Hi Kasee:

You said:

"I really want to work on getting him back in school, even if it's only part time. Does anyone have any experience with reentry? If only to prepare him for the "real" world later in life, I want him to conquer this fear to prove that he can do it"

That is exactly how both my wife and I wanted for our 17 year old son. We have been struggling with school refusal for 1 year, but have experienced general school issues for over 2 years.

We had a turning point moment when his social worker met with and challenged us on a similar set of concerns we raised with him. Our goal was to get him back to school, It was our goal to prepare him for the 'real' world through school and it was our goal to have him conquer his fear of school as well.

He said, those were our goals, not his. The social worker said, school should be the least of our concerns for him. We needed to focus on his well being and what mattered to him. We needed to show confidence in him.
The moment we changed ourselves and stopped trying to change our son, we started to move in a positive direction with him. I will share our experience in a new post called
"School just doesn't work for every child"