My Quirky Kid: The Battle of the District

On April 10, I went to another cramped board-room style meeting with four “representatives” of the Special Education Child Find Services of Fairfax County Public Schools. They read though every evaluation they ever did with Will (hello, redundant) and in a series of four yes/no questions deemed Will eligible for services through the district.

I should be excited, right?

Not so fast. This only means that he will receive something. This could be an hour of speech therapy a month to full blown school. Lame. Insert a million other expletives here.

By law, the district has 30 days to organize and carry out an IEP meeting (Individual Education Plan). This meeting includes a parent, a special Ed teacher, and a case worker or principal from the school your child is zoned for. The IEP Team is supposed to contact you to schedule this meeting. More than two weeks went by without a phone call. I emailed our caseworker—on another tangent, I was never EVER given any contact information for any of the people that worked on Will’s case at the District. I would ask specifically for a direct phone line or an email address and I was always asked to just call the main line, leave a message, and they would get back to me when they could. One time they needed a document and I told them I’d email it to them and she said, “Just fax it in. It’s easier that way.” What? What year are you living in? I always had the feeling that they were trying to give me as little contact as possible, allow me to ask a few questions as possible, and not give me their contact info because they knew I would contact them. I finally got our case worker’s email address from a sweet sweet woman I met in the parent resource center at the District. Thank goodness for District directories, and sweet sweet women to know that you’re being given the shaft—and asked her what the holdup was. She said that Will’s file was now in the hands of another woman and she gave me her number.

I called and asked what the status was and she said she’d have to find his file. More than two weeks and you haven’t even looked at it? She said she’d call me first thing in the morning. She didn’t. So I called her around noon. She said she was swamped (lame excuse) and I told her that usually parents of special needs kids don’t like to hear that people who are appointed to help their child don’t have time for their child. That usually doesn’t go over well with parents. She said she would call me first thing in the morning with the status. She didn’t. So I called her around eleven. She said she figured out where Will would be going to school and she was getting in the car to personally take his file over to Stenwood Elementary. I told her I would be calling Stenwood tomorrow morning to follow up and make sure they got it. Called Stenwood the next morning and explained that Will’s file should have gotten there yesterday. The nice secretary says that she’ll talk to the preschool teachers and she’ll call me back in the next hour. She calls back (finally, someone calls me back when they say they’re going to!) and says neither of the preschool teachers have his file, and haven’t even been told they would be receiving a new file.

I smell a rat. And she’s a liar.

I call her with some serious heat in my voice. Upon introducing that I’m Amy McAllister, I hear her almost choke, surely because she knows she’s been caught. I tell her I called Stenwood and they didn’t have his file and asked her why when she told me she was getting in her car to take it over there, she was lying. She says, I know you’re upset. I say, Yeah, I’m upset and I have every right to be furious with you. She says she’ll call me in the morning. I say, I suggest you follow through this time.

Finally, she does.

She calls and leaves a message the next morning saying she passed off Will’s file to Christy Johnson, who typically works with kids at Will’s preschool.

I exhaled in disgust. That woman passed my child on to someone else so she wouldn’t have to deal with it.

But her complacency, resulting in our interaction with Christy was the best thing that has ever happened to us in this entire awful process. As I was picking up Will from school later that day, Christy was already there talking to Will’s teacher, Mrs. Weiss. She introduced herself and had such a genuine smile. She said she just got word that she had received Will’s file—hadn’t even physically seen his file yet—, and she was over at the school doing some therapy for another student and wanted to check in on Will. Less than twelve hours later, Christy called me and said she had read through Will’s entire file, including all of the letters from Miss Lisa and Carie (I don’t think half of the people we dealt with at The District had read some, if any of Will’s file) and was going to work on scheduling an IEP meeting asap, probably in the next five school days.

I couldn’t believe my ears.

She said she needed to email me a document, but was having trouble attaching things in her email lately, so if that was the case again, “I see you live on Cottage and I’m going to pass your house on the way to my son’s lacrosse game this weekend. I’ll just drop it by.”

Oh. My. Gosh. Good people DO exist here!

In the next few days, we had at least two more twenty minute conversations on the phone. She had talked with Mrs. Weiss at length about Will and Christy said that she definitely wanted him in the District preschool classroom because it was important for his needs to be met at all angles in the classroom. My thoughts exactly!

She said the opening where Will would attend school was at Freedom Hill Elementary and wanted us to come and tour the school with her in the next few days. We did and Christy was with us for 1.5 hours telling me everything about the school. She had taken careful thought to his needs and specifically intended on placing him in a classroom full of boys with communication problems of one kind or another. I met Will’s teacher, Miss Erin, and she was wonderful. The entire school experience was just wonderful.

We went out on the play ground with the class and Christy asked me how I felt about everything. I said that I was incredibly impressed with the school, but I was worried about Will and how he would react to being taken out of Parkwood to attend this school. In addition to that, in looking at the other boys in the class, Will seemed to be in the upper eschelon of ability, and while I know Will would have a lot of things to work on there, and I was slightly worried he would have a hard time connecting to his classmates. He loves Parkwood and I liked the idea of him being with kids who were one level above him in ability that he could learn from. Christy said that this open spot was in the afternoon and that he could still go to Parkwood in the morning. I was hesitant. That seemed like so much school for such a little guy. But Christy and I kept talking and I went home and thought about it for another hour and knew it was the right thing. Will needed to attend both schools. He needed the peer modeling in the morning at Parkwood and he needed to work on his specific struggles in the afternoon at Freedom Hill. Cortney and I talked more about it that night and both concurred that was the best chance for success Will had in the next year and really closing the gap on his delays. A quick phone call to Dr. Middleton confirmed this theory and she gave the full stamp of approval. In fact, I don’t even remember praying about it. It just felt right to both Cortney and I. The first week will be tough for him to adjust to the schedule, but I know he’s completely capable to handling being in school all day. I’m more worried about how Duke and I will adjust, than Will.

The IEP meeting was scheduled for the next day. Cortney got permission to work from home so that he could attend the meeting and a friend watched Duke. We sat in a meeting room with Christy and Miss Erin and went through every single struggle Will has and created, together, a really good game plan with a set of goals for him over the next year. It was lovely not having to go to bat for my kid for once and have two loving women be overflowing with ideas on how to help him. We decided that he would attend Freedom Hill on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays for the rest of this school year so it wouldn’t be too difficult for him to adjust, as well as allowing him to meet with St. Kathryn and attend his gymnastics class on Mondays and Tuesdays—the absolute highlight of his week.

Cortney and I walked out of the meeting, arm in arm, smiling with tears in our eyes. We did it. We conquered the school district!

Over the summer, Will is going to attend a month-long summer program and will ride the bus from our home to the school in Oakton, and back. It’s a half-day program. And in the fall, I will drop off Will at Parkwood at 9 am. At noon, a bus will pick him up and take him to Vienna Elementary where he will go to school from 12:25-3:40 and then the bus will bring him home. To create as little confusion for Will as possible, we will now be referring to Parkwood as “school”, Freedom Hill as “playgroup”, and Summer School as “summer camp”. I figured three different schools was hard enough for an adult to keep up with.

Last night I packed Will’s lunch and fully felt the weight that my first born was going to school all day. He would be off in the world from 9-3:45. Was he ready? Was I ready? Would he miss me? Would he make a lot of friends? Would he be a good example to others? Would he be kind to his classmates?

Even though i feel like I got jipped out of a year with Will at home, I’m so thankful he has this opportunity to grow.

But I will miss him.

I hope he knows that.




I bought this lunchbox for Cortney for Valentine's Day a year ago as a gag gift because Cortney always takes a lunch to work. We decided it was time to pass it down to Will since he will now be taking a lunch every day to school.

Because he's a big kid. And big kids have lunch boxes.

To celebrate Will's first full day of school, I rented The Muppets for the boys and I to watch together when he got home at 4 with a hearty bowl of popcorn and chocolate milk.

I can't wait. I miss him already.

Grow, baby. Grow.