Tag: asd

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The San Francisco Unified School District

If you have a child in San Francisco that attends public school then you’re very aware of the lottery system for which school your child can get to attend. I’ve yet to hear about this happening in other cities, but it is a crazy system for San Francisco to have and we were lucky…WE BEAT THE SYSTEM!

I’m not sure why we did, but it could be because our daughter is autistic so there’s a smaller pool of kids to draw from. You can put down up to 16 different schools you want your child to attend and you’ll hopefully get one of them. Most parents put down 10 schools [note this is for elementary school, middle schools and high schools have less choicees]. From comments I’ve read there are many parents who put down 10 schools and didn’t get any of them and ended up having to in some cases drive their kids across town to attend school.

When I was a kid you went to the school in your neighborhood and we had class sizes of around 20-30 kids. We didn’t have any problems back then even though there was talk of over crowding. Then when I was getting ready for fourth grade bussing started which brought kids from bad neighborhoods to good neighborhoods and vice versa. Please note the bold/italics is the equivalent of doing the old finger quotation thing. At least they had bussing to get the kids to school back then. They only have that for kids who are in SDC classes now.

It was not a good time as I was supposed to be sent to Aptos Elementary [note it wasn’t a middle school or Junior High as we used to call them] and my Mother was down at the Board of Education kicking and screaming. In the end I ended up going to Lawton Elementary which was the closest to my house since they split out fourth-sixth grades [elementary schools before that were K-6].

What we have today is similar, but we have managed to fare through it very well. We only put down two schools that had SDC [Special Day Classes] that fit our daughter’s needs. We would have been happy with either. We knew the Kindergarten teacher at her current school and he’s a great guy. We got to meet the teacher at the school closer to us and knew that she mentored some of the people who were therapists for our daughter. Everyone had wonderful things to say all around.

Once we got accepted that’s not the end of things. You have to go to the school and fill out enrollment paperwork. We did that yesterday and after a few hiccups we got everything done. Note to parents of SDC kids, while the paper they send you says you don’t need to bring a birth certificate and proof of residence if you’re already enrolled in the SFUSD, ignore that. They sent us home to bring that back.

My Wife sent an email to the teacher that our daughter will have and she promptly sent back an email saying that she wants to visit our daughter at her school and talk with her current teacher as well as coming by our house to meet with us and see how she is outside of school. Some of you may think this sounds like a Child Protective Services thing, but it’s not. Autistic kids think different than other kids. My daughter can barely talk, but she can make music on her iPad in Garageband with very little help from me. The teacher wants to understand how your child’s mind works so she can incorporate the appropriate classwork into her daily life.

The Principal at the school even remembered us and had a long chat with us while the paperwork was being processes [it turns out she taught at my elementary school and knew many of my teachers. She even tried to flatter me by saying she might have been one of my teachers, but we only had old prune faced teachers close to their 70’s when I was in elementary school].

All in all I knew that it would work out for us. My Wife who worries more about these things is ecstatic at the moment so I’ll just shut my trap and let her enjoy it. Sometimes the world isn’t always out to get you and things work out in the end.

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Autism vs. The iPad

As I’m sure you remember we were able to get an iPad for our daughter during a time when we didn’t have much money [which is a fate we still share today]. She loves the iPad a lot and I thank again all of my readers who help us get it for her. Then my wife came running into my workspace all white face with a look of horror and my daughter running behind quickly screaming and crying — I think we just lost the iPad.

WHAT!? She handed it to me and it looked fine until she peeled back the case and showed me the dent. The dent happened to come right where the volume up and down keys were and while it still worked we couldn’t get any volume out of it. I quickly got an appointment at the Genius Bar to have them take a look and then started doing some research.

I was seeing everything from a few people who got it replaced free to most people who had to pay $299 or buy a new one. My heart sunk. This is my daughter’s baby. She treats it like a puppy hugging it and petting it. She never throws it or drops it unlike many of her other toys. She knows this is something special for her.

For any parent of a child whether they have autism or not I would highly suggest an iPad. My daughter has improved so much since we got it for her. She couldn’t point at things before, but now points to things that she doesn’t know the name of. She’s learned how to say words she never said a year ago and now she can even write. Sure she has therapists that help her out, but a lot of this even the therapists say comes from the iPad. It has helped her immensely and I was pretty devastated to learn that this great tool we had for her might be gone and we don’t have the money or credit to afford to get it fixed or buy a new one.

I went into the Apple store thinking to myself well, maybe I could ask for donations again, but I don’t really like begging. If you like the blog and want to make a donation feel free to do so, but I refuse to sit out there on the internet with a cup in hand asking spare change from everyone who comes to my blog. I’ve been getting enough work from TaskRabbit to help us get by until I can get a real job again so I figured I could find a way to make it work out.

So my Genius is guy named Tony. I told him the story and how this is our autistic daughter’s best friend [yes, I played the autism card, but it was important because of what she’s got from it.] Tony took a look and said, well, it’s only a little dent and no screen damage so we’ll replace it for you right now.

DUDE!! AWWWWWESOME!

So the crisis has been averted and we’re in the process right now of getting the back up reinstalled on the iPad. Tony suggested that we get an Otterbox case for it which my wife and I have been talking about for a while. Now it’s obviously a definite buy item. I think I’ll have to take on a few more tasks to get the money to cover this one, but it’ll be worth it in the long run if it’s something that is helping our daughter improve herself.

Tony, thanks for helping a brother out.

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John Muir Elementary School

John Muir Elementary School offers pre-school for special needs children. You’ve heard me talk about this before, they can be kids with autism, asperger’s syndrome, developmental disabilities, etc. The problem is that John Muir doesn’t have any form of play structure at the school. It is a barebones asphalt yard with a chain link fence around it. Kind of like something you would expect to see in industrial era Russian and not 21st century United States.

John Muir is a part of the Pepsi Refresh Contest where good causes can win $20,000 to help out their cause. I feel that this is a good cause to support. I have seen my daughter at school during recess and she has access to a lot of things to play with and a climbing structure. Children need to develop body strength and they can’t do that through only aerobic exercise of running around in circles. They need to challenge their muscles to help them grow.

They have until September 30th to be in the top 15 vote recipients and I’m sorry I didn’t hear about this earlier or I would have posted something then. There are three ways you can help and none of them should cost you a dime [unless you have to pay for text messaging.]

  1. Go to http://www.refresheverything.com/muirautismplayground and click on the vote button and use your Facebook login to vote.
  2. If you don’t have a Facebook account you can go to the same link and create a Pepsi account and vote that way [even in addition to you Facebook vote]
  3. Text 108702 to 73774

This is something you can do everyday until the end of the week. Pepsi is footing the bill and not your local, state or federal government so the only money is coming from a large corporation. I urge all of you to do this right now and repeat it and pass along a link to this page so that they can get as much help as possible. No child should have to go to a school where they don’t have any place to blow off some steam during recess. The kids will be happier and the Teacher’s will be happier. Let’s see if we can make a change here.

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Thank you all very much!

A friend of mine and I were talking one day and we came up with the idea if you could get a million people to give you $1 a year for something that was relatively meaningful you wouldn’t have to work again.

Well, I tried that and it hasn’t worked yet, but apparently there were enough of you who thought enough to send me a few bucks to help us get an iPad 2 for our daughter. As we expected she loves it and has taken to it quickly from day one. We found several apps that are really helping her out such as the several ABA [applied behavioral analysis] apps that have gotten her talking more since we got it on Thursday. These apps show a picture of something with the word underneath and it says the word and waits for the child to repeat it. In some you can even record your own voice. We even downloaded an app that I call “Stephen Hawking” because it’s meant for people who can’t talk to be able to talk by hitting buttons on the iPad and it will speak in man or woman’s voice. We haven’t really used that with her because she’s talking more from the ABA apps.

We also found several apps that have her drawing pictures and letters and numbers in a somewhat structured way, but when she puts the iPad down and moves to crayons and paper you can see the difference. Then there are the music programs. Since my Wife and I are both musicians it’s no surprise that she’s taken to music and considering that I play guitar and my Wife plays bass it would only seem natural for our daughter to take to the drums.

I have to say that Garage Band’s built in instruments are really giving her a lot of excitement and while she’s not able to keep a 4/4 beat yet she has the virtual drum kits to help her out. The keyboard she also loves because it’s much more larger than on the iPhone apps I tried. Even though she has small fingers the iPhone. is still too small for her tiny fingers when she has some problems with fine motor skills.

My Wife downloaded a copy of Fruit Ninja for herself, but yesterday when I started to play with it Rebecca took to it in an instant. There’s not much for her to learn from the game, but she is perfecting her fine motor skills more.

Normally when we go upstairs for dinner it has to be ready right then and there or she starts throwing a fit. Autistic kids tend to be a little impatient at times, but now I just have to pull out the iPad and open up the YouTube app and we can quietly sit together and watch some of the sesame street cartoons we have saved as her favorites.

All in all I have to say that if you have a kid with special needs, get an iPad. It may take your child a few days to start to get it, but at four Rebecca’s becoming a pro already. If your kids like to tear up books like Rebecca does, there are many you can download that have a soundtrack that reads the book to them while highlighting the words.

There are many apps that are free with an upgrade so you have a chance to try before you buy which is good. For some of the apps we don’t even need to upgrade yet, but for the better ones we’ve already upgraded for the 99¢-$2.99 the apps run. So go for it. You’ll find it will change your child for the better.

Special thanks go out to Harry, Leon, Michael, Ian, Clint & Lyubov who donated. We really appreciate what you’ve done to help us help our daughter.

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World Autism Awareness Day in San Francisco

Today I’m having yet another guest blogger and that is my wife Mama Fog who runs her own blog about what she has learned about autism to help her better understand how to deal with the system when it comes to our daughter. You can read more on her site Out of the Fog.

Tomorrow is World Autism Awareness Day.  It seems like a perfect time to list some of the local resources available for families with autism.

Autistic Like, Graham’s Story, the movie will be airing on some PBS stations.

Support for Families of Children with Disabilities hosts workshops, support groups and trainings.  They offer parent mentors, a library and many online resources.  I think their IEP workshop is a must for any parent of a student with an IEP.

List of autism friendly local activities and attractions.  Includes times and dates for the AMC sensory friendly movies and times at bounce houses around the area.

Our daughter is too young for these activities, but I have heard good things about them.

SF Park and Rec Adaptive and Inclusive Programs

KEEN – Kids Enjoy Exercise Now

Special Olympics of Northern California

Janet Pomeroy Center

Parents of children under 3 with a child with autism will be eligible for some help from Early Intervention.   Contact the Golden Gate Regional Center.

Like most city school districts, SFUSD is confusing at best: San Francisco Unified School District’s Special Education

Last year an audit was done on SFUSD’s special education programs and services.  The report was not favorable.

SFUSD is attempting to remedy this.  They are allowing special ed inclusion students to apply at any SF school.   It remains to be seen how this will be supported: San Francisco Unified School District Community Advisory Committee for Special Education

Community Alliance for Special Education offers free and low cost legal counseling and advocacy for families with special needs.

The blog SF K files documents the journey of several parents going through the gauntlet that is the admissions process here in our lovely city.  I’m pleased that they are featuring parents of children in special education.

Here’s a great post about the special education enrollment process.

Redwood City knows how to start and maintain a special ed PTA.  SF should have this too!

Other local bloggers and sites:

Senior Dad

Laura Shumaker

Squidalicious

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Playgrounds R Us

Since it’s spring break and our daughter is too young to be running around half naked with drunken frat boys we have to find something to entertain her with. Now that we’re having real weather again in San Francisco we’ve been visiting some of the local playgrounds and have found a few surprises.

This week we went to a playground we haven’t been to in over a year. It’s the Junipero Serra Playground that a block away from the Stonestown Galleria. The nice part about this playground is you can’t see it from any major street. This means that it’s hardly ever crowded. At best there was maybe 12 people at the spot. If you’re a parent of an autistic child this place is a real god send because there’s not a ton of kids running around screaming with joy that can overwhelm your child.

The nice thing about playground today is that they aren’t like the ghetto, industrial playgrounds of my youth. Back in my day [christ I can’t believe I used that phrase] playgrounds were steel, concrete and sharp tanbark. They all looked like something built in cold war Russia. Now they are nice and soft with no sharp pointy things to poke your kids eyes out.

The playgrounds we have today are nice, generally peaceful spots where your kid can run around and well, be a kid. They have much more inviting structures with very little chance for injury and the parents don’t have to keep an eye on their kids as much because if a kid falls you don’t have to worry about a broken tooth or arm because they’re filled with soft puffy foam.

Now this could be construed as a bit of molly coddling for kids and a few people could make allusions to the real world isn’t soft and cuddly, but I don’t think we need to make our kids suffer the harsh realities of the world at a young age. They need a place that they can exercise their minds by making stuff up as they go along. I found myself watching my daughter on the structure in the picture above walking around like it could have been a pirate ship running and jumping and climbing in ways that I wished I could of as a kid.

Then there are people who think the opposite. They aren’t the young kids using their imagination they’re the bored teenage few that don’t have home computers with World of Warcraft to waste their time after school, but can find a way to get their hands on a few cans of spray paint and try to ruin it for the others.

Here was a pretty close to pristine playground except for the sand that always overflows the sand box and a couple of kids had to try and ruin it by leaving their names which no one can read because they lacked proper penmanship and they know that the city lacks the funds to clean up their damage after they’ve finished.

This playground has a really nice rec center, but I’ve never seen anyone inside it or any listing of events here. Around the corner is a set of picnic tables under a well constructed pergola that would be a perfect staging point for a small party. Aside from the graffiti the only thing wrong with this playground was that one of the drinking fountains was backed up. I found a few small sticks that I tried to loosen up the drain with, but it didn’t work. I did notice a guy from park and rec walked around taking pictures and making a few phone calls so hopefully this will be changed in the near future.

Perhaps some of the vandalism is due to the high cost of other attractions around San Francisco that can turn kids minds around. While most of the big attractions in San Francisco have a “Po’ people’s day” where they are open to the masses for free, that also makes them crowded and gives our kids less chance to see and learn from them. Luckily not all playgrounds have been hit with graffiti and vandalism. Today we will stop by another spot that will not have the graffiti and our daughter will have another chance to entertain herself.

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The Sorry State of Education in San Francisco

I received an email today from my daughter’s pre-K teacher. I was sad to read this email. As a few of you know, my daughter was diagnosed with autism.  Few people really know what’s going on with autism. Not every child acts the same way. They could be normal looking kids who don’t have the ability to talk and are sensitive to song or the tastes of foods to the kids who have what are called “stimmy” behavior which could be that they hit themselves or bang themselves around or making odd gestures.  I have to say we have received excellent help along the way from the school system. Kara, my daughter’s teacher is the best. All of the aids who help her out are also the best. They all have the patience of saints, but the problem is that they only get $250/year to supply their class. When I was a kid, my mother along with other moms would bring stuff to the class for the teacher to use. My mom was a teacher and still had lots of left over stuff that we wouldn’t need anymore, but would probably be able to be used in the class.

I knew things were kind of tough, but I never realized they had gotten that bad in San Francisco. Autistic children’s behavior runs across a wide spectrum. Some people have seen my daughter and don’t understand because they don’t see anything odd about her except that she doesn’t really speak much at 3.5 years old. Most of these people either haven’t had to deal with kids or their kids are fully grown and they can’t remember what a 3 year old is like. The school district needs to be better run to provide for our kids whether they are autistic or not. California ranks very low on the education scale. While we’re spending more than other states because we have more teachers, our teacher to pupil ratio is much higher than other states. Here’s the email:
Dear Family and Friends,
As most of you know, I am Pre-K special education teacher in the San Francisco Unified School District.  I teach a wonderful group of 3-5 year olds, who are mostly on the autism spectrum.  What many people do not know, is the huge negative effect our economy has had on California’s schools.  The last two years SFUSD teachers have only been given $25 a month for classroom materials.  Yes, that is right, we are given only $250 a year to purchase paper, markers, books, puzzles, etc.  It is nearly impossible to access these materials alone, and our current materials are nearing their end.   Recently, I joined Donor’s Choose and submitted a project to help enrich my students’ learning through music, art, science, and sensory materials (as well as necessary classroom materials such as shelves without holes, new carpets, etc.)   On this wonderful website, you can support this project by donating any amount. Once we reach our goal, the website will purchase the materials and send them to my class. I’ll take pictures of my kids using them and we’ll make thank you notes to our donors!

A free way to donate $5 to my project  is by going to this website http://www.bing.com/gives/default1.aspx#fbid=nYe–0CPAFi&wom=false .   Click START HERE, enter your email address, click MAKE BING MY HOME PAGE (do not worry it will NOT make BING your homepage), click NO I will not make BING my home page,  and then click finish.  You will receive an email from Bing (most likely in your junk mail) subject donation code.  You can redeem the $5 donation yourself for my project at : http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=487308 .

I am sorry that my daughter’s teacher has to ask for money to help cover the costs, but if you’re a teacher think about only having $25/month to fund your school supplies. It seems to me that all the money we’re spending on education not enough is being spent on educating our children. Special needs kids especially need special things to help them get over some of the textural issues they have. I know my daughter when she was 2 years old didn’t like the feeling of dirt and sand and now she’ll be grabbing handfuls of dirt like all the other kids with no problem. This may not have happened if we didn’t have the extra help to bring her around. We might have been able to do it ourselves, but it probably would have taken longer, so I have to thank the school district for that.
I’m hoping that Jerry Brown while he’s cutting out unnecessary expenses to the school department like his removal of the Secretary of Education because it was a 13 person department with a $1.9 million/year budget that was basically a yes man to the Governor and redundant to the Superintendent of Public Education office. Our children deserve more in a state that’s the 8th largest economy in the world. I’m sending my $5 right now.