Jumping in to say that you and your son sound like amazing people. The frustration you’re feeling with the mixed response from his school is real and relatable. While your situation is unique to you, you are NOT alone in feeling it.
As you think about what next year will bring for him, wanted to share my son’s experience with accommodations in college for what it’s worth. My S21 deals with severe anxiety, tics and slow processing speed. He had a 504 in high school and my thought was that it would carry through to college because it’s a 504 (disability accommodations) vs. an IEP. Every college is different. The school he chose doesn’t accept a 504, IEP or any written accommodations from previous schools because they were developed for a different environment. What they require is a recent (within 3 years) neuropsych eval. Fortunately we had that available. Without it, things would have ended there.
After receiving that and reviewing they had a 1:1 conversation with S21 over the summer where talking about what he felt would help him (we did prep together for that call) and they were super supporting in approving it all. There was no pushback at all but he had to do the asking.
One other dynamic that is different between K-12 and college is that in college the student is expected to meet with every new prof, every semester and talk about their approved accommodations and how a particular class might need to change. There is no central repository that profs are expected to access and manage for their students. So for students who are uncomfortable with drawing attention to themselves or having a 1:1 conversation with someone they don’t know well, this is another area that’s worth role-playing with them. And it happens every semester.
Good luck with the process. You’ve got this!
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