Summer School

This morning marked another IEP meeting.  Looking back, the journey it took to get an IEP and the years of struggles along the way was all worth it now.  Kyle's IEP team is great.  It is nice to leave a school meeting refreshed now, instead of frustrated and furious.  Now it is just meeting a tweaking accommodations and supports that are in place.  Also, since we are rapidly approaching the end of the school year, it was time to discuss the possibility of summer school.

Kyle's academic level does not qualify him for academic summer school, but they felt that he qualified for summer school for social skills.  We had discussed this briefly a couple of months ago and I have been struggling with my opinions since.

We do a lot of 'stuff' during the summer that we just aren't able to do during the school year.  We basically live at the Montshire Museum of Science and Six Flags.  Who has time to fit in summer school?  Sending him to summer school would take away from my time with him.  But then again...I have to remember that it is his time, not mine, and that I mainly needed to look at what was best for him.

I also talked with Kyle about summer school.  To my amazement he was excited.  Seriously?  What kid wants to go to summer school?  Apparently mine.  So, I went to the meeting with an open mind.

Summer school for social skills is held four days a week just for half a day.  They do a variety of things in this group.  For instance, Mondays they plan on what they are going to prepare for lunch on Tuesday, they compile a shopping list, split it among the group and take off to the grocery store.  They are responsible for locating the items, asking the appropriate person for help when needed and paying for the items and making sure they have the correct change.  They also incorporate in the program bal-a-vis-x which I just learned about today and sounds wonderful.  Here's the link http://www.bal-a-vis-x.com/whobenifits.htm

Summer school runs for five weeks, in which one of those weeks we will be in Florida, so he really is only going for four weeks.  I could take up pages and pages writing about all of the positive aspects of this program but I'll save it for outside discussion if you would like to know more. 

One other added benefit is that Kyle is going to take the bus.  Currently Kyle is dropped off and picked up at school by us.  We are not required to do this, the bus stops right near our house, but a few years ago he was having difficulty on the bus and it was just easier all around to pick him up and drop him off.  This summer he will ride the bus with less people and can hopefully transition to regular school transportation next year.  He will probably still need to be placed behind the bus driver, but it will be that much more social exposure that he gets.

This is such a great opportunity for Kyle that I am glad he is able to participate it.  I will definitely blog about how the program goes this summer.  <3