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Home : 2002 : October : 27

I hear you
By mlg

I can truly relate to what you are saying. Last year I had a little boy who not only had severe ODD, but also ADHD, post-traumatic stress syndrome, manic-depression, and to top it all off, had been hospitalized twice before
the age of nine for attempting suicide! He was on five heavy duty meds which he refused to take and, consequently, he was totally out of control in my regular ed 5th grade class. They placed him into a regular classroom as a fourth grader after releasing him from the psychiatric facility he had been in.
The reason he was allowed to be there was that he was a foster child and the

state and school district played a game of passing responsibility for evaluating him as SPED because neither side wanted to assume the reponsibility of picking up the tab for the type of educational setting that he truly needed. If ever there was prima facie case that a child was in need of a specialized placement, this certainly was it.

It took the powers that be until the end of January to hold the meeting needed to finally determine him as ED and remove him from the class. Meanwhile, the havoc that had been raised by his daily outbursts had such a negative effect that we (both the class and myself) never did really recover.

Hopefully, the outcome for the above poster will be much more positive.