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That's crazy expensive. I think that it's outrageous how much professionals charge to work with these kids. And how much do they really improve the situation anyway?
A good professional has 4-10 years schooling under their belt, understanding of various disabilities, a willingness to work with frustrating and sometimes violent children, and a smattering of all sorts of educational skills. One client I worked with went from knowing one or two words and basically being led around by the hand all day, to using signed language for basic sentences and being able to follow a basic daily routine independently within a year.
You pay for housing, OT, Speech services, Special Education, extra staff to make sure Jimmy doesn't bash his head open on a wall, a van so they can get out of the school for outings, and constant, constant maintenance on slammed doors, busted water faucets and broken chairs.
They aren't all saints, but saying they're paid too much and do no good is like saying a carpenter is overpaid because you can build a spice rack yourself. Sure, parents can try to do it, but they'll do it slower, more incorrectly, and with a lot more frustration than well-paid professionals. Go for cheap, and you'll get immigrant labor who don't speak English with your children, can't follow a behavior plan, and treat them like barely-tolerated pets. I've done over a decade in the field, and trust me when I tell you that you child's well-being is not where you want to skimp.
Woburn MA doesn't get tons of love on here, but it's a fine small city and I'm pretty sure their public special Ed is very good. They do integrated classrooms as well.
Don't know the exact figures, but quite a bit more, as each one will probably have a one-to-one aide ($20-30k/annually), an hour or more of speech therapy ($90 or more/week), a couple hours to an hour a day of OT/PT, may need special care from a nurse if they have extra meds or a g-tube or something weird like that, but many low-functioning children who would end up in a residential program would have health, communication, or behavior issues that would mean either a visiting aide/nurse, or extra services after school that the state would end up with the bill for anyway. Hard to say, each child has different services according to what the IEP team determines they need, after more expensive testing by psychologists and doctors.
OP is actually doing the right thing by going early-intervention, as getting services early will mean that their child will need less later on, saving their family and child irritation, and everyone money later on. But it's never easy or cheap to teach children with severe disabilities, either they're in a public school getting sub-standard care and draining resources from other students, going to a residential program, with high costs and it's own pitfalls, or being cared for at home, leading to poor care due to ignorance and extreme stress for family and child.
Something is very wrong that the only two choices are... if the family is "rich" enough, they could send their child to a place such as the NECC and pay between $90K to $200K for services or stick it to the public school system and their neighboring residents with the bill for attending to their special needs child.
I understand that many specialists would be involved with the care and development of a special needs child, but there should be better utilization of those resources since many children would be sharing the time of those professionals. Sort of like getting a group discount.
And in this day and age of so many people looking for work, more people should be trained to take care of these children. Give them tax incentives for going into this sort of career, and with lower tuition bills, be able to pay them less. Eventually, it should cost much less to treat these kids.
This is also why it doesn't make sense for any property owner to encourage parents with special needs children to move into their towns and cities... as it will only their future property tax bills.
Correct. Problems are: demand is getting higher every year as not only disabled students but refugee, ESL and other special needs kids flood into schools, and each child even with a similar diagnosis (often vague or arguably accurate), can have vastly different needs.
There are some programs to encourage new teachers, but they are not well publicized, and require two or more years working in "high need" schools, a very bad idea for newbies. People get into the deep end too quick and burn out. Also, as care shifts towards more parent involvement, it's harder to curtail services and becomes more difficult to deal with ignorance, communication issues, and power struggles between and with well-meaning, but incorrect parents.
Sadly, there are no easy answers, every year it seems more children are added to "special needs" categories, either legitimately or because normal childhood development is misunderstood by parents and teachers (ADD, looking at you), and internet, TV culture and the seeming disappearance of nuclear families with a stay at home parent makes it harder for schools to back off where they should, and focus on academics rather than social skills and behavior.
Ironically, integration and mainstreaming was maybe one of the worst things for special education and classrooms alike, I've worked with Deaf and blind folks before, who almost 100% said they'd rather residential schools so they didn't feel isolated, and children with Autism that had major struggles due to resentment from teachers on all sides, who felt they were wasting time in a mainstream class, fought about accommodations and forced kids to play nice, destroying any chance the autistic child had of learning social behavior.
Long story short, it's a lot like health care, or care for the mentally ill, in that it looks like there should be an easy fix, but each easy fix piles up more problems.
Chandra, we live in Nashua and my son has been on an IEP (he was diagnosed on the Autism spectrum as well) here since he was 4. He received excellent services at the Nashua PS - we started at Broad Street and he transitioned to a special program at New Searles School (he has graduated to first grade with recommendation to be mainstreamed). What was unique about the program (for Kinder) was that it was the only school with a full day schedule and all other schools in Nashua only offered the base 8:45 to 11:45 schedule. Full day is until 3:15. He received excellent support (speech therapy, occupational therapy, etc.) here in Nashua. A friend of mine in Dracut across the border had to sue for services and ended having his son sent by bus to Chelmsford by court order (and at the expense of Dracut).
Do your due due diligence, not all school districts in MA are created equal nor are the services offered better than those in NH necessarily. It varies by town - you will like get good services in Andover, Westford, Chelmsford if you are looking at the north, but smaller towns smaller budgets. I would enlist the help of an autism advocate if you are exploring MA and make sure they give you pros and cons of each district.
Chandra, we live in Nashua and my son has been on an IEP (he was diagnosed on the Autism spectrum as well) here since he was 4. He received excellent services at the Nashua PS - we started at Broad Street and he transitioned to a special program at New Searles School (he has graduated to first grade with recommendation to be mainstreamed). What was unique about the program (for Kinder) was that it was the only school with a full day schedule and all other schools in Nashua only offered the base 8:45 to 11:45 schedule. Full day is until 3:15. He received excellent support (speech therapy, occupational therapy, etc.) here in Nashua. A friend of mine in Dracut across the border had to sue for services and ended having his son sent by bus to Chelmsford by court order (and at the expense of Dracut).
Do your due due diligence, not all school districts in MA are created equal nor are the services offered better than those in NH necessarily. It varies by town - you will like get good services in Andover, Westford, Chelmsford if you are looking at the north, but smaller towns smaller budgets. I would enlist the help of an autism advocate if you are exploring MA and make sure they give you pros and cons of each district.
Thank you Merkavah - it was really helpful. I send you a personal message - if you could please see that. Thanks.
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