Tuesday, July 08, 2003

Special delivery

Got my son's IEP in the mail today, which is something of a miracle. Usually they're processed on about the same timetable you'd expect if the Special Ed Office set up a bunch of monkeys with typewriters and eventually, inevitably, once of them happened to strike out an educational plan. The department's reputation is so bad that I have from time to time volunteered to stop by the office and type the darn thing myself, but no. Don't want to put the monkeys out of work. Maybe there's a union involved. So from my son's IEP meeting in March, we're usually lucky to get the thing to look at in August, sometimes by the first or second week of school. July is unheard of.

And I'm grateful, of course, because this stuff is my life ... but you know, it's been such a peaceful, sort of successful summer. As important as checking the plan and approving the plan and obsessing over the plan is, I just kind of hate getting sucked back in to all the drama and dispute and disagreement. Just like every year, it's bound to be mostly okay but planted with a couple of land mines that will raise my blood pressure and cause me to rant and rave at personnel who are on vacation for another month or so, long enough for me to become exhausted and resigned before I can actually have a chance to vent at them in person. At least the behavior plan I wrote is indeed included in the document, along with a couple of old outdated plans from the files. A few good plans are better than none, I suppose. Maybe I can just bury this one on my desk for a little while, and keep my teeth unclenched until August?

No comments: