"He Doesn't Qualify for Services"

That's what I was told by the Alpine School District (ASD) yesterday. I was stunned. For the past 5 months all I have heard in reference to Miles from Kids on the Move (KOTM) is how far behind he is or that he has this disorder or that one or is autistic or some combination of everyone's opinion. So when I took Miles in for his ASD evaluation yesterday, I was stunned to hear that Miles does not qualify by test scores into the ASD early intervention program. I was panicking. How could Miles not qualify for services? He's so far behind and I've been told ther are so many "problems" with him. He's been making so much progress by attending the KOTM playgroups; I've felt he's been making speech progress as well, but now that Miles is about to turn 3, all services from KOTM will be taken away and the ASD said he didn't qualify for services. I was fearing regression or, at the minimum, no progress. I didn't know what to say. And then the ASD representative said something that made all the difference- "He doesn't qualify for services, but we feel strongly that services need to be made available to him." I was relieved. the ASD has agreed to continue speech therapy for Miles and want him to attend one of their "special needs" preschools. I don't know the details yet, but those will be made available to me within the next 10 days. The evaluators acknowledged that Miles is "catching up" and want that progress to continue, so they opted to give the referral from KOTM and their observations more weight than Miles' test scores so he can continue in an early intervention program. Thanks, ASD!

FYI- Miles has made great improvement in his speech. When he tested with KOTM 4 months ago, he was in the first percentile. Yesterday, he tested in the 10th percentile. His receptive language score moved clear up to the 17th percentile. They did find some "odd gaps" that helped him qualify for the ASD services for which he technically doesn't qualify. For example, when given pictures to match, he's in the 96th percentile; when verbally asked "which ones are the same", he can't do it and ranks only in the 3rd percentile. The other thing the ASD did that won them points was that they were concerned about me. They repeatedly asked me how I was doing and how I was dealing with the things they were telling me. It's annoyed me that the KOTM people would just tell me what they thought Miles' problems were and it seemed that they didn't care how I felt about about what they were saying.

Miles exits KOTM and enters the ASD program on his third birthday. He'll continue going to his KOTM playgroups until his birthday, then we'll start his new adventure with the ASD.