I havent been around much because I have had to turn my attention to the schools again. below is a letter that I just sent to the NAA asking for help. If you know of any orgs that can help us please pass it on. This wasnt easy for me to do , Im not looking for a hand out just some help.
Hello ,
I know that right now the focus is the survivors of Katrina and effort that our
family is supporting also however we need help too. I write to you today as a mother
at her wits end , we have three ASD kids and a fourth who is currently under
evaluation. Our school district illegally took away our sons IEP the DOE found them in
non compliance with IDEA . Just prior to that our son collapsed from not having the
proper services in school , he stopped eating for seven weeks , he went from 130 lbs
to 106lbs , he was placed in a diaper and he was admitted into the hospital , thats
when he was found to have ASD. At the same meeting where our son lost his IEP the
districts doctor lied and said our doctors had retracted our sons diagnosis , this
made it so our son couldn't even have a 504 . We proved within 48 hours that our sons
diagnosis stood with letters from our doctors. It took over three months to get him a
504 , during this time a classmate of my son was killed on a school ski trip, this
child was a disabled child who was left unattended he skied into a snow machine and
was killed. This doctor is currently under investigation by the secretary of states
office. Our daughter who is a safety issue has broken her arm at school and her adult
front tooth , she was refused safety measures for over two years, she was termed a bad
child and made to sign a form saying she wouldn't do the behavior again , the behavior
in question was a disability related behavior.
My husband and I know the laws we have followed IDEA to the letter , we have
documented everything , we have over 2000 pages plus audio tapes. We have been to our
governor, our senator and everyone in between , they all say they will help and then
we never hear from them again. We have filed complaints and won however its an empty
victory. All the district had to do for illegally taking our sons IEP away was paid
for training over the summer. Meanwhile our sons rights were taken from him. He now
has a 504 but they are even violating that in multiple areas. We have fought this
fight for over three years to the point that we are grinding ourselves into the
ground. We had to stop working to keep up with the mountain of paperwork , meetings
research, doctors , therapies etc that this has brought into our lives. Currently we
are living on the kids SSIDC I resisted applying for 10 years until our sons collapse.
We feel as if we are fighting for their very lives.
We are writing to you to ask for help , Maybe you could help us to get out of here,
this place , this district, maybe you could put out a call for help for us, we need
someone willing to rent to us at a decent price who will work with us on first and
security. We have fought the good fight but now its destroying our family. There is no
joy in our lives everything is about laws , violations and the horrible effect the
violations have on the children. Please help us.
Thank you for reading this
--
Best Regards,
Dana DeMerchant
