Expert: James Michael Roan - 9/12/2009

Question
My son is 12 yrs old diagnosed with mood disorder and Aspergers syndrome. We reside in NY. Our school district sent out screening packets to numerous schools in NY state and we are now looking at each of these schools to see if they are appropriate. I have called a couple of the schools and in some schools, the children that attend the school have conduct disorder, are physically agressive, have criminal backrounds, and addiction problems and really are not suitable to have my son be around due to my son having Aspergers. Some of them do not offer any social skill training which my son really needs or they only have a few kids with Aspergers and are not too familiar with the disorder. My question is with this list of schools that our district sent out packets to, do I have to go physically see all of these schools or can I tell school district they are not suitable based the information I receive through my phone calls to the schools? I am a single mother, with a low income and I cannot afford to continously take off work and pay to drive all over NYS to check out these schools when in a phone call I can find out alot about the school. One other question I have is one of the schools I visited, I asked if I can speak with a student to get a students point of view on student life and how they like the school, etc. and I asked if the school had parent references and I was told I could not speak with a student because of confidentality and the same response was given when I asked about parent references, that if they gave that to me it would be breaking the law. Is that true? If you do not know, do you know how I can find this information out? I felt like the school was hiding something and how can I otherwise get a better feel for the school if I cannot speak with another parent and child, other than admissions just giving me a brief run down on the school? Any help you can provide will be greatly appeciated. Thank you in advance for your time.
Best regards,
Jennifer

Answer
Hi Jennifer;

I'm sorry they are making you jump through hoops. Document everything: who you spoke with, when, and what they said. Then file a complaint with the New York Department of Education. This will definitely get their attention. This web site has some good links as a place to start. They are right, they cannot give out names of parents and students. Some schools have parent groups you can speak with. There may be information on their web sites.

Here is the link: http://www.vesid.nysed.gov/specialed/quality/qaresolv.htm

Kind regards,
James