My husband and I will be meeting with the principal (2nd time) regarding our son attending school this fall. Our first meeting was to inform him of the allergy, the severity, our hopes for a "safe" environment. Basically, a very informal meeting. The principal suggested that we put together two plans: a preventative plan, and a plan of treatment.
In putting together the preventative plan, my husband and I found that we have A LOT of questions that need to be answered first, before we can make our requests. We are thinking that at our next meeting we will present these questions, hopefully get the answers ASAP, then make our plan.
Does this sound like an OK idea? We have stressed to the principal that we want this to be a cooperative effort, not adversarial ("us against them"). Do you think this question/answer approach will help with that goal?
Any opinion will be appreciated.
Thanks, and have a good day,
Tammy
Tammy,
It sounds like you're taking the right approach. Be thankful you have a principal that wants to hear 'your side' of things. Most principals already have in their mind what they're going to do and don't want to listen to parents. Make a list of your questions, you may even want drop of the questions ahead before the meetings so he can have answers ready for you. j
My only suggestion would be to let the principal know ahead of time that you need some questions answered before completing your preventative plan. He/she might be able to answer the questions for you or (as the above poster suggested) have them ready for you.
I am sure they will be greatful that you want to gather the appropriate info before ironing out your plan. I just would not wait until the meeting to let them know this needs to be done.
Check out Rhonda's "504 primer" on [url="http://www.allergysupport.com."]www.allergysupport.com.[/url] It is also posted on this discussion board. Whether or not you chose to request 504 designation for your child, it will be an invaluable tool for you because it outlines what questions to ask yourself and the school. Extremely thorough. It was an enormous help for me as I worked with my daughter's school to develop a plan.
In retrospect, we probably would have been better off asking for 504 designation right off the bat. But some schools/districts find that request in itself as "adversarial". Now that our district undertands how the 504 desigantion works, they are supportive. You might consider softly bringing it up in your meeting with the principal to see how she reacts to the idea...
I agree that you must "partner" with the school in everyway that you can. We realized early on that (right or wrong) it was really up to us to help educate them about it.
Good luck,
Gail in St. Louis
Thanks for the responses, and encouragement concerning our approach.
Gail,
I have copied pretty much every bit of school info on here and have it in a folder - it's about 6 inches thick!!! My husband kids me about walking into the principal's office with it and putting it on his desk! Ha Ha! Seriously, my husband and I are teachers - I stay at home now - and the principal knows this. That put everybody on equal footing from the first 2 minutes. We know the ins and outs, believe me.
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Anyway, thank you all so much for the encouragement and helpful hints! I am considering dropping off the questions soon, so that maybe the answers will be ready before our next meeting - Feb. 18th. I think that after we get the answers, putting the plan in writing should be a fairly quick process.
Actually, we started out with 'request statements' then decided that we needed some answers before we could finish the whole plan, so we turned all the statements into questions - it shouldn't be too difficult to turn them back into requests after we get the needed information.
Thank you!!!
Tammy