Today's Asbury Park Press takes a look at how some New Jersey school districts, including those of Red Bank and Fair Haven, are responding to the high cost of sending children with special needs out-of-district.
The approach in Red Bank, according to Red Bank Superintendent Laura Morana, is to spend a little more to bring the students back into the local school system rather than spend a lot to hand them off to another district.
New Jersey schools send more students out-of-district than any other state, the Press' Larry Higgs reports. Now, in an effort to counter spiraling costs
Districts use programs including school-within-a-school, self-contained
classes and resource centers, where students are pulled out of regular
classes and sent there for special instruction. Some schools put
students in general education classes with teachers' aides to help them
get mainstreamed into regular classes, education officials said.
More from the article:
2006 for five children with behavioral disabilities and followed that
with a second in the 2007-08 school year, said Laura C. Morana, Red
Bank superintendent of schools. It continues to grow as space permits.
Special
ed students attend general education classes where appropriate and can
participate in extracurricular and after-school programs, Morana said,
something they couldn't do if placed out-of-district.
"They've
made significant progress to full mainstreaming in a general education
setting," Morana said. "It gives us great flexibility to partially
mainstream them for one or two classes."
Taxpayers see a benefit too.
Hiring
a teacher and an assistant for a class of five special ed students
costs about $100,000 with benefits, Morana said. To place the same five
children out of district, the average tuition is $45,000 to $50,000,
totaling $225,000, plus transportation, which could be another $60,000,
she said.
of paying $300,000 for the education of five students, we can
appropriately provide for them in a regular school setting for one
third of the cost," Morana said.
