Thursday's report: Glitch Count = 5

Glitch One: Charlie's coverage during the IEP.
Part A of Glitch--> So at 7:58 a.m. I learned that Charlie's aide was on vacation and the agency planned no coverage for the 9-11:30 a.m. shift at his preschool. (The agency had called the day before but my sitter had not relayed the message when I'd spoken to her and the written message was stuck in a stack of papers). By 8:04 a.m., the office person at said agency was fully aware that I was expecting some warm body to support him within 56-minutes as his IEP was scheduled.
Part B of Glitch--> Attempted multiple times to reach the message-warp-zone sitter as she was "on call" to babysit for the morning only to hear that lovely message, "The phone number you have called is no longer in service."
Outcome: Agency found warm body and I made it to the IEP right on time, just a little less composed than otherwise would like.

Glitch Two: The IEP, the whole IEP, and nothing but the IEP.
Part A of Glitch--> No school nurse, no Assistive Technology representative.
But a whole lot of other people...the Psych Assessor, the speech Assessor, the Occupational Therapy assessor, the Physical Therapist, the Adaptive PE assessor, the independent forensic psychologist (that I feel belongs hanging out with Gregory House, MD and perhaps bothering Dr. Cutty rather than me!), Pat Matt, Pat Matt's boss and my decade-long arch-nemesis at meetings like this, the Special Ed Ombudsperson (who did not need to shake me out of tears today!), the Music Therapy assessor, one of the two speech therapists who work with Charlie, and, best of all, a general education teacher from Jamie's school.*
Patty SW and I were swallowed by the sheer number of employees. Let the Guess-the-number-of-Jellybeans-in-the-Jar game begin.
Part B of the Glitch--> Assessment report (draft) presented did not match the assessment reports (draft) that I'd been provided with minimal advance notice. Moreover, the District is moving to a "unified trans-disciplinary" style of report, so it is virtually impossible to decipher which specialist saw what behavior/skill in what setting on what occasion. Moreover, the report was a litany of skills observed, pathetic %iles for the most part, and mis-stated medical history (how many times can they change it and STILL get it wrong?) but with NO comprehensible explanation of what he needs to learn/do/exhibit to "catch up" or at least "maintain the gap between his performance and that of same-age peers".
Part C of the Glitch--> The forensic psychologist was unpredictable and irritating. His recommendations varied wildly based on what topic was on the table and most importantly, bore little resemblance to the ones in his final report. Most excruciating of all, he said, "I hated [Charlie's preschool]" four times in a row, with much dramatic flailing. At the end of his oration, I asked him to perhaps redefine the word "hate" as the way it was presented and being audio-recorded, I feared would make it sound "like a place of filth and pestilence." So then he backed up a bit and said it was just wasting Charlie's time. Fortunately, the administrative designee allowed that it is a wonderful preschool and that "we all love [name of preschool]".
Part D of the Glitch--> The District team had pre-met several times (for clearly hours on end) to pre-write the IEP document. This is a HUGE violation of the spirit of federal law (i.e., the IDEA), which requires the parent to be part of any team that determines federal handicapping condition, placement, behavior plans, etc. They wrote about 27 or 28 proposed goals and present levels, neither of which is a particularly big deal BUT they changed his federal handicapping condition from Autism to "Other Health Impaired", completed Areas of Need in a minimalistic (and never to be agreed-upon fashion), penned lame-ass special factors regarding Charlie's talker device and wrote a Behavior Support Plan. ALL BIG NO-NO-NOs.
Part E of the Glitch--> Pat Matt reverted to Pat Jerk and went after me for sharing with the team that Charlie's attention and alertness is much improved following use of suspended equipment (e.g., various swings within an OT treatment context). He sniped that I turned down a preschool placement b/c it had a swing for safety reasons, and so the team, most of them not part of the team that rode the bus to Litigation in 2006-07, had to take a quick scenic trip down memory lane. Not pretty, not pleasant. Followed by another snipe about the board-certification level of one of Charlie's Non-public agency interventionists. (see Friday's blog for more).
Outcome: Slated to return on Wednesday afternoon for yet more joy.

Glitch Three: Momentary Tantrum-like Behavior by the Author (After all that love, who would have thunk?)
Have to dash from the IEP meeting, with low blood-sugar a certainty, to retrieve Charlie from the much-besmirched (albeit NAEYC-accredited) preschool. Walking in, three teachers greet me and of course, that makes me feel worse -- that Charlie should be denied normalcy and I should have to give up having him somewhere familiar and kind. On my way out, I asked the District aide to let her colleague know that since Pat Matt (her boss) had depicted the home program as inessential and implied that it was a waste of time, I was disinclined to rush home for the session -- esp. since I had a lot of errands to run. Worse though, I called Pat Matt's voicemail and left him a more terse version, although I made it clear that I had an event to prepare for today and needed clarification from him on what exactly they were spending Charlie's time doing before having his people in our home. Not my finest hour.


Glitch Four: Getting Everything Done for the Awards Ceremony ... made more challenging by demands by Spud-owner to purchase "semi-glossy paper" for his literary magazine project on CS Lewis, my utter disorganization and procrastination, & lingering malcontent over glitches 2 and 3.
Part A of Glitch-->Suffice-it-to-say, I had to print things, find things, sort things, talk to people, run to Kinko's (AND Staples), wash the cake servers, load the vehicle amid sitter's arrival, various kids getting home from school, and the always-stressful dinner/meds hour.
Part B of Glitch-->Patty SW and I arrived 75 minutes ahead of the presentation to find that the auditorium was TOTALLY, 180-degrees out of alignment with my written request to the Building Site Supervisor. Folded up the overabundance of big tables, had to drag and set up dozens of folding chairs, close stage curtains, distribute programs (on each chair)...Patty SW saved me from ripping the fingernails from the custodian by handling the "Where's the Microphone?" issue.
Part C of Glitch-->Where's the darned ice?
So refreshments/paper products/decorations roll in as various committee members arrive...when it becomes somewhat obvious that I didn't clearly designate a person to bring ice. Argh! Luckily, a couple of folks ran to get ice, saving a thirst throng from certain fate of warm soda.
Outcome: Overall, a perfectly respectable evening of celebrating 7 individuals' contributions to special education students within SDUSD. 7 nice stories, 7 worthy recipients, and lots & lots of cake!

Glitch Five: Sand Crab's blog shenanigans.
My day ended with a chorus of "Where's the Crab?" as Major Crab had locked all his faithful readers out of his blog due to OPSEC (operational security) concerns and some inconsistent Army regs & positions on blogging. In addition to providing some occasional technical support to blog-followers of Ben, now I was tasked with damage control/public relations. Bed never looked so good.


* Ed. note: The gen ed teacher sent is the EXACT teacher that, when Jamie was assigned to her classroom was deemed so unsatisfactory an option that the Crabby Queen home-schooled Jamie for 3.5 weeks until a spot was available in another teacher's class.