laurag

Good morning, I am working with a family who has an adopted son. This late elementary school child has a significant trauma history and in-utero substance exposure. He has been diagnosed with ADHD, attachment issues, anxiety and depression. He has a 504 for his ADHD. This is his first year at this school. The teacher is very supportive and accommodates the child extensively. The child is in 10+ hours of outside therapy per week and is picked up early from school 4 days/week to attend these supports. He is also on 3 mental health medications. The child has explosive behavior at home but the school says the child has no academic or behavioral issues at school. I would love for this child, who is masking all day at school, to get more in-school support. This would in turn reduce stress on the child and family. The school denied the request for evaluation due to 'no adverse impact' at school. The family did provide extensive reports from outside therapists, doctors, and a full neuropsych report all stating his severe challenges. The family has not yet received the PWN. Any advice on how to show the school that his disabilities are affecting him but in delayed and less obvious ways? Thank you for your help!

My son started Kindergarten with an IEP for Developmental Delay. He received OT, Speech, PT, and special instruction in reading (all weekly). In 1st grade he was reevaluated and moved to a Speech Only IEP as he was meeting all benchmarks. Now he is in 3rd grade and I am very concerned about his writing and spelling skills. I submitted a written letter asking for an evaluation for SLD in written expression and included multiple data points/examples - flagged as high risk on literacy screener for spelling/encoding last spring and this fall, teacher says handwriting/spelling make some work unintelligible, report from private OT evaluation showing low visual-motor integration and poor handwriting, previous achievement testing that showed very low scores for sentence building, copies of his written work, and results from a K-3 spelling screener given by the teacher on which he scored a 3/19 correct. The school sent me a PWN stating the evaluation is denied because, "previous psycho-educational evaluations and current academic achievement due not warrant suspicion of a specific learning disability in writing or additional evaluations. Student does not display any areas of psychological processing weakness." In Virginia, SLD identification requires the student to have a documented disorder in one of the basic psychological processes (see worksheet below). His testing from two years ago evaluated most (but not all) of these categories and showed no weakness. He does have a low visual motor integration score but the school says this means his disabilities are due to a motor impairment, which is excluded from SLD. Can the school refuse to evaluate because two-year old testing did not identify a psychological process weakness, which they say makes it unlikely he has a SLD? How do students who struggle with handwriting and spelling, but not reading, make it past this roadblock since none of the processes listed below target the processes used in producing written language? Thank you for any advice you can provide, Laura