April 15, 2017, Normal (IL) Pantagraph: Baby Fold planning to expand Hammitt School http://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/baby-fold-planning-to-expand-hammitt-school/article_83d01345-e208-5912-8095-b528477bd07a.html Responding to a rise in Central Illinois children with cognitive and learning disorders, The Baby Fold wants to expand Hammitt School by spending nearly $3 million to reconfigure space at 612 Oglesby Ave. Hammitt School serves special education children with intensive needs that cannot be handled in traditional special education programs in public schools, said Aimee Beam, Baby Fold vice president of development and public relations. "There has been a real increase," including students on the autism spectrum, Beam said Friday. "We're bursting at the seams," she said. "But we don't want these kids to be on waiting lists." The Baby Fold wants to increase its number of Hammitt School classrooms from 21 to 26 and its number of students from 150 to between 180 and 190, she said. Students come to Hammitt School from a service area with a 60-mile radius.
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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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