I have had a very similar experience, however, I was not able to get the behavior specialist that has worked so well with my son for the last 4 1/2 years put back on to my son’s case.

Through my insistence (and 2 months worth of documented) regression we were finally offered another behavior specialist but, I have to say, one that is very different from the behaviorist you and I have both used.

Why is it that we all have to fight like crazy to get a level of committment and programs that everyone knows will work. It just seems as if they like to spend the money on lawyers instead of the kids themselves. I don’t know the numbers but it would be an amazing story to find out how much these districts spend on trying to not give parents services and programs for their kids as opposed to how much it would cost to just offer them in the first place.

I can’t help but hope that once California gets it’s inefficient budgeting under control and it’s priorities straightened out – that maybe one day we will live in a state that actually values education for all children and not one that builds more and more prisons.

Good luck to you and your son!

The issues he describes as stemming from “a truly amazing combination of indifference and incompetence” are, sadly, the norm these days in public special education: too little staffing, too little training, way too much staff turnover, and a small number of genuinely effective programs hidden like money under a mattress for fear that demand, once a large number of people hear about it, will utterly crush what’s working about them.

What saddens me the most, Dr. Blaisch, about your story is that dozens of parents have found what you’re seeking for your son–programs that work, staffed by people who care. In a school where the teaching community has the experience and background necessary to serve children with autism spectrum disorders and other difficult conditions, and, most importantly, the ability to collaborate in effective ways.

In a physical plant that hasn’t had a working fire alarm since the students got there. In classrooms that, like the rest of the special day classes in Oakland, sometimes do devolve into “glorified daycare” when the staffing’s not available–due to a systematic issue of paraprofessionals receiving below-poverty wages and no preservice training. In a school that, despite high academic achievement and ever-increasing enrollment (both general and special ed) is slated to get carved up like a turkey at the end of the year.

I truly believe that the special education administration in OUSD recognizes the value of the services you seek for your son. The challenge is, how can the district AS A WHOLE recognize what’s working, and look honestly at the issues that make other things not work?

I think the district has an opportunity to do something approximating the right thing for parents, families, and students who are on the same journey as Dr. Blaisch and his son. And I think every family with a child who has an IEP in this district would do well to familiarize themselves with what’s going on at Tilden, because ultimately, we’re all in this mess together.

Do you have a child that has to depend on this – yes incompetent OUSD system? Have you dealt wit OUSD Administration and Psyc staff? Why is that OUSD spokepeople are always subs?

Obviously Richard your child is not mandated to attnd schools that will perhaps ruin their future. Us poor people have no other choice than to attnd vioent schools where Subs, yes yo, must be rotated throught the year to teach kids cause no one wants the job. We the populants pay and our children suffer.

So dont give me you defense of the Teachers Aides routine- I have dealt with some who fall asleep on kids IN CLASS!!

I have taught as a substitute for many, many days in special education and in ragular classes in several Oakland high schools. Before I became a substitute teacher in the OUSD, I had rather an automatic, negative opinion of Oakland schools. After my experiences with the special education teachers in Oakland, I can tell you that the ones I have met — include some wonderful teacher aids — are wonderful. They do an excellent job in a situation that requires superhuman patience and intelligence. They care deeply about their students.

The doctor is doing what he should be doing, keeping careful track of his son’s situation. He must be one of the very few paretns doing this, though.

To give the impression that the folks in Oakland’s special education are careless and incompetent seems to me to be absolutely inaccurate.

I found out through my own investigations that OUSD recives over 3.6 million dollars for taxing the charter school for services I know myy son’s school has not recieved. A OUSD RSP Showed up one day in the semester and that was all.

Dr. Blaisch please focus on you son first because once you begin to dig deeper at the incompetence and indifference of OUSD, you will soon see tragic tales of families whose lives will be ruined by this dilemma and you may become entrenched and lose valuable time with your son.

I have seen and heard so much in the city that i really do not understand why we let these people get away with it. What is it? Is it cause we are poor? Minorities? I hate this blog because it brings the cockroaches of Oakland Education politics out of hiding. They say things that rattle and scare me to think they have connections in this city.

Stay out of the mess and work with your child and others in your practice. You will change this city one child at a time and that is better than what many of us can do.

My autistic son is 16, and he gets good services from the ASIP program at Skyline, but that’s because most/all the ASIP parents have worked together and shared information with each other.

Having walked many, many miles on the same difficult path you’re traveling, I have to say that no one else will ever love and care for your child like you will, no one else knows him like you do, his strengths, his weaknesses, his successes and failures, and no one else *can* or will advocate for him as well as you, his parent. That’s your primary job, to be the best parent-advocate possible to him, because nobody else will do that job for you, or for him.

I hope you’ll find allies along the way. Other parents, Spec. Ed. and general education teachers, aides, therapists, and once even a district adminstrator (sorry to say she’s long gone from OUSD!) have become our family’s friends and allies, and helped us with meeting our son’s needs. Our family has tried to give back to this community when and where we could.

The biggest problems we’ve encountered can be laid at the feet of the district’s Director of Special Programs, and the next biggest problems belonged to her predecessor. I’m not going to say anymore, because the language I’d use would be completely inappropriate to a public blog.

As far as we can tell, the job of the current Director of Special Programs is to do as little as possible and especially to spend as little as possible without getting the district sued. Parents have to become well-versed in state and federal education law, and walk into every meeting with all the right acronyms, words and phrases (FAPE, LRE, “necessary for the student to benefit”, etc.), sounding like we’ve just come from our attorney’s offices, and will be filing suit at the first opportunity.

Our favorite technique – and no one seems to believe how well it works until they try it – is to always bring a recorder to every meeting. By law, written notice must be given to the district 24 hours before the meeting, but other than that, it’s a minimal hassle, maximum effectiveness tool. Nobody from the district will lie, or threaten, or argue when they’re being recorded. Instead, they all want to sound super-professional, and super-invested in serving the student’s needs.

Our family’s IEP meetings went from 4-hour screaming matches where district personnel lied to our faces about what the district could and would provide, and once someone stormed out on us, and we refused to meet with those (ahem! another inappropriate term) again, and the IEP wasn’t completed. From all that horror, to meetings of one hour or less with a completed IEP that met our son’s needs, and even services we weren’t aware of being offered. When we were done, we could all genuinely smile at each other, thank each other, and feel good about what we’d accomplished together.

Katy, if Brian is interested, you have my permission to give him my contact info.

Brian, we’ve shared our son’s IEPs with other families before, because sometimes just knowing the language another family has used in their child’s IEP is all that’s needed to get a necessary service or accomodation.