Advocacy for My Son’s Speech Entitlement

Just found out today that my son’s school took his daily mandated 30 mins of speech away and he has not been receiving speech due to “scheduling issues”!

Now I’m a Special Education Advocate and this happened to my own son…. think about that!! And I’ll be all over it because this is what I do…

But.. I’m a mom first and can you imagine how heartbreaking it is to have your son’s speech therapy taken away when your son is non-verbal! 😡 😞. And… if it’s heartbreaking for me… imagine how heartbreaking it is for my son and how that affects his self esteem.

Now back to my advocate hat - this is a substantive denial of FAPE (Free Appropriate Public Education) and a 504 violation amongst a long list of other violations and the school obviously have no idea who they are dealing with.

Aside from all these violations, how the hell do these people sleep at night?!!!

And remember (irrespective of whether you are a parent, guardian, caregiver, teacher, paraprofessional, therapist, coach, superintendent or even a substitute teacher) keep on advocating for our kiddos who can’t yet advocate for themselves… our kids will remember you forever and you will be able to sleep at night ❤️. And, if not for you, who do our kids have to advocate for them right now whilst they can’t yet advocate for themselves.

Be that someone for somebody 👏 ❤️

To update: I ended up having to file (sue) for those missed speech services to be made up by a privately appointed speech therapist.

At my son’s recent IEP meeting I asked the speech therapist why was the decision made to take away my son’s mandate in the first place (a student who needs it the most)… she replied because he had the most (5 x 30 mins per week) so was easier to take his out to make sure she could cover all the other student’s mandates 😳😞.

Anyway the IEP team agreed that my son needed a private school and confirmed they would work with me for that so, even though I have to sue for the private school, I was thankful they made it clear there would be no push back.

I do wonder though what would have happened if my son did not have a mother who was a special education advocate who knew his rights?! 😔

And I feel for that speech therapist who is young and new to the field and is overburdened. Our schools do not have enough staff to fulfill the student’s mandates in the first place and our new teachers and therapists are not receiving adequate or, in most cases, any training for our special needs students.