It's 4 am and I can't sleep. I can't believe how long it has been since I've journaled for Faith and it's really surprising that the reason I can't sleep and need to journal isn't related to any upcoming surgeries. It's because of school. And the decision facing us is as hard as many of Faith's past surgery decisions.
Faith has been going to a center-based program for Deaf Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) children for the past 5 years (2 yrs of pre-school plus K, 1st and 2nd) at Summit View Elementary. Last week we received a letter home from the County Special Education Department, just asking us to come to a meeting at the school to discuss an upcoming change to the DHH program. I'm not sure why I thought this, but I just knew they were going to move the program to another school.
And in fact, that is what they are doing. They are moving the DHH program back to the elementary school it was about about 7 years ago. This now leaves us having to decide on one of three choices.
1 - leave Faith at Summit View where they will continue to provide DHH support "as long as there are still DHH students at the school" - there seems to be some question on how this would work if the majority of DHH students leave and only a couple remain.
2 - move her to the new school - Arrowwood - which has a lower academic rating than most schools in the county but was the previous location of the DHH school, feeds into the DHH middle and high schools and just happens to be where one of Faith's former DHH classmates has already moved to.
3 - move her to our neighborhood school - Cougar Run - something we've been wanting to do for years. She would get to go to school with Anthony as well as a new best friend who moved in next door in her grade level and also feeds into the DHH middle and high schools.
The next steps are to meet with the schools and see whether her needs could be met at Cougar Run and then make a decision.
I ended up spending the last couple hours doing some research and sending a long email to the special education team at Cougar Run, so now it's already 7:30 and I'm late for work! Better get moving!
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