Special Education

When Lavelle Patterson and Kenneth Blake joined a picket line set up by members and supporters of Chester's Concerned Citizens for Educational Renewal last week, each said he had a personal reason for protesting the treatment of special-education students in the Chester-Upland School District. "I was in special-education classes from third to 11th grade, and I shouldn't have been there. I am concerned that there are other students in special ed that don't belong there," said Patterson, who added that after getting out of special-education classes, he ended up graduating in June from Chester High School with honor-roll grades.

All last year, parents of special-education students attended Gloucester City Board of Education meetings and complained that their children were not making progress in reading and writing and that the school district was failing to meet their needs. Their persistent complaints have brought state monitoring and a 10-point corrective-action plan to the special-education programs run by the Gloucester City schools. The district had, until now, consolidated its special-education classes at a single school.

After a yearlong study, a committee has recommended that the Wallingford- Swarthmore school board increase staffing for the district's special- education classes. The Community Curriculum Committee for Special Education, which was appointed by the school board, made its report at a board planning session Tuesday night. The committee, composed of teachers, parents and residents, studied throughout 1986 how special education is carried out in the district. Members observed special-education classes, met with special-education teachers, and conducted a survey of teachers, parents and students in grades 5-12.

When it comes to providing special education to their students, three Chester County school districts have said they can do it cheaper and more efficiently on their own. And so, last night, the countywide Intermediate Unit - the public agency that has been providing special education for years - cut its operating staff by more than 10 percent, furloughing 34 employees. The IU teachers, speech therapists and instructional aides being furloughed work in the Avon Grove, Kennett and Unionville/Chadds Ford School Districts - the three districts that have chosen to run most of their programs themselves.

The Kennett Consolidated School District has joined other Pennsylvania school districts and educational organizations in a lawsuit filed in Commonwealth Court seeking to force the state to pay its share of special- education costs this school year. By law, the state is required to pay a portion of expenses for special- education programs. "When you're trying to encourage someone to play by the rules, you have to let them know when you're concerned, you have to get their attention," said Superintendent Larry Bosley.

A week after a community committee recommended increased staffing for special education in the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District, a parent has assailed the program as a failure. "Our school district program fails the test for a number of reasons," Joseph Rizzello told school board members at Monday's business meeting. Rizzello said teachers assigned to areas other than special education did not fully accept learning-disabled students and did not completely understand the type of education those students needed.

An expected $1 million gap in state funding for county special-education programs may force the Chester County Intermediate Unit to make significant cuts in teachers and classes serving more than 5,200 students, according to school officials. News of the funding shortfall has left parents, teachers and advocates of handicapped and disabled children worried over which programs and services may be eliminated or curtailed. Those issues will likely be decided on Tuesday, when the Intermediate Unit board meets at its new offices in the Oaklands Corporate Center at 8 p.m. The Intermediate Unit moved to the new offices in Exton off U.S. Route 30 last week.

Bucks County educators remained critical of the Casey administration's handling of special-education funds this week despite two events seen by some as the governor's attempt to calm the raging controversy. On Monday, Secretary of Education Thomas K. Gilhool resigned amid heavy criticism of the administration's plan to stop paying certain special- education expenses and Gilhool's support for mainstreaming special- education students into regular classrooms. And on Wednesday, Gov. Casey softened a proposal to cut about $40 million in special-education program payments to local districts next year by promising to support more special-education funding than originally proposed.

Lawyers for the state Department of Education began their defense Tuesday in a federal special-education lawsuit brought by the Chester Upland School District, saying that no law had been violated and that the district had done too little to solve its own problems. In testimony last week and Monday, Chester Upland's lawyers sought to show U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson that the district faces a large funding shortfall in providing legally required services for its 735 special-education students.

Chester Upland School District officials, in federal court Wednesday hoping to receive assurances that they will have enough money to educate 700 special-education students this fall, painted a grim picture of the district's finances. District officials told U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson that Chester Upland will end up the year owing charter schools, vendors, and special-education providers about $29 million that it cannot pay. The district, they said, will receive only $17 million to $18 million this school year from the state.

Last year, the Pennsylvania legislature closed many loopholes in the Rendell-era Taxpayer Relief Act, also known as Act 1, with lawmakers and Corbett administration officials proclaiming that, finally, residents would get more say on school-tax increases. But one year in, that has not happened. Act 1, passed in 2006, calls for voter referendums on proposed property-tax increases that exceed an annually set education inflation rate, called the "index. " For 2012-13 budgets, the index is 1.7 percent.

President Bill Clinton picked up a few books from the bargain and new fiction departments at the Barnes & Noble (102 Park) in Willow Grove Thursday evening before attending a rally for Democratic state Attorney Genereal candidate Kathleen Kane. The visit was a surprise to the store and its customers who certainly took notice of Clinton and his Secret Service detail. Clinton stopped to take a few photos with customers and chat a little bit before heading to Upper Moreland High School for the Kane rally.

The crisis facing the Chester Upland School District is what happens when politicians are more interested in getting their way than in solving a problem. The fault lies as much in Harrisburg as in Chester. Privatization. Charters. State control. Increased funding. Austerity. None of these glib solutions to the problems of urban schools has provided Chester Upland's 7,000 students with what is available in most Pennsylvania school districts - an education that prepares students for college or the job market.

As Delaware County's financially troubled Chester Upland School District struggles to stay afloat, officials there say they are paying millions more than they should on special-education students who attend charter schools. School districts pay charters to teach their children, using a complicated formula set by state law. About 45 percent of Chester Upland's students attend charters. Chester Upland's payments are based on the previous year's expense of educating students in its own schools, minus some costs charters do not incur.

Getting laid off was devastating for Joshua Levin and David Orlansky, two young Philadelphia School District teachers with big dreams of making a difference in urban education. But it was fortuitous, in a way: It gave them a lot of free time to polish their musical. Awesome Alliteration: The Magical Musical , the freshman effort of the friends who grew up in Abington and now live in Manayunk, debuts Thursday night at the Adrienne Theater on Sansom Street. It's the tale of an English teacher who runs up against the bureaucrat who banned all literary devices in a small town.

The school board and some parents in Delaware County's Chester Upland School District filed suit in federal court today against the state, the education department and legislative leaders, asking that the district be adequately funded through the end of the school year, at a cost of about $20.7 million. The money should come from state allocations normally due the district which are now being diverted to pay charter schools, the lawsuit said, and from state education department reserve funds.

The family of an autistic teenager and the Moorestown School District are on opposing sides of a long and costly court battle that experts say could have an impact on children's access to special education in states beyond New Jersey. In a strongly worded opinion this year, U.S. District Judge Renee Bumb held that Moorestown was wrong when it refused to provide an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for the boy on the ground that he was not enrolled in a district school. The district appealed Bumb's decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia.