http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/educa ... utism.html Librado Romero/The New York Times
LEADING THE WAY
Parents involved with Westbury Preparatory School, a residential school for special-needs students, include Diana Tasco Meyer, above, Pat Schissel and Faith Kappenberg.
“There’s always this thing inside you that you want to be home,” said Tom, who attended five day schools here on Long Island and tried home schooling before his local school district sent him to the Connecticut school, Devereux Glenholme. “I mean, I got used to living there, but every day I think about what’s going on at home. It’s really difficult.”
Next year, Tom is hoping to attend Westbrook Preparatory School, a $2.5 million institution that will be New York State’s first residential school for students with high-functioning autism and that was founded after intense lobbying by parents, including Tom’s mother, Maureen Holohan, 48, who is on the school’s governing board. The new school, to serve 24 middle and high school students with average or above-average intelligence but in need of significant emotional and social support, is part of a statewide push to bring special education students back from out-of-state private schools by creating publicly financed alternatives closer to home.
Since 2005, out-of-state placements by school districts and social service agencies have dropped to fewer than 650 from more than 1,200, even as the number of special education students has risen slightly to 410,000, or 12 percent of the total student population. Besides Westbrook Prep, a half dozen New York City schools for the disabled are planning to add residential programs in the next few years.
“New York is a great state. Why should our children have to be sent out of state for services?” said Lester Kaufman, executive vice president of Birch Family Services, a nonprofit agency that runs a network of schools for students with special needs, which is starting a residential program for 12 high school students in Flushing, Queens, next year. “We should be able to create those services locally where the families and children live, and this is exactly what this program is about.”
As part of the government’s responsibility to provide an appropriate education for all children, school districts routinely send those with severe disabilities to private schools at costs of up to $200,000 a year per student. A New York State law requires school districts to exhaust all in-state options before considering an out-of-state placement, which is usually reserved for children with severe emotional and behavioral problems or multiple developmental disabilities.
But there were precious few local options for those students, with the shortage of residential schools particularly acute in New York City and Long Island, where it was difficult to build because of limited space and high real estate costs, as well as local opposition in some cases.
By 2005, according to state lawmakers, the price tag for out-of-state placements had reached roughly $200 million a year.
“It’s been a problem for 40 years,” said Bob McMahon, executive director of SCO Family of Services, a nonprofit agency that will operate Westbrook. “It’s caused a lot of hardship for parents.”
When Diana Tasco Meyer, 42, who lives in Manhasset, sought a residential placement for her 15-year-old son, Nick, this year, the closest schools for high-functioning autism that would accept him were in North Carolina, Tennessee and Ohio. She settled for a school in Rockland County that takes students with many other kinds of disabilities. “It’s upsetting that there’s nothing really in New York that’s a fit for him,” she said.
But Nick misses his two brothers and says the two-hour drive to school is too far. “I’m not O.K. with it because I want to be home,” he said.
Debate over out-of-state placements reached a peak in 2005, when the Legislature passed Billy’s Law, named for Vito Albanese Jr., a Brooklyn resident known as Billy whose father said he was neglected while in residential programs in New Jersey and elsewhere. The law seeks to expand in-state special education programs, reduce out-of-state placements and give New York officials more oversight of treatment in those private schools.
“We were never happy with the number of students going out of state,” said Rebecca H. Cort, New York’s deputy commissioner overseeing special education. “It was always a concern, but Billy’s Law put a spotlight on it and gave real impetus for state agencies to work together to develop and expand in-state programs.”
While local schools will probably have similarly high tuition and room-and-board charges, Dr. Cort said that keeping students in state would give New York officials more control over their education and help keep the children integrated in their communities, boosting the chance that they might transfer to day programs. She also noted that having schools here would have some economic benefit, in terms of creating jobs.
To accommodate the returning students with disabilities, state officials have worked with existing residential schools to place them in about 250 beds that were once used for abused and neglected children referred by social service agencies. (Those numbers have been declining as students are increasingly placed in homes in their own communities.)
In addition, by 2011, state officials plan to create 250 beds for students with disabilities in more than a dozen residential schools, of which 142 would be in New York City and 58 on Long Island. The expansion is expected to cost tens of millions of dollars in state and local funds, but state
officials said they could not provide more exact figures because the plans were still being developed.
Westbrook Prep, the new school, will be housed in a former convent on the grounds of St. Brigid’s Parish here in Nassau County. The school was dreamed up by a group of Long Island mothers, including Tom’s, who met through autism support groups. Several of them had children in schools in Connecticut, and they spent much of their time driving there for visits or parent activities, often leaving their husbands and other children behind.
“You could never get together as a family on Sunday unless it was school vacation — it was really hard,” said May-Lynn Andresen, 47, a nurse and administrative director for a hospital autism center, whose 16-year-old son, Alex, has attended two boarding schools in Connecticut in the past three years.
Ms. Holohan spends $80 a week on gas alone to bring Tom home every weekend. She also had to trade up to a Jeep Commander because Tom — who at 6-foot-2 is known to his family as “the gentle giant” — kept bumping his head against the car roof on the long drives back and forth.
The mothers, who serve on the school’s governing committee, raised $25,000 at a cocktail party in December to supplement the school budget, and spoke at community events to sell the idea of the school. They have also explored partnerships with local colleges and universities, including Adelphi and Hofstra, and the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System to develop a model for teaching high-functioning autistic children.
Westbury’s mayor, Ernest J. Strada, said that a few residents have opposed the school. “It is new, and they don’t know what to expect,” he said. “They are concerned it will have an impact on their property values.”
But Mr. Strada considers it a welcome addition to a community that already includes a group home for the mentally retarded. “We have a history of being good neighbors,” he said.
