School update

Douwe has officially qualified for special ed funding. Well, it's sort of confusing, because he didn't qualify for his language disorder. His language issues are no longer bad enough to be classified as special ed. However, he then got in the back door, catch all exception. Which is, that his performance at school is not commensurate with his ability as measured by the various tests he has now taken, and the language disorder clearly plays into that.

They then tossed in a note which says that it is not clear that this gap would not be bridged by some simple accomodations at the individual classroom level (double negatives really suck, by the way and especially if you are having trouble reasing the sentence anyway) but that it would be in the opinion of the muckety mucks in charge "irresponsible" to wait and see in this case.

I thought that was a strange word to choose somehow which is why it's in quotes. I'm not sure why I think that.

What this means in practice is that we can either enroll him in the speech school or that his current school will get extra money every year (about 4K euros per year, for the nosy amoung us, *grin*) to pay for whatever extra help he may need along the way. How that exactly works is unclear to me; though I am sure I will be finding out soon.

The grant is good for three years. So the interminable testing is now over, at leat for three years, and all that's left is that he has to go back to the neurologist every year for followup. Since his neurologist is the only really helpful person I have met so far, I am not unhappy about this.

We will be keeping him at the Montessori school; it would require a very serious inducement to persuade me to subject the poor child to another school change. I am very much enjoying his current unfrightened, unanxious self and have no desire to provoke the return of that scared little kid I had on my hands for so long.

I have no idea really what plans the school has for this money, but I have no doubt they will come up with something. I would, in their place. I am also pleased because I have been concerned about the possibility that he might be kept back in Kindy because of the language problem and I think this development decreases that possibility.