The One About Science Class

Last Thursday was back to school night at the middle school.  Minion #1 who attends this school is in a special autism class for some of his day, and back to school night is usually a great way to introduce ourselves to his teachers, get their impressions and give them ideas if they are having trouble teaching him.  Usually, is the word though we want to stress here, because this year, as we've found out teaching isn't really what they are doing.  For those of you just tuning in, feel free to read a few other posts about our local school district and how we've had to file complaints for not following the IEP as well as contact the Attorney General's office to report them for medicaid fraud.

After speaking to his history teacher, it was his opinion that he simply change all the tests to things that he could pass without really having to work at understanding the material.  If he could just know names and dates, and that was good enough, and the best part is that he would gets A's too!  The science teacher informed us that he was only rehashing material from the two previous years, and that would be a struggle for him, since he wasn't sure how you could rehash the material and make it seem new.  Oh, and science class, wouldn't really be 'class' it was really more an online thing and they would do a project or something too.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think the King's brain may have imploded at that point.  The incredulous looks he was giving me coupled with the opening and closing of his mouth, rather like a stunned trout, while trying to form angry words was giving it away.  Whatever, it was time to go home.

We found out a number of other things that evening as well.  One was that the autism program that the school started is failing miserably and won't be continued at the high school level.  Another was that there still aren't any other students that are high functioning autistics, so minion #1's getting pretty far behind in his own studies due to the other kids not progressing.  My personal favorite though was that the school is simply neglecting to provide speech services this year, contrary to the IEP and the settlement reached (not monetary)  with the department of ed. over the summer.  So, I'll have to start filing complaints, again.

As parents, I think we all find faults with the public school system.  From teachers that care too little to bad food that's offered in the cafeterias at lunch time and all things between.  At this point though, we've reached our limits of what's acceptable.  We're looking into cyber school.  Which, while still public school it gives us the opportunity to be more involved and interact with our minions throughout the day while not being responsible for developing a curriculum.  With any luck this will allow them to achieve their potential instead of just whatever the school thinks they need to squeak by.

Has anyone else run into this sort of thing?  What did you decide to do?
If any of you have decided on cyber school what has your experience been like?