Anyone with kids with disabilities should demand that Trump's choice for Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos his Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch and finally his to his Attorney General pick, Jeff Sessions not be appointed

Thank god my kids are in Charter School, because public schools are officially done today.  Anyone with kids with disabilities should demand that Trump's choice for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos his Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch and finally his to his attorney general pick Jeff Sessions not be appointed.  They all want all want to get rid of services for kids with disabilities. In fact, Sessions the newly appointed attorney general said laws designed to help disabled children were to blame for a "decline in civility and discipline" in classrooms. His education Secretary DeVos even said schools should lose federal funding for kids with disabilities.   

First time parents or even experienced parents are often in denial of what learning issues their child might have.  They shouldn’t be.  Finding out what issues affecting your child could help them get diagnosed with dyslexia, leaning disabilities or other learning or cognitive issues.

When my son was about 1 year old, I noticed all the other children were walking.  My son wasn’t.  He also crawled later than others too.  For a while I thought about sending him to a physical therapist but then I figured he just was a little delayed and it wasn’t a big deal.

In his Gymboree class the teachers noticed that he wouldn’t sit down and walk around everyone.  He hadn’t crawled correctly either when he was at the crawling age,  he would just crawl with out using his legs like we was in the army or something.  He would have made a great soldier in basic training.

Finally at 15 months he started walking and we forgot about any issues he might have had.  Everything appeared fine until Kindergarten when the social worker at Zachary’s school noticed him walking around and not being able to sit when the other kids sat.  He would also get districted easily and lose his temper easily.  Honestly I was a bit surprised because when Zachary entered Kindergarten he appeared to have no tough transition like most of the other kids experiencing in the class. 

Things appeared to be going well until March when he started acting out.  We would get calls from the school daily asking if we could talk to him on the phone which didn’t work and I would have to run to his school and talk to him.  This happened all the time.  We had no clue what was wrong with him until the curriculum director noticed he had similar habits that her son had, who had sensory issues. Things like fragrance, the smell of  strawberries would  heighten Zachary’s sensory issues and cause him to act out Later we found out that child  ate strawberries and smelled like them which heightened Zachary’s sensory issues and not knowing what was going on, Zachary acted out by hitting that student.

He had been getting suspension notices and calls from the teachers.  We knew that he wasn’t a bad kid, so when the curriculum director said he had sensory issues we were relieved.  Then we began the IEP process.  Three letters that meant nothing to us.  We didn’t know what we didn’t know.

Although the struggle was real we found that experts were everywhere, friends with kids of all levels of learning.  We learned that sensory issues were everywhere.  We learned that if my wife and I were born now we would have both been diagnosed sensory issues.  We also learned that NYC is a community of sharers.  We’d talk, people would listen and next thing we knew we had names of lawyers, educators and advocates.  Once again, we didn’t know what we didn’t know.  So we took it all in and listened.  We started with Sarah at NY Special Needs.  Sarah helped answer questions, navigate the system. One year later our barely passing kindergartener is a thriving first grader working his way to second grade. 

We’ve learned that when you live in the greatest city in the world people step up.  Our team at Harlem Hebrew is heroic. They have provided Zack with a great teaching team and a nurturing ICT classroom. Zack’s social worker Ms. Schlomit has provided amazing specialists helping him in the school “in action” and Zack’s teachers are all aware of Zack’s sensory issues and work WITH him.  The specialists gave us the tools to work with, but more importantly, they gave Zach the tools to work with and become  the great kid he’s become.  He loves to read and is proud of himself when he advances a letter in www.raz-kids.com.

We didn’t have to leave our school or leave NYC we simply worked with our friends and community and listened and worked and paid attention and we know, every day counts and we can’t take this year for granted, we have to continue to live and learn and share.

Recently, Donald Trump's Nominee for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was asked by Tim Kaine if all schools that receive taxpayer funding should be required to meet the requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act?”  Her response was that it was up to the state.  No schools that get taxpayer funding must be compliant with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and if they aren’t they should have their taxpayer funding taken away.  Add this to Neil Gorsuch and finally his to his attorney general pick Jeff Sessions  who said the federal special education law was too lenient and allowed "special treatment for certain children," which was resulting in the acceleration of "the decline in civility and discipline in classrooms all over America."and you can clearly see that most of Trump's  nominees are no friends of students with disabilities.

For his next accomplishment Trump will weaken the FDA so bad drugs get approved faster.