Across the country, we have awful breakfast participation. |
I want them to observe students to see if we are identifying them correctly. The doctors here don't have all the criteria. Unless someone is really autistic-looking, there are lots of subtle signs that a lot of doctors don't realize. |
Sometimes parents want to protect their child. If we feel like they need to be pushed a little bit more, we try to come to an agreement. If they totally disagree, the parents have a right to take us to a hearing. But we try not to get to that point. I like to build a partnership with parents. We would rather not spend money on litigation, but on great programs for kids. |
That's a good number. Most counties have but one or two. |
There truly needs to be a lot more professional development in the educational community. One child isn't like the next, so you can't always use the same bag of tricks. Plus, they're constantly changing. You never know; what's going to make them happy one day might set them off tomorrow. |
We can provide what we provide during the school day, but we can't provide the medical support. |
We don't see that behavior anymore. Most people think of autism like 'Rain Man' or walking around flapping, but that's not everyone. George doesn't flap. He doesn't wave his hands in front of his face or spin. We have autistic kids with 160 IQs. |
We look right out at the need, we're pretty sure we've got kids coming to school hungry. The other thing is we have locations where the children need to be dropped off before school starts. We take them and feed them breakfast. They are getting well-nourished and can head off to class. |
With our deficits, we can't afford this. |