The fight closer to home

Just a chance to blow off a little steam...

My two boys are perfect. I am blessed. Yet even with blessings there are trials to make you stronger. They both were born with a gene abnormality which gives them a non corrective vision disability. Non corrective in that surgery and/or glasses will not help. While my older son has an acuity of about 20-50 and has adapted well, my youngest is somewhere around 20-100 and is struggling in second grade.

Both are entitled (and yes I will use this terrible word because of the amount of tax that is extorted from me each year), for extra services through the school system. But... there is little or no money available after other services take their share. Other services? Not hearing... not behavioral... but language. Or speech. Or to be exact, 'English' as a second language. They wrap this up as special needs to receive additional instructors. They won't give numbers out but my son shares the same vision resource teacher amongst multiple districts.

UPDATE AS OF 4-15-09 OUR VISION TEACHER RETIRED BEFORE THE END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR - WE HAVE NO ONE NOW!

Our little school of 300 or so has a couple full time and several part time specialists for 'speech'. Can you imagine what the the cost of this is on a local level... a state level? It's absurd. We've been trying to find large print, age appropriate books for him to read. The library can't allocate the funds. Yet they just received a couple hundred new books all in a foreign language. For those who don't know it's Spanish. Logic is scarce here. It's wrong. Our system is broken and out of money and they want to know why? I KNOW WHY!