I worked as both a school nurse and as a nurse in an inpatient child and adolescent Psych program (besides being a parent).
So, first of all, to D'AngelosdoDisney, pixie dust to your family and to the people caring for your son; msy they find things that help him to deal with what he is going thru.
And to everyone else, it seems like the "labels" should be pretty clear cut, but they are not. In some schools (at least in my experience with about 6 school districts over my adult lifetime), OHI is a catchall category for kids who don't fit somewhere else and is used mostly for children who need minor arrangements/adjustments or accomidation in just one area (things like severe allergies, ADD or ADHD for extra time). Depending on their program, the school may not have a lot of services available for kids in that qualification. So, it may be necessary to use another classification for children who need other services. I wanted my DD classified as OHI, but she would not have been able to get special edication services under that classification, so we had to go with another label.
I don't agree with the idea that schools try to do things the cheapest way (maybe some do, but I don't think that's the usual). From having been on the "school" side of the equation, I can see they have limited resources and have to figure out how to use them the best way. I have sat as a nurse in meetings where the team looked at different labels and how using them would impact the services - I've seen long discussions of whether a child would best be served as ED (Emotionally Disturbed), LD (Learning Disabled) or OHI. Most school people (most, not all) are trying to do the best they can with a very complex system.
There are
individual people who don't want to change (We ran into a Principal who has a 2 story school and higher grades on the second floor. In our intake meeting when DD was entering 1st grade, he refused to put in an elevator (because it would be a budget area for him and he didn't want an elevator that "people could abuse".) He said that when my DD got to 3rd grade (the grade that started upstairs), she would have to switch schools, since he was not going to "penalize the other children" by not allowing them the "growing up step" of going upstairs. The district special education coordinator who was at the meeting took him out to talk to him privately 3 times. Finally, she gave up and told him "If this child comes to this school, you
will do these things. They will be placed on the IEP and you
will have to comply with that." If she had not been there, I would have gotten a much different (and much more negative) picture of the school district. For better or worse, we chose to go with a different school in the same district.
Here's a
good article about OHI.
And a good resource with lots of links:
www.pacer.org
. My brother used to live in Highland (I can't remember where...I only remember it was a basement apartment). I live further upstate, near Schenectady. I'm not going down the same road as you are (DS has NLD), but if you ever want to chat, please feel free to PM me. I know a little about New York State special education law (have taken a course in special education avocacy), and if I can be of any help, let me know.
