Sept 29, 2018, Sanatoga (PA) Post: Pottsgrove Looks To Hire Unbudgeted Assistants http://sanatogapost.com/2018/09/29/pottsgrove-looks-to-hire-unbudgeted-assistants/ An unexpected surge in enrollment of Pottsgrove School District students with significantly high special education requirements – “some of them with great needs,” according to Superintendent Dr. William Shirk – may result in hiring an estimated seven unbudgeted full-time student assistants, the Board of School Directors heard Tuesday night (Sept. 25, 2018). Director of Pupil Services Kathryn Pacitto reported Pottsgrove had registered “close to 45” special education students since July 1. None of the money for the hires necessary to accommodate some of them is budgeted in the current academic year, Shirk acknowledged. … This year’s special education enrollment levels are “similar to trends we’ve seen in recent years,” Pacitto observed. The difference, she noted, is that the newest arrivals’ “needs are greater” and could not have been have anticipated. The district teaching staff is apparently sufficient for the additional learners. However, support staffers like student assistants must be either added or raised from part-time to full-time status, she said. …
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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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