After a lot of thinking, researching, phoning parents in our school district who have gone both paths in these schools, I have decided that Mikey will not be in a fully inclusive classroom next year.
My options were first presented to me back in January. This school district has been amazing in letting me choose what I feel is best for Mikey and working with it. It is important to me that Mikey remain at the same school he is currently at. So my options in this school are for him to be included in the grade 2 classroom or for him to move in to the Learning Assistance Program. It looks like the grade 2 program might actually be a grade 2-3 split with about 24 students in it which would be very difficult for Mikey during academic subjects like Language Arts and Math. The other option is for him to go in to a Learning Assistance Program that will have about 12 students in it varying in age from Grade 2 through 5 age. This coming up year it is looking like the program will be very Grade 2 and 3 heavy. The way the learning assistance program works at this school is that it is thought of as a program rather than a class. Students are still considered part of whichever grade level class they belong to (so Mikey would still be part of the grade 2 class). Students in the Learning Assistance Program participate in all activities that is done by class (field trips, skating, swimming, contests, Christmas concert...etc.) with their grade level class as opposed to with the Learning Assistance Program group. They also do lunch and have their lockers by their grade level class. As well, they do all subjects except for Language Arts, Math, Science and Social with their grade level class. This school de-emphasizes Social and Science in their programming so there is a limited amount of time for that anyway. During those core academic times, the students are in the Learning Assistance Program (LAP) and have programming tailored to where they are at. Usually, because there are students integrated in to all grade levels, there are only 5 to 8 children in that room at a time. I visited the LAP classroom and it is extremely academically geared - all be it, depending on the child, the academics may fit more in to the functional academic end of things. There have also been many students who have moved from this LAP setting in to full inclusion settings so I do not feel that thsi is a done deal for the rest of his school years. Mikey will be with this graded class for approximately half of the day - including lunch and PE everyday (we have a daily PE requirement in our province), and then joining them for all relgiion, library, health, art, music and computer classes as well as group times. This works out to about half of his time in school. I'm excited about the mix. This year of inclusion that he has had has been absolutely wonderful but I have also seen the nightmare that last year was. I just feel that it is less of a gamble to put him in a classroom with a teacher who is expereienced in setting up an individual program. I never thought I would be going to a program that was not full inclusion but here I am
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Monica, mommy to EIGHT (gulp!) year old 
(Mikey)!
