Special Education / Autism services in Myrtle Beach area schools (Murrells Inlet: how much, hotel)

[lizdkelley]

Hi, My family is considering a move to Myrtle Beach area this summer (I would be working at Market Common). We have 2 boys ages 7 & 9 with mild/moderate autism. Can anyone give me any information on the programs at any of the local schools for kids on the spectrum. Currently the boys are in fully included classrooms with one to one aides. Our school district also has a 5 week - 3 day summer program. And they each get 1 hour of speech, 1 hour of OT per week (my youngest also gets 1 hr of PT). Any information would be appreciated.

thanks.

Liz

[flootsmith]

Also interested in this information. Hope someone responds!!

[pburgess68]

Originally Posted by lizdkelley

Hi, My family is considering a move to Myrtle Beach area this summer (I would be working at Market Common). We have 2 boys ages 7 & 9 with mild/moderate autism. Can anyone give me any information on the programs at any of the local schools for kids on the spectrum. Currently the boys are in fully included classrooms with one to one aides. Our school district also has a 5 week - 3 day summer program. And they each get 1 hour of speech, 1 hour of OT per week (my youngest also gets 1 hr of PT). Any information would be appreciated.

thanks.

Liz

We moved here when my daughter was in middle school, coming from a northern school district that also offered summer programs. To the best of my knowledge, Horry Country doesn't offer such things. They are EXTREMELY tight on money. However, their general special ed classes are awesome. Now, whether your children would benefit, I couldn't tell you as my daughter doesn't have autism.

You could visit the HorryCountySchools and locate the numbers to call to find out what programs are available. They DO offer speech, and I know they do group every week as well.

The one thing I can say is that I felt the special ed system here was far superior to the one we left in NY. There are many kids getting special services here, and it seems to me that they have a good grasp on how to mainline the kids once they feel they can handle it. Again, this may not fit your situation.

In general I would never advise people to move here looking for a good education. It just isn't possible. However, I was more than pleased with their special education system. The one thing I have to stress...they leave many things not taught, and this will fall heavily on learning at home. If my daughter asks me ONE MORE TIME how many ounces are in a pound, or how many quarts are in a gallon...ugh!!! (didn't we learn that in middle school?!)

While they encourage mainstreaming of most special education students, obviously this doesn't fit "all". As well, they don't always teach things that they may need in their future lives. (see my comment above about gallons!)

[randredge]

Horry County does offer Summer programs for special ed students, it is known as ESY (Extended School Year) and is offered for students needing speech and other special ed services. My wife has taught ESY Speech along with her regular speech classes for a long time! Speech and special ed through the Summer are offered one on one, and many times are at the childrens houses. These are services that are mainly limited to Medicaid kids, but are available to all students!

[Bzybeader]

We moved here recently from CA and have nothing but good to say about Horry County. Services here were immediately offered, without a request and/or fight, and the focus on social skills is a huge plus. We had good luck in CA, one-on-one aide and other services but their budget was tanking and getting autism-trained teachers/aides was increasingly difficult. Out here, they don't sweat the small stuff and my son is a much happier person. (Now, me? Eh, not finding the southern hospitality to be hospitable but I'm not giving up yet.)

[hummingbird21078]

Since no one has been able to answer my questions on my original post i searched the posts for autism related posts and found this. I was wondering if anyone could offer up any updated info on the schools special ed department. I have a 10 year old son who has autism and he is not an easy child to work with for a teacher. I wanted to know if anyone had any recent insight on this subject? What districts are better at serving special needs kids? Are there autism services available down there? Do they "pool" these kids into one school or do they have separate schools for them to attend if they cannot be generalized? These are just some of the many questions I have as to what I can expect.

[Bzybeader]

I don't get here that often so I don't think I saw your original post, but Horry County has been good for our son. Much less stress than in California, and less hassle in getting services. They have an actual autism team/specialist, and special ed dept has someone at every IEP. I can't speak for any other county/district as we're new to SC, but our experience has been mostly positive. Our son is in a regular ed classroom with support services, and as we'd had a one-on-one in CA, we were asked if we wanted one here, but we declined. Our son also can pose a challenge for a teacher as he is highly verbal but can have mood swings and use his verbal skills inappropriately; as we all know, speech doesn't mean proper communication. Autism-trained specialists work with him daily. I don't know if there's a school just for autism. I wish I had more info for you, as I did the same searching before we moved here. I'd heard a lot of bad, but in comparison to California's tanking budget, which is directly impacting the schools, makes most states better already in a comparison. We still hear some negative, but given what we had to fight for in CA, SC has been so much easier. Social skills are taken much more seriously here, as they should be, and we've yet to hear "we can't do that" when we ask for something. I can't say it's perfect, as I think some people here get hung up on little things and patience isn't what it could be, but it's still better than the attitudes we faced in CA. Good luck.

[hummingbird21078]

Thanks for your reply. I'm glad to hear that there's an autism team there as we do not have one here. What we have is a team of people, one trained in multiple areas of disabilities, and that's only one person who chairs the IEP. Everyone else isn't necessarily trained to that extent. It truely scares me sometimes as the school recently hired a teacher who isn't even a special education teacher to teach special ed CSP classes. I think that's where my son had his biggest struggles because the teacher didn't understand his students and couldn't handle them and therefor wound up escalating every situation or meltdown that happened. My son now attends Villa Maria School, a special education intensive outpatient school which is run by Catholic Charities.
Villa Maria Schools Harford County Campus
Outstanding school!!! They are so involved with the children and they do many activities with the kids to keep the kids interested and involved in their education. Every teacher, therapist, para educator, psychologist and so on is required to have a background and training with special needs children.

I know I will probably have to contact the school system when we get closer to the actual move to find out specific details and i also thought to contact someone in the SC Autism society chapter to find out details from them as well when it's time as I would also have to find a therapist for him who is trained in Autism as well.

I too have heard much negativity regarding the schools in SC but most of what I hear is related to their general ed students and not the special ed department, which as a special ed parent we know full well can be vastly different. I do not let this discourage me though as I realize that there are many parents here too that complain about the school system and budget cut backs and so on. What they fail to realize is that in most cases their hands are tied cause if the system says it's not in the budget then it's not in the budget no matter how much kicking and screaming they do. They just announced, at last minute at that, our high school seniors, which i have 2 of, will not have the funds for graduation costs, prom and so on. This has parents scrambling, up in arms, as to why there isn't any money when there were a multitude of fund raisers and there was enough in the treasury for them to have their prom at a really fancy hotel and even hold a graduation dinner for students and their families. Now the seniors treasury is broke? I'll tell you why that is. It's because the school stole money out of the classes treasury to pay for a new football field and scoreboard. I know this because i am very good friends with the treasurer So now the board of education is turning a blind eye to it all because they don't want it getting out to the media. They are hoping the don't ask don't tell policy works for them in this instance.
Another instance of corruption. My oldest daughter is on the school yearbook and paper as she chose journalism as her "career path". Her yearbook class requires them to sell ads for the yearbook to local businesses or congratulatory spreads for graduating students. They are required to sell $200 dollars worth of these per quarter. If they don't sell enough ads the teacher told them they had to make up the difference or bring in $200 dollars in order to receive a passing grade. So in other words the kids have to buy their grades!
MD schools are too political and corrupt, IMO. Maybe, at least I'm hoping, SC schools will be a breath of fresh air.

[sak9210]

My husband has been asked to come down for a job interview in Murrells Inlet. We live in PA. My son is 4 yrs old with high functioning autism. Not sure which town to live in. Looking for a nice family neighborhood, lots of kids, safe, good schools, etc. I'm so happy to read all of the positive comments about special ed in Horry County!

[Autismmyrtlebeach]

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