In May 2012 my son was approved for funding for a laptop at school. The desktop computer he previously had at school was so old that it didn't have functions he needed for computer science class.
I followed up about this computer but kept being told it was in the "system," which I understood to be going through some kind of government checks to ensure money isn't wasted.
Two days ago I met with some therapists who were going in to Ben's school on another matter. "I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know if he ever got the laptop he was approved for," I told them in advance.
Years ago we had a situation where Ben waited over a year for a computer he was approved for, and I e-mailed the superintendent of special education and everyone else I could think of for months, and followed up with calls, and stamped my feet, with zero effect.
The therapists who went into Ben's school yesterday confirmed that he does not have the laptop -- the one he was approved for 18 months ago. Apparently sometimes requests get "lost" in the system.
It seems to me that the process of funding and delivering computers to students with disabilities needs an audit. What is the average wait time for delivery of these computers?
Could any business operate by delivering products 18 months AFTER the request was made? And wait. We don't have delivery yet, and we don't even have an estimated time of arrival.
What is the point of approving a computer that is going to take more than 1 1/2 years to get into the classroom? Couldn't a child's needs change over that amount of time?
And during that 1 1/2 years, what happens to the dollars that were supposedly allocated to its purchase?
Simple questions, really. But ones that parents like me are too busy or too tired to keep asking.
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2 comments:
I hear ya.
We struggle with convincing the speech pathologists to come to Aaron's school to deliver therapy - interventions that they have referrals for. Sometimes it feels like they spend more time trying to get him off their caseload than actually helping kids.
As I always say, it isn't Aaron we have troubles with. Aaron is awesome. It is the SYSTEMS that we struggle with - health, education, government.
The problem is that everyone is overloaded, and with public funding everything has to be run through SO MANY PEOPLE, that it just doesn't happen unless someone is hounding it through every step. There's always some crisis brewing. It's silly.
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