This is a difficult year re planning for Toby’s move up to through the school grades. He moves up to the middle school (6th grade) next year, and the real problem is that the building is horrible regarding functional accessibility for anyone who uses wheels to get around. It is technically up to ADA code, but it is far from “friendly” – it’s a hard building to deal with even for folks who are ambulatory. I swear, I’m having more trouble with sorting this out emotionally than I did when sending Toby off to kindergarten (that was a hard thing to do with both of my kids – a combination of excitement plus bittersweet about “launching” your kids off into worlds wider than one which orbits around moms/parents).
The building is sort of like a combination of a (1) multi-level split-level part, attached to a (2) multi-floor “donut” shaped building with a hole in the middle and an elevator in opposite corners, with neither corner particular close to the multi-level split-level part. You enter the school into a big open area, where there are four choices – a hallway at the back which goes off to the left, a hallway at the back which goes further to the back and the elevator a stairway jutting out from the wall on teh right about halfway back which ascends to a loft type thing and the main office, and a sunken atrium thing straight ahead which opens to an open area, and then beyond that the cafeteria. Note all the stairs, and the only way to the places is via going back down a long hallway to an elevator, which then connects to long hallways which connect back to areas at the front of the building.
So – while most kids can go up the stairs to the main office for whatever they need to take care of (the nurses office is up there too, and counselors, and things like the table to pick up items that parents drop off), and then off down the hallway to classrooms – Toby will have to make a 20 minute trip the long way around and back if he needs to go to that area before a classroom. Twenty minutes is an eternity as far as the daily schedule goes at middle school, he’ll miss half a class. Plus, reason #1 that I suspect he’ll be spending much of his middle school career in hallways, and not for punitive but rather mobility reasons.
That’s the multi/split level part of the building. The donut part of the building is also a challenge. The elevators are old and only sometimes functional. (Hannah was on crutches for three weeks in 6th grade, so they gave her a key to use the elevator. Three separate times in those three weeks, the elevator was “broken” and she had to hop down the stairs on her crutches to get to wherever.) Hopping down the stairs will not be an option with Toby. Instead? He will be waiting in the hallway for however long it takes for them to fix the elevator. Reason # 2 that I expect he’ll be spending much of middle school looking at the hallway walls.
There are a zillion other reasons why I suspect he’ll become intimately familiar with the hallways.
We also have to decide what kind of “program” to put him in – there are three choices:
1. Regular classes, with a resource room period daily.
2. Regular classes with a Teaching Assistant there, with a resource room period every other day.
3. Modified classrooms – only special ed students, only a special ed teacher, no resource room, no mainstreaming/inclusion (however you plan that out), though there’s probably room for “push out” to a regular classroom for a few periods a day.
Toby is a kid who has mobility needs, but academically is at or above grade level and holds his own against peers.
With any option, they recommend that Toby skip taking a foreign language until “later”, as the resource room will take the scheduling slot of a foreign language (and apparently no one in option #3 ever takes a foreign language).
Toby is highly communicative and verbal, and he has the best vocabulary in his class according to his current and prior few teachers. There is no academic reason for keeping him out of a foreign language, plus he’d do well at it I suspect. I have no idea if option #1 or option #2 is better (#2 gives a sort of “case manager” – if the Teaching Assistant is “good,” they’ll keep tabs on where Toby’s at across the school days). Resource room is where they’ll do stuff like give him extended time on tests when he needs it, and when they’ll be able to “scribe” his work (he speaks it, someone else writes it) without bothering the rest of the class.
Further, there’s the PE “oy” part of the puzzle. There are two PE options: Regular PE, which starting around now becomes sort of competitive/team training stuff, and some sort of modified – which is mostly for the kids who for usually cognitive and social reasons do not “fit” well in the competitive/team environment, and it’s “skills based” – they send them out to the field if the weather is good, and they work on throwing a ball. Etc.. (Honestly. It’ll take Toby the entire PE period to get the walker across the grassy field.) The problem really is that CP is pretty low-incidence – the more common reasons to offer a modified PE program are for other kinds of developmental disabilities. So in addition to the physical challenge part of getting a walker over a grassy field, he will be miserable in a group of kids who don’t communicate as well as he does. He is a really sensitive kid and as friendly and aware as can be of other folks’ challenges, but asking him to do a chunk of time in a place where talking doesn’t work so well? Not a great fit for him. Plus – he LOVES trying to figure out how to participate in team sports. He will not love figuring out how to throw a ball 10 feet. He is perfectly adequate at things like wheelchair basketball and sled hockey. If the sport happens while sitting, he’ll do it and he’ll be doing PE.
PT cannot substitute for PE. There’s a state law about a certain amount of PE throughout K-12 (it varies by age, it’s about 3 times per 6 day cycle in middle and high school). I get that PT is not a good substitute for adapted team sports. However it beats the hell out of modified skills based stuff. And he’s doing the PT regardless, it’s hard to envision him “having” to do what will be a mostly useless and miserable PE experience for him.
The one way we may be able to “manage” the PE piece is that something on an IEP trumps state law. So if we can get the PE reduced to one time per cycle on his IEP, and then request that that time be used for pull-out PT time, we may be able to manage it that way. That, or I’m prepared to get him a doctor’s note and give him a study hall instead for every single PE day during the school year 
Somehow I doubt we’ll be able to get it reduced to zero.
But the irony – PE is required but foreign languages are optional – it slays me.
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