Ben’s First Day of School

We, quite frankly, had no idea what to expect on Ben’s first day of school.  To this point we had been showered with good fortune by having available to us places like the Cerebral Palsy Center, Children’s Hospital and finally  the Charles Webb Center.   All we knew was
that we were nervous about what may be ahead for our little guy.

Our first concern was the bus ride.  Now, I know there isn’t a parent out there who isn’t at least a little nervous the first day they put their kindergartener on the bus.  Our concern was magnified by two facts.

1.  Ben would be traveling out of the district, thus the ride would probably exceed the normal thirty minutes.
2. Ben was non-verbal.  The normal kindergartener is about five years old and able to verbalize problems they may encounter on the bus.

Of  course the natural thing to do was to follow the bus on the first day.  After putting
Ben on the bus we both jumped into the car and followed behind.  I felt a little self-conscious because it almost seemed like we were spying.  But this was our child and who cares if the bus driver gets annoyed; which she didn’t.   I’m sure we aren’t the only parents who have done this.   Dennis has made this practice a habit and to this day when Ben’s transportation situation changes, Dennis will be right there following behind.  I now let him do it alone, because I never developed an appetite for the art of spying.  If I remember correctly the ride turned out to be between forty-five minutes to one hour.   Which wasn’t terrible, but it was long.   He seemed to do fine and both the driver and aid were very kind to him.

The issue we ran into was when we reached the school.  We were absolutely appalled to find out that Ben’s classroom was in a trailer (reference the “Taj Mahal  in last week’s post) a good fifty yards from the main school building.  On top of that; it was not handicapped
accessible.  Our son, who was barely  walking with a walker, was being carried in and out of the classroom!  In true non-compliance of  LRE (Least Restrictive Environment) we were  told that out of convenience they would have their lunches brought to the trailer.  There would be almost no mainstreaming for Ben.  All we could think of was the school administrators saying that if we wanted them to comply with the law, we would probably have to sue

.

This was the  proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back”.  They had worn us down and we realized that the only way to fix the problem would be to move.