One thing that raising LuLu all this time has taught me is how to deal with opposition. She can be quite oppositional; quite stuck. And it can be quite draining.

But none of this compares with how oppositional the educrats can be surrounding our pursuit to have my daughter educated. The due process war we’re in rages on. And the end goal for us…to secure an education for LuLu…is no where in sight.

The latest oppositional moves include the state DOE getting the federal judge to agree (in one day’s time with no official notice to us until after the fact) to seal the records on our federal appeal. Now even the most trusting person has to ask themselves why a state agency would work so hard (and quickly) to seal the records of a local school system’s hearing when the parents had made the choice to open the hearing to the public. Due process hearings are generally kept closed to protect the children and families’ confidentiality. Are you suspicious yet?

Then, of course, there was the very passive-aggressive move of the school district to complete autism testing (that was ordered by the state-level judge). They didn’t want to do it and made no moves to follow through until we insisted. Then they sent their psychologist to our home nine times over a 3-month period. All the testing she did showed LuLu to fall within the autistic spectrum – each and every test. Yet, the educrats pulled out a line of code out of the state regulations that says a child can’t be labeled as “autistic” if their behaviors could be due to “emotionality” (whatever the heck that means) and they refused to change her eligibility.

Then there’s the whole school voucher issue. Even while I was working hard to support the passage of this voucher program so that parents of special education students in Georgia would have a choice, I had this feeling in my gut that LuLu would be denied this option. At first it looked like the denial would be for all children assigned to the state’s kiddie prisons (psychoeducational centers), because after the passage of the bill the state DOE announced that children in these state-run schools would not be eligible for the vouchers because the funding for these schools came from a different source than the state funding handed to the local school districts (huh?) At no time prior to the law’s passage did anyone even hint that these children (some of the most severely disabled and most undereducated in the system) would not be eligible. Special education advocates were all over this issue, and just about the time the news of this inequality was becoming public, the state found a way to fund the vouchers for these neurologically impaired and developmentally delayed children.

Meanwhile, folks at the state were scrambling to find out what LuLu’s status was. After all, we’ve never unenrolled her from school. Her doctor has issued a medical homebound request that the school system refuses to honor. Even though she’s starting her second full year at “Ladybug Elementary” next week, she is not officially being homeschooled. We’re in a funky “limbo” that I suppose could end up in truancy charges, like the mom near Macon. Children who are enrolled in their local school district, with a current IEP are voucher eligible. But, for whatever reason, the local school district counted LuLu as enrolled in October of last year, but not in March of this year. Of course she had not attended classes since February 2006, but her status had not changed. Hmmm….you can draw your own conclusions as to the reasons the district accounted for her in this matter. But each time she was counted, the district received state funding for her. And by March this year, it was becoming apparent that the voucher bill was gaining enough momentum that it might actually pass.

The point is that the opposition continues at every turn. Just like when our children exhibit oppositional behavior, it’s exhausting. And it makes no logical sense. From my vantage point, it looks like the systems are being oppositional just because they can. It is obvious that the motivation has nothing to do with seeing that LuLu get an education.

I’m outnumbered resources-wise. If this is a war (and who can view it as anything but), the educrats hold all the cards – all the money, all the staff, all the resources – and lots of bureaucratic rules and regulations they can choose to follow or ignore at will.

I have to spend my day figuring out how to best educate LuLu as my first priority, scramble for resources to assist me with this and then carve out time to occasionally engage in a battle with the system. It’s far from being a fair fight.


The Long, Dry Summer