Question about IEP's and Music

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I have a 17 year old that was just diagnosed with AS and want to know if Music (Guitar Class) would be appropriate in his IEP. School district immediately gave him homebound program as he also has severe situational anxiety disorder as high school principal battered him. We have IEP meeting with school monday and school psych says they don't have to provide any music tutors or instructors for him in homebound. His favorite class in school was Guitar. He is very musically inclined. He has used his own allowances and earnings to purchase harmonica, banjo, mandolin, bagpipe, violin and guitar. He is only interested in playing irish music but can play over 30 Irish songs by ear in a very short time. With this being the one thing he seems to excel at I don't want the district to take it away from him. Any thoughts or experience with this? Please help! Nvfireman

yes. and furthermore take atvantage of every free/ program your son qualifys for in school. once he gets out of school, unless he goes to college is quit shocking.

IEP's are about accommodating needs plain and simple. How much does a schoolboard have to bend to accommodate a student? Generally...and this is different throughout out the world, but generally the school doesn't have to do anything that is unreasonable and cost prohibitive.

With regards to your son. If the school offers a guitar class and he likes guitar, he should be allowed to take the class. Seeing that he is AS, social needs should be a need on his IEP. One could further argue that this is one area that he excels in and by allowing him to take the class, it fits his need of poor socialization.

I'm not sure what homebound schooling means. Does that mean he is segregated within the school? If it does the current education trend is away full time segregation. Generally, full time segregation doesn't do what it is supposed to do and can turn into a dumping ground of "misfit" students. The rule of thumb is, the best place for a student is at his home school with regular peers, as often as possible. At our school, even the most challenging and difficult kids get at least 1/2 the day integrated within the regular classroom...and I'm talking about developmental kids who need help with toiling because they are incapable of mentally doing this by themselves.

Now in the guitar class the schoolboard could argue that it would be unreasonable for the school to provide a separate instructor to teach your son how to play irish songs. On the other hand, it would be a good accommodation to look at each assessment within that course and see where irish songs could be incorporated into the curriculum. That is compromise and that is the nature of Special Education....that is unless you have loads of cash and simply want to beat the school board into submission with lawyers.

What I would do before the meeting if possible, is to get a Dr.'s note stating that the further development of his musical skills would be beneficial to your son. I'm a Special Education teacher so you can also share this post at the meeting.

Homebound instructors are supplied by the school district to tutor medically fragile students at home or another location. It is intended to be only a temporary situation and not a long term one.

I am not 100% on this but I believe the answer is that the district doesn't have to provide homebound instruction for subjects that aren't mandated by the state. Fine arts aren't mandated in my state and in fact we have some money crunched districts that have done away with them entirely. They get the core subject areas plus PE and then they're sent home.

Could he attend that one class at school each day? Having one positive experience at school each day might be beneficial.

To clarify- We have a long and horrible history with school district. my wife was battered by the principal in '05. We attempted to file legal charges against him but turns out local DA is good friends with him so no prosecution. Same principal battered 17 year old son in November. School is hostile learning environment so when we finally got DX of AS school psych immediately put him in "homebound" program where he will be "homeschooled" at district expense using online course. (Gee! not much social action there!) But at least he is safe. The school psych feels he will get all the socialization skills he will need from our own psychologist.We belive that if he has to get this info there that the school should be paying for the socialization "training". If our local legall system wasn't so corupt then maybe all the parents and students at the high school would be safe. When my son was battered he tried to report it immediately at the office but instead of taking his report 6 high school employees including the campus cop (paid for by the district) ignored his continued request to file a report and arrested him for disturbing the peace. He was also suspended for 10 days. The trial is tomorow. The district attorneys office feels that this is important enough to continue trying to punish him for TRYING to file a report of battery against his buddy. The battery report has yet to be filed at the school. we tried to file it with the local police but the DA's office quashed it also -stating that no matter what the investigation would show they would refuse to prosecute the principal. So no investigation!
My son is now at home waiting to get some kind of education. The school psych has already tried to reject any home music tutor for my son's IEP. Guitar lessons would be $40.00 a week . i guess they don't feel they get enough funding to provide the one thing he enjoys and excells at. This is just the tip of the iceburg of the story with this school district. I think what I need to do is contact 20/20 or 60 minutes. (60 minutes has already done a program on corruption in this small town 10 or 15 years ago). It might just be time to do an update. if anyone has any suggestions on how to deal with a school district that is uncooperative please let me know. Thanks!

Sorry to hear about this--what a trauma for your son, as well as the whole family.

I guess if I were in your shoes my decision on where to go with any of this would depend on what year my son was in school. If he is a senior due to graduate this spring, there are only 3 months left and I'd do only what was necessary for the kid to graduate. The school probably knows this too.

If he is a junior and you have a year and 3 months left in his schooling and you want to maintain some relationship with this district, then you need representation in the form of an educational advocate or education attorney. You can't fight this alone, given all that is passed.

A good forum to go to get help with this would be http://www.conductdisorders.com/

There's a special education board and you'll feel right at home with all the battle weary parents there. I'm sorry to say that what the school has to provide for your son is based on special education law, not on what he enjoys and excells at, so if this is already a losing battle you need to know that before you expend any more time and energy on it.

Good luck, and my hopes for some gentle healing with your son and the anxiety. BTDT with mine and am on the other side of the valley and thriving now, but it was an incredibly difficult time for all.