Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Iowa’

Last month, Ted’s ipad went missing. Since Dan wasn’t working, we couldn’t replace it, until today. I downloaded his stuff on the new one from the icloud thing, and found THREE VIDEOS by the thief (or child of). PLEASE pass this on. The ipad was Ted’s way of communicating (we have an app called TapSpeak). He’s been lost without it. Even though we replaced it, there was plenty of contact info on the ipad. They could have got it back to is. PLEASE help us find this family. IF you’re in Dubuque especially PLEASE PASS THIS ON. The most recent 3 videos are the kid with the ipad. PLEASE HELP US.

With more digging into the ipad, we found an email address for the person who has it, too.  It was obvious it belonged to a child because of the apps on it. There were also apps that had the word AUTISM in the title.  Lastly, besides the communications software, there were other apps that would indicate that it belonged to someone who had some sort of disability or cognitive problems.  The parents of this kid had to know. They knew enough to turn off FIND MY IPHONE, but not enough to realize I had it automatically sending stuff to icloud.

Read Full Post »

I am trying to keep track of how much time they spend sitting across the street from my house. I only caught them for one hour yesterday, but that was late afternoon. Now, at 1pm, they’re sitting there. I am really curious as to how much time they sit hanging out on a side street every day.  I think if we have that little crime, we could do some cutbacks, right?

Read Full Post »

My son’s school did some community service work at the Dubuque Arboretum.  They have a Veteran’s Memorial there.  For whatever reason, his classmates started spitting on it. They thought it was funny; we don’t know why.

My son had the nerve to say “what the HELL are you doing?”

He got in trouble for saying hell.  Nothing happened to those who spit on the memorial.

This is what matters in Dubuque. This is how life has been at Washington all year.  My son said “hell”, and that was a bad thing. Spitting is ok, even if it is on a memorial for all veterans from Dubuque. 

Read Full Post »

My son finishes work early.  He has a para that takes him out to the library when he’s done, so as to not disturb the class.  He spends a lot of time there.

He has a Kindle, so he has plenty to read at all times. The school itself (Washington Middle School in Dubuque) has kindles to loan out to students, too.  

His para, for whatever reason, thinks that Kindles are a disgrace.  She first banned him from reading whatever he wanted on it, even though he reads adult science books, and Greek classics.  He could only read what was assigned in school.

Then she decided that was unacceptable.  On Friday, she ripped it out of his hands, went to the shelves, found the book he was reading, and threw it down in front of him.  For whatever reason, she would not allow him to read it on the Kindle.

It is bad enough they wouldn’t put him in gifted classes because he has a learning disability (dysgraphia, cannot write legibly), but now to discourage reading advanced books, and only read school books on paper? What is wrong with this place?

We’re taking him out of school after this year, and using the virtual public school until we move out of Dubuque. When you have staff acting against the child’s best interests, you need to pull your child out.  This is just the latest in a string of incidents with this woman, and it’s the last straw.

Read Full Post »

They had a threat called in yesterday. It wasn’t a student. We got a self congratulatory phone call from them, yesterday. It wasn’t a credible threat, apparently.

But the real credible threat, the bullying we’ve been talking about for months, is still being ignored. The school won’t do anything, and neither will the police. Their answer is to call an IEP meeting. The children are acting like their parents, to be honest. You hear from them the same scorn and attitude as you see in parents around here. It’s been awful, and I cannot wait until the year is over. We pulled our son out so he could go to the Iowa Virtual Public school. After that, we are moving so we don’t have to subject our youngest to that horribly run school. I cannot wait.

Read Full Post »

So, it started with the Dubuque Community School Board looking for a consultant to help them figure out what to do about computers in the district.

They hire Dell to be the consultants. Not like Dell is in Dubuque or anything, just some tax dollars going out of state to tell us what to do.

Of course, Dell said to buy Dell computers. Which we did. In abudance.

Support was needed for all those computers. Despite IBM relocating here because we supposedly have a great education system with people majoring in all sorts of computer-related stuff, hiring local people to do that support was out of the question.  So we hired Dell to do our tech support for our new Dell computers that the Dell consultant told us to buy.

What next? Oh? The Dubuque Community School Board sent officials down to Texas to visit with Dell? Really? Imagine that.  

What’s next? A penny tax for a few years, to go directly to Dell? Might as well…

Read Full Post »

I no longer think that Dubuque is a good place to raise a family. In fact, if you have a child with a disability, you may be better off elsewhere.  It’s not bad, and better than what we would have had in New York City, but I’ve been looking around and there seem to be better places.  Madison, WI is one place we’re looking at, and if it wasn’t for Walker, it would be close to perfect.

But the bloom is off the rose, and Dubuque, which once seemed a very grounded and open place, has turned to the usual bad habits of many cities.  The politicians are inaccessible, the police are unethical, and the laws are now going from protecting citizens to generating money off of them. Schools get cut, but special pet projects do not.  Small businesses suffer at the hands of larger ones. They found a way to get rid of undesirable “people from Chicago” (code word for black) legally.  Discrimination is almost as rampant as apathy and ignorance.  There are few people with strong convictions here, and it shows.

I want to fight for a community that fights with me, for me, alongside me. I’ll be the best thing that ever happened!  

We still have to ride it out more than a year, since we do want our daughter to graduate from the local high school. It would be foolish to pull her out now.  But if we can figure out how to make it work, we need to go to a good city, one that is family friendly.

Read Full Post »

My son started Camp Bee A Friend this week. This camp pairs off children on the autism spectrum with their typically developing peers, sharing the camp experience together. It’s not about therapy, academics, things like that, it is camp. Real camp with camp activities. Fishing and swimming and crafts and lunch and songs and games and sports and all the typical day camp stuff — something that kids on the spectrum, particularly ones like mine, don’t really get to experience.

Now, one of my fears with Ted is that he’d be alone when we were gone. That the only people who would be with him would be obligated to. Family members, and people who work with him. Maybe a roommate in an apartment or group home. It’s one of the things that makes me sad, the thought my son may never have a partner, a family, a social life. He’s still non verbal, and he doesn’t really notice other people a lot. He doesn’t interact, usually. And since there are a lot of things he doesn’t understand, what could he bring to the table, friendship-wise? This breaks my heart on a regular basis. I try not to think about it, because it makes me want to die inside.

Well, when he got on the bus to go to camp, another kid came by. He looked at the open doors, looked over the seats, and said, “I want to sit next to Ted!” I smiled, I made a pleasant remark to one of the staff members standing there (as well as continued to discuss how Ted doesn’t eat lunch) and left.

And then proceeded to cry the entire drive home.

Read Full Post »

Earlier this week I woke up to my driver’s side window smashed in (by a spark plug, apparently a common way of breaking car windows quietly and quickly).  My GPS, which I normally take in every night, was stolen.  I was supposed to go out for one more drive, but Ted wanted to walk, instead, and after the walk I put him to bed and forgot about the GPS. (And my backpack AND my radio.)

I have an idea who did it — waiting for the police to finish their investigation.  There was one person who rode in my car, who knew all about it, who was curious about it, and the first day it is left in, it’s gone. A family that always asks for money and items.  Who knew too much about other things. Most importantly, I was woken up twice by noise from their door that night — they claim no one was up and about.  A bunch of other thoughts too, but for now, there is nothing I can do.

The police who responded, and the investigators I spoke to later on in the day, were absolutely brilliant.  They made something scary and upsetting, bearable.  I didn’t expect so much attention and concern, it was a pleasant suprise.

Dealing with Progressive was pleasant too, although my deductible is rather high, and I wound up paying out of pocket. But they found me a local division of Safelite, which is prompt, affordable, and on site.  The GPS was not covered, though, as it wasn’t a permanent part of the car. (That’s being taken care of though, at least.)

I am very disappointed that this happened in a place I moved to that I went in with bright expectations about safety.  I let my guard down a little bit.  I should have known better. What bothers me the most, though, is I’ve done a bit to help this family out, and support them in ways I could, and it felt like “no good deed goes unpunished”.  Plus they knew that I wasn’t rolling in cash.  That I couldn’t help them too much because I had my own tight budget to adhere to.

However, given the outpouring of support from family, friends, and community, if this is my punishment, keep it coming.  Although I am still rattled, and this hit me at a time where I really didn’t need to get a (financial) hit, in ways I’m better off than I was before it happened. I found support and caring from places I didn’t expect it, and had other parts of my network re-affirm how wonderful they really are.

Read Full Post »

I think I posted a while back about the nonsense they presented as sex ed to my daughter.  False information about condoms, and made the girls responsible for everything, like they were dirty whores, and if they should get pregnant, they should give it up.  Sounded like a plan to get more cute white babies for adoption, to be honest.  (Another pro-life organization in Dubuque is very good at getting help for women who want to continue their pregnancy, and I respect them for that.)

Well now, on 105.3, they ran a radio ad where they said RU-486 was the Morning After Pill, and that you should come to THEM for the truth.

I’m checking with the FCC about filing a complaint (filled one out on the website), and anywhere else that handles lying during advertising.  And to think the Dubuque Community Schools financially supports them in their endeavors.

They lied to our children and now they are lying to us.  This HAS to stop.

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »