Deerfield High School is probably fine for most typical students. Four of my kids have graduated from DHS, with varying experiences, and I have two more typical kids attending presently. The issue is my daughter who has very special needs. She has been in full-day classes at Park School in Evanston for 11 years. Park School is a GEM. It is a school solely for special needs students, ages 3 through 21. The staff is amazing (understatement). Students are grouped in their classrooms more by level of ability rather than age. The physical building fits the students' needs (for example, narrow stairways with railings reachable on both sides at the same time). Workshop, kitchen, etc. facilities are utilized and the students are well-known in the community. Typical kids visit the school to interact. There are IN-HOUSE therapists, so problems or questions that arise at any time are easily addressed. Now that my daughter is chronologically high school age (developmentally, she is an infant), the "all-knowing" staff at DHS are forcing her to attend a classroom there. Here are just some of the issues....1) the physical building is not set up for kids like my daughter (wide stairways, long, dark hallways, etc). 2) communication with the administration has been horrible, and that is an understatement. I left four VMs over the summer for the superintendents and not one of them was returned. The lack of response continues today. 3) the cohort in the classroom is NOT NOT NOT a match for my daughter. It is really hard to teach my child when the other kids in the class have some verbal skills (completely lacking in my daughter). BTW, another one of my kids was evaluated to be a potential student at Cove School years ago, and the response from Cove after the eval was...."we can educate your child but we can't accept him because the present cohort is not a good match for him." Cove understands the importance of a matching cohort. DHS has no clue. 4) MOST IMPORTANTLY, I observed my daughter for 40 minutes in the class last week (the rule is...up to 3 observations per year, 40 minutes each. My child cannot communicate how her day was spent. She can't communicate anything verbally. It is very scary, as a mother, to have such limitations set). What I did observe was appalling. Not going into every detail, the gist is...the classroom teacher had no idea of how to relate to my girl. There were only 2 students in the room (my daughter and another student with some verbal skills) when "reading time" started. There was ZERO connection between my daughter and the teacher. ZERO. Less than ZERO. My girl got so frustrated just sitting at her desk that she cleared everything off the desktop with one shove, even though an aide was sitting beside her. This "reading time" is so above the level of my daughter's abilities that it frightened me. How could the teacher not see my daughter's lack of engagement? How can a teacher fail to engage my daughter with only ONE other student in the class? The teacher held a "book" (basically, it wasn't even a paperback...it looked like leaves of paper stapled together, about 8 by 8 inches in size, with pictures that were almost invisible due to the yellow coloring on a white background. Oh, BTW, my daughter is legally blind). Guess it didn't matter though...the teacher mostly stood at the front of the class (with my daughter at a desk 8-10 feet away), reading in a monotone voice, no excitement....and she would walk past my daughter's desk occasionally, not stopping to try to engage her...just kept reading the book as she walked. I was so utterly disappointed. The fact that DHS thinks this is an appropriate placement is not only shocking, it's cruel. My daughter deserves the best. She did not ask to be born with a horrible disability, and I'll be damned if I will sit by like a wet noodle and not support her. Her lifespan will not be normal due to her syndrome, and every day is precious. She needs to be back with her family, her community, her support system...at Park School. read more