What do you do when the educational system has failed your child?

My son has been a special education student since before kindergarten. He has a learning disability but is very capable of learning, loves school and is extremely sociable (not a behavior problem in anyway).

From the minute he entered Byram Township Intermediate School (5th through 8th grade) he has been failed by our public schools and our educational system.

This was documented by legal records but it could not get fixed because the system is broken and we could not afford to keep this in court or more accurately, go to court a second time.

He is now about to enter into 9th grade at Lenape Valley Regional High School, but already we see the same neglect for proper placement and bureaucratic issues we have experienced over the past four years.

Even though he has gone to summer school almost every year of his life, he is being denied school this summer because of bureaucratic policy being used against him (our family) to get placement deemed appropriate by the school, but placement we do not agree with.

It's just another example of how the system has failed our child. I have asked the Board of Education for appropriate and immediate action. I get more red tape. Where does one turn to care of what is best for a child and not provide a wall of excuses?

My son scores extremely low on standardized tests. So low, he was classified as cognitively impaired for several years until we found out what that really means and how it was holding him back in his educational placement.

Any teacher at Byram will tell you he is not cognitively impaired and we even provided experts to prove it. But still our school district used this diagnoses against us to place him incorrectly for three years because they did not want to change anything in there general special education program and give him a real IEP. For three years his learning was repressed because the program was not appropriate for him.

We took this to court and while we won a small portion of our case (we finally got the diagnoses officially changed), the three years of improper placement has left my son far behind where he should be.

We could not afford to get our child placed into a proper program because the legal costs were too high us to sustain. This coupled with having to deal with a new IEP program at high school in six months when he entered into high school made proved to be too much for us to combat, even when the judges told us we had an open and close case.

Byram Schools proved to be a lose-lose situation for my son and my family.

Our hopes were high heading into the new year and for LVRHS but even before the traditional school year starts we already see much of the same.

My son continues to want to learn, he is very capable of learning, is eligible for extended school year and he wants to go to summer school this year, but he is being denied. His test scores still work to his disadvantage and enter into high school this year he is once again being told he must be placed in a inappropriate, self-contained class, with other students that are not among his peers and far less capable than he is mentally, physically and socially.

We are once again following the educational systems rules, trying to get him placed appropriately and I am sure we find that we can't afford to do this again but in the interim, my son is being told he can�t go to summer school.

How crazy is that?
A child that needs schooling, wants schooling, deserves schooling, is eligible for schooling and has had schooling almost every summer of his life is being denied schooling because the system is broken.

I am saddened to believe this is the best New Jersey has to offer and wonder how many others are being left behind by the system too.

John Figiel
Sparta