Curricula and Learning Links - Special Needs
Deciding Whether to Homeschool the Autistic Child
By Caron
Should you send your daughter to public school? There are at least four issues to be addressed in this question:
- To the best of your ability to determine, what does your daughter need from the school district?
- CAN (not "will," but "can") the district reasonably (at least in your opinion) provide what your daughter needs from them?
- If the answer to #2 is "yes," then: How much time, energy, money, and emotional stress would need to be spent in order to have the district provide what your daughter needs?
- Is it in your and your family's best interest to spend the time, energy, money, and emotional stress that would need to be spent in order to obtain those services from the school district?
Notice that the above questions do not even address the potential risks of public schooling (e.g., bullying), nor the risks of homeschooling an autistic child (e.g., parent burnout). That is because the answers to #1-4 aren't hypothetical risks; they're the black-and-white realities of what is.
If your school district cannot (not will not) provide what your daughter needs, then the answer is obvious: Don't send your daughter to public school.
If your school district can, and WILL, provide what your daughter needs, then your decision-making would move into the realm of the hypothetical risks (and benefits) that I mentioned above.
If the school district can, but refuses to, provide what your daughter needs, then that brings you to questions #3 and 4: What will it take to get them to provide those services, and are you willing to pay that price to get them to provide those services?
You feel that your daughter needs a 1:1 aide, for example. Fine. WRITE IT INTO THE IEP. Remember: Don't sign the IEP if you don't agree to EVERY element in it. They may (and probably will) pressure you to sign an IEP you don't entirely agree with. You have the legal right to *not* sign. However, they also have the legal right to not include in the IEP what they don't want to provide. If you reach an impasse, then, you would need to go to mediation. This is what I meant by time/energy/money/emotional stress. To have a special needs child in public school means that you need to become well versed in special education law to know what your rights are. It may mean having to go so far as to hire an attorney.
Suppose you get the 1:1 aide written into your daughter's IEP. Everything fine and dandy, right? Not necessarily. School districts are notorious for not complying with IEP's. You need to ride herd on the school to make sure that the provisions of the IEP are being carried out. If they're not, you would probably then need to file a compliance grievance--which could continue on into having to go to court to get the school to comply.
Not all school districts are adversarial. But some are.
Also, some schools want special ed students not primarily to help the student, but for the school's own bottom line: Schools get a lot more money for a special ed child than they do for a regular ed child, and some districts may not be using all of that special ed funding for special ed.
If you do decide to homeschool your daughter, you may want to consider joining HSLDA, especially since the public school district knows that your daughter exists. There are some issues that need to be considered in pulling a child with an active IEP out of the public school.
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