<p>My niece has been ordered to stay home after 3 ACL surgeries. Her school district (Montgomery Country, MD) has been very difficult with arrangements. It took them a while to find high school teachers willing to teach and then they wanted a one month contract. No one was certified for AP classes, so niece had to drop that class. Someone over the age of 18 must be home with the student, so my sister, who works, is trying to get teachers who will come in the evenings. Teachers are only allowed to come for 90 minutes per week, per class. They are only providing two teachers and each teaches two classes. She is registered for two other classes, where no teacher has been provided. Is this typical?</p>
<p>My sister (Los Angeles suburb) had an excellent experience with homebound teachers for my nephew. Well, at least his grades improved. He is an above average but not top student. So I wouldn’t say it is typical for my sister’s district.</p>
<p>My friend did this when she broke her leg in our freshman year of high school. I don’t think she had the same difficulties your niece does since she was able to have the full cooperation of the teachers (both homebound and in school) and that made all the difference. She was able to continue her normal classes. She wasn’t in AP so no issues with that, and her mom worked from home. </p>
<p>I think it’s more that your particular situation and school district is simply not prepared for things like this. The policies seem oddly constraining.</p>
<p>Your sister may want to find an older lady to be the chaperone. You may have an easier time finding older people with time on their hands during daylight hours than you would have finding night time teachers.</p>
<p>Along with ellemenope’s excellent suggestion, you might think about asking around among parents you know who work from home, freelance, etc. If they can bring work along, they might be very open to using your house as office space, as it were, in order to help you meet the over-18 requirement. I did this a couple of years ago for a friend whose daughter was unable to get to school for two months.</p>
<p>My S had multiple surgeries and was in the hospital for a month the first quarter of his freshman year at high school. The school district had a teacher assigned to the hospital (it was a children’s hospital.) She came to his room for half an hour every day with her crayons and coloring books and chatted with my S who was pretty zonked out on meds. He was counted as present for a full school day for each visit. When he got out of the hospital we wanted to send him back to school half days but the school could only give him credit for the classes he attended but said if we had a homebound teacher come for an hour a day he would get full credit. It was fairly easy to arrange. A very nice man came to the house each day for a few weeks and spent an hour. My S was still pretty weak and the teacher said he usually taught kids who were either terminal or had been expelled so he didn’t really know what to do with my son. The upshot was my S didn’t really do any school work but got credit for the full quarter and he caught up pretty easily once he recovered and returned to school. He ended his freshman year with a 3.5 so all’s well that ends well.</p>
<p>I have no advice but 3 ACL surgeries. Just OW! I’m sorry to hear about that.</p>
<p>You might want to meet with a lawyer. Spend $150 on an hour, and then implement what is suggested yourself, but tell the school, with a smile, that you got these helpful suggestions from legal counsel. That will do it, believe me.</p>
<p>Sometimes schools are quite willing to help, but have no idea how. So a lawyer who is familiar with this kind of thing really can help, in a positive sense.</p>
<p>If you can’t afford a lawyer, hire an advocate through Federation for Children with Special Needs.</p>
<p>None of this has to be hostile, but can help the school figure out how to cope with your son’s needs, and help you get what he needs too.</p>
<p>A couple of suggestions, though it may be too late now for them. One, online classes can be helpful. Anyone reading this who has a kid with health problems, who is missing school or needs to miss partial school, or needs less time in the classroom for whatever reason, online classes can give flexiblity, and can be done when the child feels up to it.</p>
<p>The other suggestion is to arrange, through the principal or 504 coordinator, that every day, every teacher in every class fills out a sheet for your son, with work done in class, homework assigned, notes attached, any other class materials attached, quizzes and tests to take at home, and any grades missing. This can be a form, made by you, copied by the school, and the nurse or some other staff person should collect them at the end of every day and get them to you.</p>
<p>You can help your son compile lists of work and help him keep track of it.</p>
<p>Sometimes this kind of system exposes some weaknesses of teachers, such as problems keeping track of their own assignments etc., but overall it works.</p>
<p>Now, in addition to this, a tutor can come by to work with your son on any questions. Depending on his energy and yours, he can do most of this himself (presumably, as an AP student, he is capable, thought no doubt tired) and with you there as a support, not much tutoring may be needed.</p>
<p>This is what a lawyer suggested for us.The school was happy because we did all the work. We had a legal right to a tutor but did not want one. The tutor tended to come just when our daughter could not do work. So the school saved money, and we met them halfway. They just made sure teachers filled out the sheets and got them to us.</p>
<p>One other thing: a kid in this situation, or with any illness, should be able to get credit for any combination of working at home and attendance at school. The school, and parents, should work to maximize time spent at school, even if that means going up for a class, going home, then up for a last class, etc. That business about partial credit sounds wrong. Maybe this doesn’t apply to the OP’s son, but as he gets better, he has every right to work his way back in gradually.</p>
<p>Also, our school allowed our daughter to participate in extracurriculars, even if she was not in school. The lawyer suggested that as well Academics are important, but EC’s like music and theater were important too, for her overall development.</p>
<p>I realize not all of this applies, but please take from it what is helpful. Good luck.</p>
<p>I basically agree with compmom, though I’d probably start with a more direct approach to the school district. The biggest issue is that if it is a temporary disability (expected duration of <6 months) then it is not required to be covered under 504 plan rules. But, your state may have more expansive rules, and Montgomery County may have policies that might be helpful. Our school district has routinely covered homebound services for kids with brain tumors (who couldn’t come back to school for a couple of months due to infection risks), and spinal surgery where the child was immobilized for a period of time that was less than 6 months.</p>
<p>Niece is hoping to only miss the first 4-6 weeks of school, so this is just temporary (unless she reinjures it a 4th time :0 ). They obviously have to cut the students a lot of slack, because 6 hours of instruction per week is not much. Based on your responses, it sounds like that’s true. Thanks for your ideas.</p>
<p>Is there a parent’s list-serve at the school? That was always a big help to me when Happykid was in the MCPS system. If there is no parent’s list-serve, then your sister should talk with the PTA and/or Booster Club about this. They might know where a few bodies are buried and be able to expedite a working solution for the family.</p>
<p>Just adding that a lot can be done by e-mail too. Instead of the sheets that I described, teachers can e-mail back and forth with the student. The trouble in our school was that we had to kind of nag them for that, so the principal liked the lawyer’s idea of filling out the forms we wrote up. But a school intermediary/dean could handle nagging them, and forward the e-mails each day to the student.</p>
<p>One year, our daughter actually entered school a month late, due to health. This was before the system with the forms. The school and teachers just waived a lot of stuff and let her start with the material being taught from the day she went back. That’s another option I guess. She did read the English books herself, and reviewed all the other subjects herself, but didn’t do the homework or take the tests from the first month.</p>