ESY (Extended School Year)

For a day that Jack is off school there as already been a lot of activity.  I woke up at 4:30 this morning and went to boot camp then when the everyone was up and ready we went to have breakfast at Denny's.  After breakfast we went over to Jack's school for our ARD meeting to make changes to his IEP to add ESY (extended school year).  This means that Jack will be provided services from the school district during the summer.  He will be going for 5 weeks, which will be split up into two sessions, and attend from 8-11 Monday through Thursday.  They still are not sure of what weeks this will be occurring, which was a detail I though would be ironed out by our meeting today, but will hopefully be figured out soon. He will be going to a different school and have new instructors/aids.  I am concerned about how he will react to new people, but on the other hand interested to see how he responds with new instructors. 

He originally didn't qualify for ESY because they usually only offer this program to those who have skill regression after receiving breaks from school.  Jack hasn't shown any skill regression (which is a good this) this year, but did show regression when it came to classroom routine, transitioning, and behavior.  Which to his teachers and us are just as big of concerns as the retention of skills.  His teacher talked with the people who make the decisions on who will qualify for ESY on Jack behalf and was able to get Jack qualified for ESY as a Summer Enrichment program.  Even though he will be at a new school his classroom environment will be set up similar to the one he is in now.  He will continue to work on his current goals and maintaing the classroom routine.  The teacher-student ration should be the same or possibly lower then what he has now.

I was disappointed that the schedule for ESY hasn't been finalized yet, but since that really isn't within my control I can only hope that they will have the dates for us as soon as possible.  I would very much like to try and set up Jack's additional therapy schedules, get back to the ABA therapist we had made plans with for the summer, and figure out when would be a good time for us to take a mini family vacation.  I hope the school district gets it together quickly because school summer officially begins May 31st...

I am looking forward to my parents and sister coming down for a visit over Memorial Day.  Justin and I got all the details finalized for our trip in July thanks to the help from his parents.  We are going to leaving the kids with my folks and go out to San Fransisco/ Napa area to celebrate our ten year anniversary (which technically isn't until September, but our baby sisters are only available over the summer :-)   I am very happy it's Friday and am looking forward to a nice and hopefully (fingers crossed) sick free weekend!