Greetings,

 

I hope all of you are doing well and have recovered from the Disney Conference. I know it took me about a week to get back into my normal routine. Disney sure was exciting. It was great to make new friends and spend time with old friends. When we returned home I had to start making some difficult and stressful decisions regarding Daniel's schooling for next year. I'm sure this is something that most of you deal with as well. This was the first year I've really had to struggle with where to place him. 

 

Last year I made a somewhat controversial decision to place him in a school for special needs kids. Mainstreaming is great when it works but it doesn't work for Daniel. At his old school Daniel was struggling. He would get violent when getting ready to go to school and I was getting texts and phone calls on a regular basis about his disruptive behavior in school. When I placed him at the charter school for special needs kids he thrived. He was learning, he had friends, he was accepted and he felt safe. He loved going to school. No more violence or arguing about going to school. He would start telling me if we were getting close to time to leave. He would worry if we were going to be late. He absolutely loved it.

 

Imagine his utter despair when he learned that the State Board of Education in their infinite wisdom (said with extreme sarcasm) decided to shut his school down. They made a lot of claims about the school but the worst was that the kids "weren't" learning. Out of 80 kids they had 75 sets of parents saying how much their kids were learning and how happy they were at school. Our school board is fighting this decision but in the meantime they were forced to close the school. Which left 80 sets of parents "scrambling" with where to place their kids. The base middle school for Daniel was NOT an option. I've had a lot of friends send their kids there. They would send me text or say things like "I can't get them to follow the iep". The "administration doesn't listen to me regarding the iep". "there's no supervision". The "bullying is out of control". These were different sets of parents telling me this. Sigh. Private school wasn't an option because I couldn't afford it. 

 

This led me to home schooling. Something I never thought I would do. Home schooling takes lots of patience, structure, and planning. These are not my strong suits. However, the state of NC allows for parents to do a home school co-op and pay teachers to teach it. Parents will have to do volunteer hours but Daniel will be taught by three of his favorite teachers and will have some of his friends in class with him.

 

I'm wondering how many of you have had the same struggles I've had with the school system (I bet it's most of you) and how many of you have made the decision to home school?. I would love to hear from you. 

 

Kellie