I have ton of experience and insight into this area, my son is going to graduate this summer, and we were told this was never going to happen.

We're in Middletown, our experience started out with Moody School telling us our child was weird and he couldn't be in school. As it turns out this is quite illegal. The school requested a "mental" evaluation, where they paid for an expert, that rendered an opinion that no only turned out for completely false, but favored the school. This started a battle that lasted a few years and to the dismissal of the principal.

We had access to the Yale Child Center, which is one of the leading Autism research centers in the world (check out their robotics work for non-verbal, low functioning children, it's amazing.) We had a parallel report and evaluation done and this proved to be a keystone in our continual fight over the next twelve years.

Once your child has been identified, you will need that paperwork to deal with the school district. Our son attended Benhaven for a few years until he was ready to start transitioning, with a Para, into regular school. So what was needed in between? Here's a quick guide to help you.

Special Education services are run at the state level and filter down to the district level. They will fight you tooth and nail through the entire process. My suggestion is this:

Bring a laptop. At EVERY meeting with the school, take a roll call - the get the name and title, and function of everyone at the meeting. Get contact information. Note the date and the time. Record the information in the meeting like a court recorder would. I cannot tell you how many times, early on, where someone said something, and I was able to recall the information up and dispute in the meeting.

Do not give in to some of the strong arm tactics. When school district thought we were going to sue them, they ambushed us with with the district lawyer and intentionally set up the room where we were encircled by the administration. After everyone arrived, I moved all of the tables to the wall, except for one, and set the room up where it was more favorable for us, once they announced the lawyer, I started recording the video and audio and that never happened again.

Do not be afraid to discuss the possibility of having legal council there. We never brought a lawyer, but we discussed it several times. Eventually, we had zero shenanigans from the school. This is where meticulous documentation comes in. I scanned all the documents they provided to us, and all the information I recorded into Evernote and that gave me instant search.

Many of the teachers and paras are great, but they are overworked and do not have an appropriate support system. Over the past twelve years, this has improved, in particular with the student who received national attention for the scream room incident (he was in my Son's class at Benhaven).

Always get a second opinion on any diagnosis. Never let the school distribute medication. Save, retain and archive all documentation and assume the district is not working in favor of your child. Once the district sees that you are not a push over (for horror stories, talk to single moms with daughters on the spectrum in any Autism support group), the district will not pursue their angle, because you provide too much resistance. In most cases they expect you to be disengaged, once they realize you aren't, most barriers drop. Also, feel free to not except things that are proposed during the PPT meetings. There were plenty of times, we flat out said "no" and proposed an alternate - all of which were accepted.

Hope this helps and welcome to Connecticut.