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Philadelphia Inquirer - Burlington County board votes to eliminate autism unit
NJ Spotlight - Draft Charter Bill Calls for Local Approval, More Reviewers…Bill sponsor -- Assemblyman Diegnan -- hopes to build consensus before Legislature tackles NJ's 18-year-old charter law
Philadelphia Inquirer - Burlington County board votes to eliminate autism unit
By Danielle Camilli Staff writer | Posted: Friday, April 26, 2013 9:30 am
MOUNT HOLLY — The parents spoke of students they were told would never speak and children who would never be able to socialize or be in classrooms with their peers.
But these parents, fighting to halt the elimination of the county Educational Services Unit’s autism and applied behavioral analysis services and programs, also told the county Special Services School District Board of Education on Thursday night of children who now thrive in those same classrooms they once couldn’t tolerate to sit in. They spoke of academic and personal success that allows their autistic children to speak in public, have friends and be educated in their own way.
“We wouldn’t have seen the progress without the ESU,” Christine Ferguson of Mount Holly said about her second-grade daughter. “If you take it away, my daughter will bear that burden. You cannot take her future away from her.”
Despite the overflow crowd of more than 100 and the stories of the ESU successes, the BOE voted to abolish the unit’s autism programs and services after hearing from the public and discussing the matter in a 30-minute executive session. The measure will lead to nearly 80 autism team members, including consultants, team facilitators, trainers, assistants and aides to lose their jobs. The staff only received word late last week that their jobs and the highly regarded program used by 17 local school districts to support their in-district autism students was on the chopping block.
Board President Robert Silcox told the crowd at Thursday night’s meeting that the decision was not taken lightly and due to the board’s concerns with the elimination of the program and the local districts’ ability to meet students’ ongoing needs that the unit would continue through the summer. Originally, Superintendent Donald Lucas had recommended it be discontinued as of June 30, but parents and staff argued that was not enough time for the local districts to find new private sector providers of autism services or develop their own in-district programs.
The autism/ABA unit works directly with about 150 special-needs students in the county. These are students who are educated in their local school districts but receive support services and programs from the ESU.
The local districts pay year-to-year contracts for the services of the unit, but Lucas said this week that over the past three years those districts increasingly are opting to use private companies or their own in-district staff to meet the needs because the options are less expensive than contracting with the county.
He said the ESU autism unit ran at a $500,000 deficit this year and had to be subsidized by other ESU programs, which are all fee-for-service and billed to the individual districts. The ESU, with a $17 million budget, is not taxpayer supported and not part of the Special Services District budget, which does receive a contribution from the county.
“The cost we would pass on to (the local school districts) would exceed what they are capable and willing to pay,” Lucas said Thursday.
While other programs are available and can deliver services to the autistic student population, parents argued Thursday that it was not the same as having a coordinated team that, depending on a child’s needs, can be with them at school, provide counseling and services in the home or make changes to immediately address problems.
Regina Pettola’s 8-year-old son, Matthew, has five ESU autism/ABA unit members who he works with weekly.
“That’s a lot of services to disappear,” she told the board. “The ESU ABA/autism staff is filling in the gaps where families and teachers cannot. … (They) have the education, experience and dedication to make my son successful and one day I hope that he will be independent.”
The parents said a change in provider of services could be detrimental to their children, who thrive on consistency. They also said some private companies do not offer the quality of services that the county does and that some school districts do not have the personnel trained to deal with their children’s special and diverse needs.
Lucas, however, pointed out that the unit has had turnover of more than 50 staff members over the past three years.
He said the extension until September will allow the ESU director time to develop a comprehensive transition and work with the local districts from June 30 to Sept. 1 “to give them some direction and give them time to adjust.”
After the decision, parents and staff were disappointed, but a group of staff members, all wearing ribbons with the familiar puzzle piece logo that has come to symbolize autism, vowed to continue fighting.
“It’s not over. It’s not over,” one staff member said as she hugged her colleagues. The employees have requested financial and other documents since receiving layoff notices last week.
Parents said the decision was made too quickly and without enough information. Some parents, and one special education employee from Mount Holly, said the schools are “scrambling” to determine how to meet students’ needs without the county autism/ABA services.
The students, by law, must receive all services outlined in the individual education plans.
The county ESU was created in 1997 as a way for county school districts to meet the diverse and specialized needs of its special education students by sharing programs and services through a centralized effort. The autism program is one of about a dozen available through the ESU and the only one that was eliminated Thursday.
NJ Spotlight - At Cyberbullying Conference, Experts and Educators Try to Define Line Between Texting and Trouble…Is it just a snarky Facebook comment, or one sign of a problem that ultimately makes it impossible to learn in school?
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By John Mooney, April 25, 2013 in Education |Post a Comment
One of the most vexing legal questions raised by New Jersey’s two-year-old anti-bullying law remains how to address incidents that occur online and off school grounds -- including nights and weekends.
Cyberbullying was the focus of a daylong conference yesterday at Rutgers University in Newark, where lawyers, scholars, educators, and others discussed the difficulties of drawing a legal line that determines if schools -- or parents -- are culpable.
Enacted in 2011, the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights states that schools must investigate incidents of online bullying if they disrupt or disturb the educational environment .
In the first year of the law, more than 12,000 reported cases of bullying were investigated -- a 50 percent increase from the year before -- with more than 1,000 taking place via smartphone, computer, or other electronic device.
But it isn’t always easy to make a direct connection between a Facebook posting or an insulting text and what happens in schools, according to state Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa, who said the state continues to grapple with how to define cyberbullying
Some cases are easier than others, Chiesa. Exhibit A in New Jersey remains Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers students who was unknowingly recorded in an intimate encounter and saw the video distributed over the Internet. Clementi later killed himself.
“When you go to the realm of gossip, though, then I am lost,” Chiesa said during the keynote speech held at Rutgers Law School and hosted by the Rutgers Computer and Technology Law Journal.
“Where do you go from a speech issue to where you crossed the line?” Chiesa said. “Where is the line to where government has a role when certain kinds of behaviors should be penalized?”
The idea of there being a defined line was repeatedly mentioned by Chiesa, and others.
“You want policies that will protect children, but also will survive the [legal] scrutiny that it will inevitably be exposed to,” he said. “Wherever you place a line, someone is going to say it’s in the wrong spot.”
These were words that stuck with the primary sponsor of the anti-bullying law who was sitting in the audience, saying afterward that the law has proven a valuable tool but there may be ways to strengthen it.
“If the attorney general has questions, obviously it’s a difficult challenge,” said state Assemblywoman Valerie Huttle (D-Bergen).
Another member of the audience asked about parent’s culpability. Chiesa said parents bear a great deal of the burden by setting their own rules and standards, and typically by providing the electronic devices. And that could prove to be a legal burden.
“Lawyers can be creative, and working their way to the parents wouldn’t be too hard,” he said.
Still, the legal precedents are thus far limited, and schools are sometimes left to determine those lines on their own. One legal expert said yesterday that New Jersey does better than most at addressing cyberbullying among schoolchildren.
“I think New Jersey is on the right track,” said Elizabeth Jaffe, an associate professor at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School who has studied New Jersey’s anti-bullying law. “Nobody can jump in and get it right perfectly. It will take time to see how it plays out.”
Jaffe, also a panelist at the event, said afterward that questions arise as to whether the law is too vague and gives districts too much leeway in deciding what is cyberbullying.
“Is it too vague, is just saying ‘I don’t like your clothes’ amount to bullying,” she said. “You need to ask how pervasive it is, what is the extent of it.”
A state task force charged with monitoring the law and its implementation continues to grapple with the topic as well, with the one member who works in a school district saying he sees the ramifications on a regular basis.
Joseph Ricca, superintendent of East Hanover School District, said in a separate interview last night that he has had a parent hand him a stack of printouts from a Facebook account that shows her child’s interactions online.
Or he himself has listened to the sometimes troubling dialogue in online gaming. “The things that are being said are just chilling,” he said.
“The law hasn’t changed that as much, as all of this happened before, but it has helped in clarifying the case of something said online that maybe happened the night before. If that spills over into school the next day, there could be consequences,” Ricca said.
But he said the law will have fallen short if it is just about meting out penalties on students without educating them -- and their parents.
“When you talk about any law and in this case the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights, it has to be about partnerships between the schools, the children, and the parents in order to limit this kind of things from happening in the first place,” Ricca said.
