CSE Transition Meeting

When students transition from the preschool age group setting to the school-age setting, a special education transition meeting must be held, since the service providers change from the county to the school district. Nolan's transition meeting was today, and he moved from CPSE (the Committee for Preschool Special Education) to CSE (the Committee for Special Education).

One of the hard things is determining exactly what Nolan needs. He's quite bright and developmentally on track. He technically qualifies for an IEP in two different ways: the first being "hard of hearing" and the second being "other health impairment." His primary disability is the hearing loss (this affects his education the most), so this is his classification in the school district.

Our elementary school is fantastic and has a Teacher of the Deaf (TOD) on campus. Nolan has some vocabulary gaps and some language processing issues (some of this is due to his fluctuating hearing loss, which has been known to cause central auditory processing disorder - CAPD - in children). In children who are deaf or hard of hearing, this problem isn't referred to as CAPD, but is simply considered an effect of the hearing loss. Nolan needs some pre-teaching and some work on processing phrases, multiple step directions, and auditory discrimination skills in the classroom. The team decided that 30 minute daily sessions with the TOD would be appropriate - these sessions may be push-in or pull-out. "Push-in" means that the TOD will go into the classroom with Nolan, and "pull-out" means that Nolan would be pulled out of the classroom for a one-to-one session.

The biggest debate was speech. Nolan has some speech errors, but the majority are developmental in nature. He has W for L, misses S occasionally, and has the normal speech errors of a four year old (difficulty with R and TH). He does sometimes miss the D sound in words, and will confuse M for N. These errors are related to his hearing, and can fluctuate with his hearing level. Some weeks he has a solid D sound, other weeks it nearly disappears.

In the end, we decided to keep speech therapy, at least for Kindergarten. If the developmental errors disappear and his articulation becomes clearer, then we can always drop it. We'd rather not get behind the 8-ball with his speech, as it is easier to prevent a problem than to remediate one. He'll get speech twice per week at 30 minutes per session, which may be in (very) small groups or individually, as the speech language pathologist sees fit.

There are also a few "alerts" put into his IEP - things his kindergarten teacher should monitor. Nolan's gross motor skills are borderline, and his fine motor skills have come along nicely. Still, we want to watch for fatigue and make sure he is able to develop age-appropriate skills. He still can't hop on one leg like his peers can (or throw a ball well), but that may change over the summer (hint: Mommy Boot Camp is in session this summer).

The meeting went very well, and I am so thankful that we live in the best school district in the area for kids with disabilities. The team at our school really ensures that every child is given what they need to excel!

Preparing for Nolan's CPSE: Deciding on Services

Nolan's CPSE meeting is rapidly approaching, and our wonderful speech therapist asked us to start thinking about what we would like for services next year. We currently get speech therapy an amazing three times per week, which is quite good. Many children only get speech therapy once per week. Our county does not have any teacher of the deaf services for children younger than kindergarten, so our speech therapist covers all roles with ensuring Nolan's language development stays on track.

When Nolan graduates to the school district, we would like to maintain two days per week of speech services. While his language is on par with his hearing peers, he has lost some sounds that he used to have- most notably /f/ and /v/. These are more difficult sounds for a child to obtain, but Nolan used to have them and has since lost them. "First" now comes out as "horse" and "for" is "hor."

He never had a true /v/ sound, but used to substitute /b/ for /v/, which is normal for his age- "biolin" for "violin." He has now lost the sound entirely. He substitutes /h/ for /v/ now- saying "hiolin" for "violin." Since he is not voicing the letter in this position, it is likely he is not hearing the /v/ or the /f/ in these words. He also occasionally confuses /m/ and /n/, saying "nilt" for "milk" and "meed" for "need."

Because of the articulation issues, we are likely to maintain the two days per week of speech services. I don't have the official articulation scores yet, but he will probably score lower this time than he did last time, due to the loss of those sounds.

The next pressing issue was whether to include classroom services by our therapist. Nolan doesn't actively engage during library story hour or during circle time at his 2 year old preschool program when I am present. I have mixed feelings on the subject, because I don't know if having classroom services would be more distracting or helpful to Nolan. I decided to ask his preschool teachers about the idea, since they see Nolan during the entire portion of the 2-year old program and I am only present for the parent/child portion.

They did agree that Nolan is clingy and doesn't participate when I am present. However, he does just fine when I am not there, behaving and participating in the same manner as his peers. This doesn't surprise me, since we have the same situation with (hearing) booth tests. They feel he doesn't need any help in the classroom. They also said they were impressed at how much Nolan knows and understands (such as colors/shapes/letters), and that many of the children without any "special needs" do not have these concepts. Of course, with one-on-one therapy three times per week in a quiet setting, he's ahead of the game when it comes to many of the more academic pursuits.

Because of this, I think we will request the 2 days of speech therapy (45 minutes each session) and not ask for the classroom services. If we feel he isn't doing well at preschool, then we'll reconsider at a later date.

Pre-CPSE Meeting

We had considered canceling the pre-CPSE (for those not in the know, CPSE stands for the Committee on Preschool Special Education) meeting because of all the medical appointments we knew we would have this spring. We decided to reinstate the meeting once we had all the dates nailed down for Nolan's future medical procedures.

This meeting is not the official transition meeting, but just a "meet and greet" to let the district know about Nolan and to get a feel for what his needs are. Everything went great until we started discussing what Nolan would need once he started pre-kindergarten. There were two things the special education chairperson paled at: a teacher of the deaf (TOD) for Nolan and an FM system.

Children in the preschool age group are at a distinct disadvantage. They are no longer covered by Early Intervention, but are not yet covered by the services offered in school. Frankly, a 0-5 age group for Early Intervention makes more sense, but the system isn't set up to be practical. Thus, the TOD cannot consult on Nolan's education until he is in kindergarten, which will be in 2012-2013.

When we mentioned an FM system, the chairperson got excited and said, "every room in our elementary school has an FM system!"

"No, we don't want a sound-field for Nolan. We want a personal, ear-level FM system. Not now, but by pre-kindergarten."

Her demeanor changed slightly. Oh, we were those parents. The ones who know what their child needs to succeed in the classroom and won't back down. The ones who aren't afraid to break out the "equal access to his education" phrase. Darn those pesky IDEA laws.

She did state that he cannot have an FM system until kindergarten, even if he attends pre-kindergarten at their school. They might not have enough, you see, and if they don't have an extra one laying around... then he doesn't get one.

The school district isn't responsible for funding technology until kindergarten, and he isn't in Early Intervention for preschool. It will be very interesting to see how this will be covered, because he will have a personal FM system for pre-K. I don't care which agency covers it- he has to have one. It's the law.

The meeting wasn't negative in any way, but I did sense that we might have a fight or two coming up over technology. To be fair, the school district has never dealt with a child who needed assistive technology (AT) at such a young age. This is new for them, and it looks like we're going to pave the path for families who follow after us. Hopefully, by the time we're through the preschool years, the system will be "smoothed out" for any other mainstreamed children who require AT at the preschool level.