Preschool - IEP setup etc Please help | Autism PDD

Those of you whose children started preschool (out of early intervention) - when did u start the process? How? who guided u thru it?

Preschool will start in Jul but someone told me that I have to start NOW! I don't know where to begin... will my EI coordinator help? Do I need to draft letters? What happens then?

Are there posts that will direct me - sorry to bother u... I just need to start but don't know how/where from!

Thanks alot.

 

Our Early Intervention agency set up a meeting with the school 120 days before our son turned 3.  We didn't have to do anything except take him in for testing.My son was 3 this past July too.  We sent our first letter to them in January alerting them of his attending in July.  Our EI sort of helped, we also had intensive autism services and they did the most to help and to prepare us for the meetings. 

They should have draft letters, actually my EI coordinator sent the first letter to the school about Liam. There are DOE time frames that start when that letter goes in.  EI should make you aware of those also.  The school should contact you and set up a pre planning meeting. 

Our school was bad with time frames and we eventually ended up removing the first contact we had from our team and she was fired because she didn't do her job very well.   In our case, the EI folks were supposed to handle the process and hand off paperwork to the school district.  The EI folks started too late and holidays etc delayed things.  So it does not hurt to ask about this maybe 3 months in advance (in there are long holidays in there add more time.)  We went a month or so without services even though there was a diagnosis in the EI paperwork.  The SD wants to (has to?) do the evaluations over.

Someone recommended doing your own evaluations.  Depending on financial situation that might be worth doing even with a diagnosis.  Locally the SDs are pressuring the EI staff to not talk in the IEP meetings, presumably to make it easier to reduce services.
Dad2Luke&Alan39403.0153587963

Rita,
Does your son have autism or is he undiagnosed so far?  If he's not been diagnosed yet, I recommend you have it done before the school evaluations.  I made the mistake of having the school eval first.  Here they don't test for autism unless you already have a diagnosis or the child has been in school and the teachers and therapists suspect autism. 

So I am having to have him retested by the school.  Not having his diagnosis first has added 8 months to the process for us. 

I contacted my local school district special education office and they told me what to do and where to go. I went in, filled some forms... took some forms for his EI teacher to fill out and scheduled an evaluation with the district. During that time, Rita, I would recommend u use the time to have an ur "independent" evaluations done, and all the recommendations that come with that. Make a list of all the services u expect the SD to fund. Strap on a helmet, and go into that first IEP ready to do battle...
Copyright Autism-PDD.net