School's Out!!

Reese has been attending Holly Ridge for speech therapy and preschool which incorporates occupational therapy and speech in a group class. We started in October 2008. He was in a class that required parents to stay and participate the whole time. About 2 months after his 2nd birthday he graduated to the class where the parents do not stay. This was with the same teacher we already had been in class with so it made the transition a lot easier. Well today was his last day. This program is for birth to age 3, so starting Tuesday he is no longer eligible for this program. He has had all his 3 year old assessments and I think I've filled out all the appropriate paperwork. Now we are just waiting to hear what is next. The 3-5 year old program is preschool through the school district, so he'll go to the elementary school. (I do not know if they expect us to drop our kids and leave or what--but I'm not too comfortable with that idea.) Holly Ridge has recommended he go into an inclusion class --meaning along side "typically developing kids" aka TDKs. Of course nothing can be straight forward---inclusion classes are both school district and head start sharing a class. The class he should be in only has 3 district spots which are full. The other 17 are head start and 1 spot is open, BUT we don't financially qualify for head start.

SOOOO...they have to review all of Reese's assessments and calculate a score for him. Head start must give their spot to the child with the "most need" and that is determined based on a score compiled from a huge stack of factors. So we should know by Friday if he gets the head start spot or not. They haven't really told me about what the options are if he doesn't get that spot as they are thinking he likely will. So for now we think he'll go 4 days a week at 8:15AM (HOLY COW) at the elementary school closest to our house..less than a mile. SO we shall see.