Communication from the school regarding The Boy has dwindled down to virtually nothing.  And I learned the hard way when The Boy was first in preschool that assuming that no news is good news is never a good idea.

He started preschool at his home school in January after being kicked out of his speech-based preschool run by the hospital. In March, his dad and I went to teacher conferences and asked about kindergarten. The teacher laughed and said, “Oh he won’t be ready for kindergarten next year! We’re going to recommend he do another year of preschool.” She waited 3 months to tell us she didn’t think he’d be ready. We went home and started looking for a house in a district with better schools and a better reputation for kids with autism.

And now, everyone from his school has gone dark… Maybe I’m gaining a reputation for being “that mom” and they don’t want to poke the bear. I don’t know. I do know that the district is depending on a TA with three other children on her load to act as my son’s primary special education teacher. The teacher who teaches his special education math and language arts classes was out for a week last week, but tends to freak out about things that aren’t very freak-out worthy. I’m supposed to get an IEP progress report with his report card, and haven’t yet received one although I’ve had the report card for over a week.  His classroom teachers don’t often communicate directly with home, and expect parents to “look online” for assignments, tests, grades, everything. That makes their job easier, and mine infinitely harder (which assignments have been modified, are the due dates and number of questions the same for my kid, or not?). Two of his teachers have started a texting thing, where they will send out mass texts about upcoming quizzes and tests – great! Except the last text I got was on a Sunday, saying there was a test the next day… I was signing his agenda every night, and that is also supposed to be where assignments are written, but it’s pretty blank now, so I haven’t been checking or signing it.

They’ve taken him out of a social skills class (that’s in his IEP), and put him with his TA for an hour at the end of the day. They still call it “Social Skills” but the teacher is listed as his TA (is that even legal? I asked the principal in my last email and she didn’t respond to that question), and from what I can tell there are no other kids in it. They work on getting homework done. I don’t know if the class he left remains, or if they reassigned that teacher. She also used to teach him math, but they took him out of her class for that, as well (and she was a good one).

I’d love to sit down with The Boy’s TA over coffee and just have a heart to heart with her. Let her know that I believe she is the only thing keeping my kid afloat over there. Let her know that it’s not fair for the district to use her like they are. And let her know that she doesn’t have to try to solve everything herself. I think she’s trying to keep me from worrying.

But the lack of communication is making me nervous. Time to investigate, I guess.