Making room for autism

Even after move to bigger facility, local school will have waiting list

Teacher Mackenzie Marcet works with Robert Le in a narrow space at a Nashoba Learning Group facility for autistic students in Westford. (Boston Globe Photo / Jon Chase)

By the end of next month, the students of the Nashoba Learning Group will not have to eat lunch in the gym anymore. The older students will be able to acquire job skills in four vocational classrooms. And the capacity at the school for autistic children will double to 70.

But even the opening of a 40,000-square-foot building in Bedford will barely make a dent in the Westford-based school's waiting list, which has almost 100 children. "The supply and demand is out of balance," said the group's founder and president, Liz Martineau. "There are definitely more kids who need the schools than there are schools."

Still, Nashoba is holding down enrollment so it can customize the programs, said Martineau, who founded the group partly because she could not find a spot in a private school for her autistic son. "We're able to look at each child and say, 'This is working; this isn't working,' and be able to modify that for each child."

Nationwide, the rate of children diagnosed with autism has risen sharply over the past decade, with Massachusetts having a slightly higher rate than the national average, according to data from the federal government.

About 7,500 Massachusetts schoolchildren have been diagnosed with the disorder, about 1,200 of them living in the Globe NorthWest coverage area, according to numbers provided by the state Department of Education.

There are at least six private schools of various sizes in the area that teach children with autism, and more than 20 across Massachusetts. These schools generally serve a subset of autistic children who are unable to make progress at special-education programs in local school districts.

For those children, private schools like Nashoba may be "their only shot," said Dr. David Ansel, a developmental behavioral pediatrician in North Andover. He has several patients who attend Nashoba. "If they're in a program that's not working for them . . . the net gain over several years will be zero or close to zero."

Nevertheless, "it's truly amazing what a sophisticated educational service can do for a child," said Rita Gardner, executive director of Melmark New England, a school for autistic children in Andover. "The problem is there's no magic Ouija board that is going to tell us which child is going to be successful."

Melmark, which expanded its program by about 30 percent in 2006, has a waiting list numbering in the hundreds.

Moving a child from a public to a private program can be difficult for a variety of reasons, including resistance from school districts, which pay for the care that often exceeds $50,000 a year, and the ever-present problem of finding a spot in a private school.

"There wasn't a single program we looked at that didn't have a waiting list," said Cynthia Reed, whose son attends Nashoba.

Founded only five years ago, Nashoba Learning Group's program quickly filled to capacity. It serves about 35 students in two buildings in Westford that will close after the school moves to the Bedford site during the February vacation week. Class sizes usually are four to six students.

Martineau said that while one of the Westford buildings, which is rented from a Methodist church, can be a "jumble," the school has customized the renovations on the building in Bedford to better suit its needs. The $6.8 million cost of purchasing, renovating, and equipping the former office building will provide smaller classrooms, which are more conducive to learning for autistic children. Unlike the present arrangement, the gym will not double as a lunchroom. In addition to the vocational classrooms, a room for physical therapy is being built.

Besides finding the right space, one of the biggest challenges facing private schools for autistic children is finding enough trained staffers. Gardner, the executive director at Melmark, said salaries for special-education teachers in private schools can be as much as $20,000 less than for their public school counterparts, especially when aspects like a 12-month school year are factored in. "The task is very demanding," but, she said, "for some people, it's not about the salary."

For Judith Ursitti, whose 4-year-old son was recently admitted to Nashoba, the eight months she spent on the school's waiting list were nerve-racking. When she was trying to decide to which school to send her son, other parents and specialists told her, "It was Nashoba hands down, absolutely the best," she said. "The second thing they said was that you'll absolutely never get in."

The time Ursitti's son spent on the waiting list was relatively short, compared with the experiences of some parents whose children are on waiting lists at schools filled to capacity. Children enter as early as kindergarten and may stay in these programs for years, until they are 22 and their local school district is no longer required to pay most of the tuition and transportation fees to send them to private school.

When Ursitti toured the school with her family, she said, "They told me they were considering eight kids for this one spot. It's like trying to do the Ivy League, autism-style."

But, Ursitti said, she was persistent because she was convinced Nashoba provided the best chance for her son, Jack, to succeed. "When I found out that there was a possibility that there was going to be a spot, I think that was the happiest day of my life, besides having my kids. I was literally shaking with excitement."

Jeanine Freimont, whose son attends Nashoba, said: "We won the lottery. He's there."

Alex I. Oster can be reached at aoster@globe.com.