[ajjhmf]

Has anyone had success in getting their school to pay for an personal FM system for their LD child?

My son has a variety of processing disorders as well as language issues, frontal lobe brain impairment and ADHD. I can rent a system from our speech clinic for short term use to try it out, but since he isn't actually hearing impaired I'm concerned the school will give us a fight should we need one long term. Most of the accommodations haven't cost the district money and as we all know, money is tight everywhere. I,m just looking for ideas I can use to convince the district that this is a good idea.

Thanks,
Jenny

[SingleMama2B]

Hi Jenny.... Not so sure that the school will pay for a "personal" one. From what you wrote, does your school have them for use at the school? If you have clinical diagnosis (not from school but from specialists you have gone to), you may have better luck going through your insurance, or through a local chapter of Division of Developmental Disabilities (DDD). Your state or county should be listed in the phone book and also on the internet. Of course you will have to register him, but it is just forms and copies of his med records. They will probably be able to help you now and through the years!
A in NJ

[crick]

You might have to get really pushy about it, but with all the medical records etc., you do have a valid reason behind the request for them to provide it. By personal I assume you just mean it's provided only for his personal usage while at school, not for ownership, correct?

Just be REAL pushy.

My mom had to fight hard for speech therapy services both through the school and insurance. Their reasoning for not providing it was "There isn't anything physically wrong with her mouth or tongue." Lame...but Mom won.

[ajjhmf]

I don't think there are any classroom systems in our building, so I am thinking of a personal osystem where there is one transimitter and one receiver. It's possible the district has a classroom system not in use, but I don't know yet.

Our principal really has a heart for J and has reallty worked with us in getting him the help he needs. I'm going to try talking to her first and see is she has any ideas.

Our biggest challenge is that our district only puts very severe students in self containted classrooms. Everyone else is pulled for the subjects they get help on and other areas. As it stands for the 4th grade, J will be out for 90-120 minutes a day, depending on his speech and OT schedule. The rest of the time he has to function with the rest of the class. He can work at grade level on science/social studies/health as long as they modifiy the work that involves reading, writing and math, but when they are actually doing the teaching of the subject, he gets lost with all the noise and distractions. Last year his teacher took the time to reteach him the stuff to his strengths, but not every teacher will do that and he has 8-10 more students in his class this year. Plus 4th grade is when it gets harder and they really start working on teaching the kids to take notes and be more independent.

I have a call into our county DD board, but it will take time to get him qualified and enrolled.

[TxMom65]

I know that our school has the ones you are talking about, individual, but only for the students who are hearing impaired. I would start collecting information about it. Anything on paper helps.

[athikers]

It looks like with the way ours son's language is progressing we might be fighting a similiar battle, to get him an interpreter even though he can hear perfectly well. His ability to learn sign is amazing, though his actual speech is still VERY poor (read: basically non-existent).

[aspenhall]

I work in the schools as a sub teacher and we have an amazing system in every classroom. It isn't all that expensive and EVERY CHILD benefits from it. It is ridiculously hard to teach in a classroom that doesn't have it. I cannot imagine your son dealing with trying to learn in a classroom without one. It can be retrofitted into the ceiling, and you don't need to rewire the entire school.
Check it out just one of the companies......
Audio Enhancement - We create audio enhanced classrooms! | AE Introduces New Enhanced Learning Systems Powered By Panasonic | Audio, Classroom, Infrared, Control, Wireless

[Joy2566]

My children are hard of hearing and they had this at school. They hated it as they could only hear the teacher. None of their teachers were good at repeating what the other students said. If a student asked a question and the teacher answered, it made no sense as they didn't know what the question was. We have had better luck with their hearing aids and classroom placement. The school has the fm system available, they were not purchased for my children specifically.

For my kids with auditory processing disorder, we have used an assisitive listening device. You can get them from Harris Communications. We had the pocket talker pro (cost less than $200), It was absolutely wonderful. It has the mike on the device, so you are not dependent on the speaker wearing a microphone. I find it to be a bit staticy, (I am hard of hearing) and it is distracting for me, but my APD girls claim there is no static. They say they just hear the voice and no background noise. The benefit is that they can hear any speaker in the room. My daughter used her pocket talker through high school and college, and now younger daughter is using it in highschool, so it was a good investment.

[ajjhmf]

Joy,

That sound's like something to look into. Thanks!

jenny