Aug 14, 2017, Hazleton (PA) Standard-Speaker: Special education: Another reason school district budgets are strained http://standardspeaker.com/news/special-education-another-reason-school-district-budgets-are-strained-1.2229753
Very few students with special needs live at a private school like Woods Services of Langhorne, Bucks County, which sued the Hazleton Area School District over a student’s bill.
While approximately 15 percent of students require special education services, perhaps 1 percent of them attend private schools like Woods Services.
In the Hazleton Area case, Woods Services sought $226,450 for educating and housing a student during the summers of 2014 and 2015. The parties settled for $165,000, according to an agreement which the Hazleton Area School Board approved on June 29.
The costs for students with the highest needs can disrupt a school district’s budget but are hard to anticipate, as illustrated in the Woods Services case. The student’s mother moved into Hazleton Area from the Parkland School District in Lehigh County in February 2014. Before that, she had lived in six other school districts in New York and Pennsylvania while her child lived at Woods Services. …
Students who behave aggressively, however, might not fit in regular classrooms.
“It’s not safe for the kid, the other kids and the staff,” he said. …
Ten students, for example, attended the New Story School in Berwick, a day program that provides support for autism and behavior, the Hazleton Area’s “Special Education Plan Report” for 2015 to 2018 said.
Likewise, Berwick Area Superintendent Wayne Brookhart said his district spent more than $300,000 a year to send five of its students to New Story for a year.
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
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What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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