying.
We want the best for our children and we do not want them to be sandbagged by the system because it is cheaper for the district to force us into submission than to actually provide what our children need.
Without assistance we will have to triage who needs services most and get them the evaluation, we currently have funds for one child. We are asking for your assistance to help us fund testing for all of the children.
We are foregoing our 5 year anniversary weekend trip to NYC this Fall to commemorate our first visit in September 2001 immediately following our wedding that we save up for, it takes us 5 years to save up for 3 days in NYC. That money this year will be going toward the additional evaluations and costs surrounding the children's educational needs.
Any amount is appreciated!! We thank you for your donation! We are so grateful if you cannot make a donation that you would share with others that they might be able to assist. :) As a show of our gratitude 10% of the amount received will be donated to help others in need. Thank you so much!!!!