It’s been a while since I updated this series, partly because I needed to wait to see how everything ended up.  No, my blog is not in real time.  Sorry to disappoint!

Ok, so in Part 1 I shared how Mr R got himself expelled from homeschool, and then gave some background to his bipolar and learning difficulties in part 2.

After a day of this, and an emotional meeting between us, with his father mediating, promises were made (as they always are.)  I allowed him back into the school, on the condition that he complete his work quickly and promptly, without argument.

And on the following Monday, he arrived at our school a changed man.

Unfortunately, as is so often the case with my fiery oldest son, it didn’t last.  He tried, valiantly, for a couple of days but months of bad habits plus a short memory span meant that within days everything was exactly the same as it was before.

So, one Wednesday when his father got home from school, I grabbed his birth certificate and a utility bill and took him to the elementary school to enroll.

My timing couldn’t have been worse.  It was two days before Spring Break started.  Mr R was excited to see several kids he knew from the neighborhood in the halls and lunchroom.  They gave him placement tests and to my shock placed him at a 4th grade level in reading.  I really don’t think he reads at that level.  His math score was terrible.

I filled out forms, in triplicate.  I signed up for email alerts from the school newsletter.  We got the school bus schedule.  I skipped over “protocol” and requested an evaluation for an IEP (Individual Education Plan) asking the school to test him to see if he qualified for special education services.  His old IEP from South Carolina had expired because he had been enrolled in homeschool for the past year and a half.

The vice principal tried to talk me out of it, wanting to see how he’d do in a classroom and letting his teachers request the evaluation, so I sent her a letter, formally and in writing.

We headed to Walmart to buy the short list of supplies.  Mr R’s new school doesn’t allow students to keep their own supplies, but rather dumps everything in a communal pot.  It was late in the year, just days before the fourth quarter started so we were asked for four boxes of pencils and two bottles of Purell.

While cruising the office supply aisle, I got a call from the vice principal.  Because of Robert’s age, they wanted to put him into fifth grade.  I insisted that he was in fourth grade, and there is no way he was ready to summarily skip a grade simply because he was 11.  He was currently enrolled in fourth grade at our homeschool.

It took me a lot of wrangling, a formal, written account of Mr R’s entire academic history, and a few phone calls before she decided to let him into the fourth grade.  In a way, wrangling with the school was tiring, but on the other hand, it was easier than wrangling with Mr R.

Side note that is longer than I thought it would be but maybe someone wants to read it:  Mr R was in 4th grade this year, even though he was 11.

When he was 5, we lived in an area of Denver that required tuition for PUBLIC SCHOOL kindergarten (mandatory school age in Colorado is 7; kindergarten is “optional” and we were in a strange no-mans land with a Denver address but not Denver Public Schools or Denver county.)  So, I didn’t enroll him.

The next year, we had moved and I tried to enroll Mr R and Mr P into public school.  The school informed me that there was no room in regular classrooms so Mr P would be in the ESL (Spanish) kindergarten class.  Um, no.  Fortunately, a private school run by the church my brother attended agreed to let the boys attend on a work scholarship.  I helped clean the school twice a month in exchange for tuition.

So Mr R started formal school in 1st grade at age 7; but was put back with the kindergartners and repeated 1st grade in a self contained special education classroom when we moved to SC.  Mr. R’s kindergarten/1st grade transitional year was also the year we got his bipolar diagnosis.

So now Mr R was in a fourth grade public school classroom, and the school had 60 days to test him and see if he qualified for services.

He did, but I am not happy with the IEP.  They did not identify a specific learning disability, but did find several areas that qualified him for services.  His IQ test gave him a 70 for memory, confirming my suspicion that his poor memory was keeping him from moving ahead, especially in mathematics.  (That, and we had drilled for 18 months on multiplication – doing a drill sheet EVERY DAY, and he still counted up on his fingers.)

As of now, I don’t know if he will return to public school in the fall or stay at home.  We are working on ‘school light’ over the summer.  I want to try some new programs with him.  I am trying to find programs or techniques to help him overcome his memory deficits.

But, for what it’s worth, the rest of our homeschool year was smoother.  We participated in a science fair, and got to a few projects I had been putting off.

I really missed my Mr R, though.  He wants to return to homeschool.  I want him to, also, but I don’t want all of the conflict.  Next year, I’ll have 6 children in school.  Can I handle it if there’s so much opposition?  But how can I turn him away?