Please explain something to me. Was Abbie placed in a regular mainstream school? Or was this a special needs school?
In the US, there isn’t a lot of special needs schools, due to parents demanding equal rights and same settings as other kids. Most special needs schools are private and most parents cannot afford to send them, unless they sue or get scholarships.
Our regular schools have special needs (EC) rooms. These rooms can be for students that need just therapy, some come in half the day and others stay all day in the rooms. This goes based on assessments and accommodations needed per student within their IEPs.
That means A&P would have sat down and the school probably fought to keep her within the EC (exceptional children) classroom, all day and A&P probably thought that she needed more mainstream (which is what usually happens) or needed more support within the classroom. Sadly, our public school systems just do not have the ability for 1-on-1 help, especially in Florida, for someone like Abbie. They run on very limited funds.
So, it is a fight for parents and like with the McKay, most individuals sit on waitlists, with the lawsuit, Abbie was given a front row seat to get the grant that coming year, to send her to JSA. The McKay is federal funds, so the school doesn’t get her funds, if she was enrolled in the school. They then also got her state funds within the lawsuit, for the difference. Which means the school system won out because now, while they lost her funds, they don’t have to pay to hire someone for just her, which could have been required, if they pushed that way…
So, even when they think they won, they really lost because Abbie could access more things (like free lunches, school therapies, which would free up her private therapies to be in the afternoon, and help from the school system) but they also got to film at JSA, which would never be allowed in a public school…