IEP

Since John turns 5 next month, he is eligible for kindergarten starting this September. So, we had his IEP meeting last week. The purpose of this meeting is to determine eligibility, document goals for the coming year, and determine his placement.
You hear a lot of bad stories about IEP meetings, and parents having to really fight for services for their kids, so Yoshie and I prepared pretty well for this meeting. We had all of our questions printed out. And, we had our goals written down for each area.
Eligibility is a non-issue for John. He's had so many evaluations, and he is currently in the ECSE program, so there was no question that he needed special services. His main diagnosis is still "Other health impairment" or something like that. However, we went through the autism evaluation during this meeting and it was unanimous that he also qualified as autistic. That label opened up a lot more possibilities as far as placement.
Thankfully, the goals that Yoshie and I had come up with very closely matched the goals that they had come up with. There were a few goals that weren't specific enough or weren't measureable, so we had them re-word those. Once it became very apparent that we weren't going to sign off on their goals without some challenge, I thought it went very smoothly. Actually, some of their goals seemed a little too optimistic. I'm all for striving for high goals so I was happy to see that.
As for placement, they actually said one of our options was to be included in the normal kindergarten class right next to our house, and to be pulled out 20-60% of the time for special instruction. I never, ever thought they would offer that. But, Yoshie and I both felt that John would benefit from a more structured, intensive type program. They agreed and we ended up tentatively agreeing to an autism program at a school that is pretty far from our house. I don't like the distance thing, but the school sounds good. We are going to go check it out next week.

We also asked about holding John back a year, and they said we could do that if we wanted, but since they were providing a "free and appropriate" option, that we would not be eligible for any funding. I asked about repeating kindergarten next year if that turned out to be a good option, and they said that we COULD do that, though I got the feeling they would frown on it. The truth is that we can also drop out at any time, and re-enroll next year. So, we decided to give it a try (though we haven't signed anything yet and could change our mind after seeing the school).

Since we got the educational autism label, we decided that we did not need or want the medical autism label. So, we were able to cancel his all day autism evaluation that was scheduled for this week.