Last post I talked about the IEP meeting I was excited to go to – and after being delayed three times, we finally had it today. Woohoo! Keeping in tradition with how everything has been has been handled with this poor kid – it went horrible wrong.se
First off, the teachers, SPED instructor, case manager, parent & child all meet in the conference room. And who should be 20 minutes late? The translator – because he’s not important or anything. After sending two people out to get him, the case manager attempted to start the meeting having the child translate for the mom when no one was returning with translator in tow.
While we really didn’t have much else to do without him, the mom was understandably irritated & I couldnt help think the entire time what a bad message we were sending the student and the parent. Walking away from that meeting, (which ended up lasting only ten minutes once the translator came) I felt like the attitude the school had the entire time was “why can’t you just speak English.” Yes, it was difficult, but between the tardiness and the frustration seen in the staff, how could the mom or student walk away feeling like something positive happened?
I don’t normally complain a lot, but what’s frustrating me so much in this situation is that this is a girl who both needs and wants special ed services. Yet, the school does nothing to help her out. In fact, they go out of their way to do nothing. Yet there are other kids who are lucky enough to have parents who can advocate them, and despite the fact that the kids are apathetic and don’t want help – we have to pull out every stop. It just gets so frustrating to see good kids miss out on advantages they’re entitled to because their parents don’t know how to manipulate the system.
It just gets so aggravating, and I’m still not sure what I can do about it.