Our daughter, Ruth, is a 12-year old 7th grade student in a regular class, in a private Christian school in California. She has a profound, bilateral, reverse sloping hearing loss. She has never been in public school either because the local district could not or would not offer an appropriate placement. No offer of a free and appropriate placement was ever made. In January 1998 we requested real time captioning to help our daughter meet the challenges of middle school.
Real time captioning is provided by an individual, much like a court stenographer.
It also provides daily notes, which could be made available to other students. However, before Ruth entered 6th grade, three members of the IEP team decided outside of the meeting to deny her this service. It was extremely hard, but on our own, we managed to provide real time captioning for two classes. We hired a lawyer and went to mediation. This was the first we had ever heard of such a thing.