Hometown schooling cuts special-ed costs

Some Lexington students with disabilities used to ride in vans for as much as two hours every day to attend specialized schools in distant communities. This year, the 47 middle school and high school students go to classes in their hometown.

The result: The students have more time for learning, friends, family, play, and sleep. But perhaps as impressive - at least from the number-crunchers' point of view - the move has helped lop almost $1 million off the municipal budget.

"There is a strong financial benefit to create in-house capacity," Lexington Superintendent of Schools Paul Ash said.

So far, the changes in Lexington have won approval from the local Special Education Parent Advisory Council, the key organization looking out for the rights of parents of children with special needs.

"We really do want as many kids as possible to be educated in their home schools," said Dale Hernquist, council cochair. "It's best for the kids, it's best for the other kids around them, it's best for the community. I think the new special-education programs are the way to go."

Lexington is among many school districts grappling with ways to save on the skyrocketing costs of special education while still delivering quality services to students. The biggest savings have come from bringing special-education services in-house. Collaborating with neighboring communities on required van service to specialized schools has also tamed the bottom line.

Like Lexington, Andover is hiring new staff and starting new special-education classes.

"The biggest thing we are looking at is really developing our own in-house expertise and ability to meet the needs of a wider range of kids," said Katherine Fink, Andover's pupil personnel administrator.

Christine McGrath, superintendent of schools in Tewksbury, said her district partners with Billerica to help defray costs of transportation for 52 of its students with special needs. Jack Quinn, school business manager, said the two towns use 14 buses jointly, saving about $250,000 annually.

Superintendents and special-education directors insist they do not intend to lower the quality of services for the disabled while keeping their eye on the bottom line. "Our primary goal is to meet the needs of the kids," said Linda Stapp, director of pupil services in Winchester, where an in-house high school program began this year. "If we can do it in a cost-effective way, everybody wins."

The push comes as special education claims an increasingly larger chunk of school budgets across the state.

The high costs come partly from the sheer volume of students diagnosed with some kind of cognitive, emotional, or physical problem, or multiple disabilities that hamper learning. Lexington, for example, serves some 1,200 students with special needs, out of a total school population of about 6,200. State and federal laws require the local public school district to foot the bills to address those needs.

The additional cost of educating some special-needs students is negligible. But for others, specialized schools can charge as much $50,000 per child per year in tuition, not including transportation.

And the costs are rising.

Ash has been particularly outspoken among superintendents about the consequences of the escalation. With the price tag for all municipal costs rising, and with cutbacks of state aid, he says the amount of money for public schools is dwindling. At the same time, since special-education expenditures are mandated while those for regular education are not, the budget for regular education gets squeezed.

"It means that unless there is a Proposition 2 1/2 override, general-education services will annually be cut," Ash said, referring to the vote - often difficult to secure from cost-conscious residents - to hike local property taxes by more than 2.5 percent above the tax levy limit.

As a result, Ash said, communities are "seeing increased class sizes, reductions in services, and increased fees" in regular education.

In fiscal year 2006, for example, the latest year for which numbers are available, Lexington devoted 21.4 percent of its $72.1 million total school budget to special education. That's an increase from 18.9 percent in fiscal 2004, when the school budget was $63.1 million, according to the state Department of Education.

As they reexamine special education, some local officials are searching for ways to insulate regular education. In Burlington, for example, officials have included special-education out-of-district costs as a separate item on the municipal budget. While not necessarily saving money, the strategy protects regular education from unexpected upward bumps in special-education costs. Last month, Lexington school officials met with those in Burlington to discuss the measure, and subsequently voted unanimously to do the same.

Within the next week or so, Lexington School Committee members will be discussing the idea with selectmen, who must also agree to it, said Thomas Diaz, the committee chairman.

"I think it's a good idea because it makes those particular expenses more visible and provides more details to the town on why they're rising or falling so rapidly," he said.

Ash said he supports special education and does not want to "blame" it for the dilemma in regular education. But he said he also believes costs for special education can be slashed.

Ash began to grapple with the problem as soon as he took the Lexington job two years ago. Last year, he developed five programs - some new, some expanded - so more students could remain within the system.

One program provides schooling at the Clarke Middle School for eight sixth-graders who have been identified as having some type of autism or similar learning disorders. The students receive practice in social skills, instruction based on individual learning profiles, and counseling. A similar program at the high school includes 13 students.

Another program, also at Clarke, gives four sixth-graders and two seventh-graders with cognitive-intellectual impairments instruction in line with their abilities.

In addition, a high school program for students with language-based disabilities serves 17. The high school also expanded a multidisciplinary team of specialists available to accommodate 71 students' psychological, social, and emotional needs.

The five programs cost almost $800,000 but saved about $950,000.

But the programs will succeed only with collaboration with parents, Ash said.

As he explained it, parents of special-needs students have a right to services, including the ability to send their children out of district without consulting with or enrolling first in the local public school.

The principle was recently upheld by the US Supreme Court, which let stand a ruling allowing millionaire Tom Freston, former chief executive of Viacom, to send his son to a private school on the tab of the New York City public schools. While that ruling does not affect Massachusetts, the high court is likely to revisit the issue.

Still, for now, it's up to the district to persuade parents to opt into the local public school - what Ash describes as "a leap of faith that we're going to do the right thing for their children."

Ash was able to sell many families on the benefits of keeping their children in hometown schools: Saved from the van rides, their children could get extra time for academic instruction and nonschool activities, and interact with peers who are not disabled.

Parents familiar with the new programs say they have as yet untapped benefits. Sue Cusack, an educator and mother of two special-needs children who have graduated from Lexington High School, said the teaching strategies being used in the town's new programs can help students not diagnosed with disabilities. For example, techniques such as phonics used in special education can supplement any reading program.

Ash said that in the future he plans to intervene earlier with young children to avoid problems later in their school careers. He said he hopes to be able to provide a "continuum of care" from preschool to graduation.

"There's no doubt in my mind that if we invest more money in providing support for children before they get into special education, some children won't end up in special education," he said.

Lexington is also reducing costs this year in a pilot program with Arlington and Burlington to jointly transport some of the children whose needs cannot be met in the local public schools. Lexington is saving $5,600 by transporting 10 of the 90 students who go out of district and will probably broaden the program, said Linda Chase, student services director.

For more information on the relative expenditures on regular and special education for all the state's school districts, go to finance1.doe.mass.edu/SchFin/sped/sped_exp_budget.aspx?ID999.

Connie Paige can be reached at cpaige@globe.com.