June 29, 2018, Nevada (MO) Daily Mail: Bronaugh R-7 board wrestles with budget options https://www.nevadadailymail.com/ …Following the regular monthly meeting eleven days earlier, Superintendent Dr. David Copeland had said, “All public schools in Missouri have students with IEPs (individual education program) and most of the time they’re very well served by a special education teacher and maybe one or more para-professionals working with the student.” The superintendent then spoke about the High Need Fund and a problem he thinks the Missouri General Assembly needs to fix. The High Need Fund provides financial reimbursement to districts for special education students when costs exceed three times the cost of a typical special education student…. The superintendent said, “Well, according to an email the district received, the typical time it’ll take for us to receive the portion which the state will reimburse us is currently 12 and they warned us it would be likely 18 months from the time we submit our costs until the time we see the money,”… Explained Copeland, “Our budget looks great but when we have to wait 12 to 18 months to be reimbursed for over $200,000 in costs that means we don’t have a budget problem, we have a cash flow problem.”… At the mid-June board meeting the superintendent told the board about efforts to lobby the legislature about this problem.
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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.)
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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