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Getting my son where he is now really HAS been an adventure, and I am grateful beyond words for this school.

Our public school system here is a total disaster for everyone, and they are incapable of providing a safe environment for any of the autistic kids. I don't think much of what they provide the mainstream kids either, let me tell you. (How would you like to eat lunch with someone ranting at you through a megaphone the whole time? Isn't something wrong when a third of all the kids on a playground are in time-out--routinely? Do you remember your elementary school being so prisonlike as the ones I see here?)

The special ed director made a shocking admission to me--they are having trouble finding enough ways to spend the money they have--they're buying a lot of stuff they don't even need because they have to spend the money, while the mainstream budget is laying off needed teachers left and right. Mainstream kids aren't getting field trips, aren't getting to go to spelling bees and sports competitions because there's no money. But Special Ed is deliberately wasting funds because it's use it or lose it. Of course if the media went to them over this, they'd deny it, but this is what she said to me.

They can't just move the money over, either, even though the infrastructure problems that affect the mainstream kids affect the special ed kids just as much! A delapidated building is a delapidated building, and inadequate supervison of the mainstream kids because of fired teachers endangers everyone. They tend to locate special programs like the autistic programs in the very worst schools, and bus the kids in from all over the city--this helps them to keep the troubled schools open, but it means that good special ed teachers sometimes actually fear for their own safety, and are more likely to quit. The school they put my son in when he was in the public autistic program has NASTY facilities. Beyond bad. NASTY. Depressing, repressing.... The fewer adults there are around, the more damage the kids do, and things just get worse.

(For some reason, administration never gets the axe.)

They put my son on a bus with broken brakes when he was in 2nd grade, before I pulled him out. The driver was having to downshift and then use the emergency brake to make the bus stop. The epidemic broken buses meant that the rest of the fleet was having to stay on the road more, exacerbating the problem. Some kids were on the bus for 3 or 4 hours without even a potty break! School out at 3, kids home at 6:30--that's not acceptable to ME. But I was told that's just how it is. (He was never picked up on time, either. Late to school sometimes an hour, almost every day! And waiting for his bus meant his sister was tardy for her kindergarten 59 times in one semester!)

The district can't afford to maintain the special ed and other buses, but Special Ed is buying unneeded toys to spend federal money. They (by law) can't pay aides enough to make them stick around, so turnover and shortages result in them hiring dangerous and meritless people that McDonald's wouldn't let flip burgers.

You have to be a special kind of person to change a 10 year old's diapers, and even more special to stick around long enough to bond a little bit with such children. Most times these people quit without notice, leaving the teachers completely overwhelmed and in the lurch, and THEY burn out. What do you do when you're alone with 8 autistic elementary kids because the aides both quit, and two of the severely autistic need diaper changes, which has to be done in another room? Leave seven alone, unsupervised, lift and change the others, pray the couple who are occasionally violent don't hurt the others? Pray the one so disturbed he will break and eat glass doesn't decide to get up and find a window? Pester the principal (who has an Attitude about being stuck with the program) to please come down again and babysit for you?

And what happens all this time to the bright, Aspergers kid who **can** learn, can be brilliant in fact, if someone is helping him stay on task? High functioning disabled kids are put in with low-functioning kids, which does the low-functioning ones a lot of good but means the high-functioning ones aren't getting what they need. That attention is NOT a waste of time. It can make the difference between a high-functioning autistic kid (or otherwise disabled kid) becoming a working taxpayer (and a happy, functioning person who needs minimal help) and a kid becoming institutionalized as an adult, lost, unable to achieve his potential...and a burden on the taxpayer.

I'm just very blessed--my son is very blessed--that a way out opened up for us. There is no way that my son could be functioning at grade level if he had been left in that public special ed program...a pawn in a sickening money game. We drive two hours a day between us to get the kids to and from this school. We will stay here when we could make more money moving elsewhere because of this school.

There's truth in every word you wrote!

This however:

And what happens all this time to the bright, Aspergers kid who **can** learn, can be brilliant in fact, if someone is helping him stay on task? High functioning disabled kids are put in with low-functioning kids, which does the low-functioning ones a lot of good but means the high-functioning ones aren't getting what they need.

was a particular sticking point for us.

The school district had/has a decent program for high functioning kids that are verbal and are nearly potty trained. My 4 year old is non-verbal, low functioning and definitely not appropriate for the class that the school district wanted to put him in. My wife implored the directors that the high functioning kids, which we only wished our son could be, would suffer if my son was placed in their class. Didn't matter to them.

It hasn't been easy, but I would go to the ends of the earth to help my son be all that he can be.