For the past several months, we’ve been working to get Baguette into a certain school with a certain autism program. It’s been an exhausting, nerve-wracking process. After refusing our requests in the spring and seemingly lying dormant during the summer, the school district managed to make and rescind several offers over the past week.
“Emotional rollercoaster” may be a cliche, but wow, is it also true.
So yesterday we finally got the offer, which was signed by all parties. It placed Baguette in the school we want with the help we want, and it arrived just before we needed to leave the house to pick her up and take her over for enrollment.
She is enrolled. She’s in a Transitional Kindergarten class, which is a two-year program designed for students who are a little young for kindergarten. I have no idea how it’s different from Pre-K followed by K, but it is a thing that exists in the world, and it is the thing we are doing.
We’re not done–there are aides to identify and work schedules to coordinate–but one big piece of this educational puzzle is in place.
Oh, and in Los Angeles, school started on August 18. So it’s her first day of school, but it’s everyone else’s third week.
Hooray! I’m glad you got in. I’m sad it was such a struggle, though.
TK came about when California move the “you must be 5 by this date” deadline for Kindergarten back to September. We could have done it last year, but chose not to (long, irrelevant story). As far as I can tell, TK is very much like pre-K, but publicly funded.
I hope Baguette loves her new school!
We’re hopeful. Today was rough. I don’t think she’ll be happy about going back tomorrow. But I do know that she can make this transition.
It took my older daughter 6 weeks to settle in and start liking kindergarten. That was very hard on me, but she doesn’t even really remember it now! As far as she’s concerned, she’s always loved school. Hugs to both of you!
Thanks! Everything was fine until the actual moment of dropoff. We need to find a systematic way to get information about her day, because she can’t tell us with words.
Truly hope this works! I’m VERY eager in the results.
Her transition went soooo much better than we expected. Some days are hard, but we only had two dropoffs that were rough; since Day 3, she’s been perfectly content to be in the classroom when I leave her.
Still working on aides and after-school care, but it’s probably for the best that we’re doing it in stages–even though we’d like to have everything in place, already.