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nj.com

Special Services school hopes to open by spring

 
Monday, September 11, 2006
By MATT DUNN
Staff Writer

BRIDGETON -- Salem County Special Services School District Superintendent Dr. Robert Andrews hopes to have four or five classrooms operating at a Cumberland County extension of the Salem County Special Services School District by spring.

Cumberland County may donate up to $200,000 annually to help operate the special needs school at the former Fairfield Township Primary School on Ramah Road.

The total cost savings to sending school districts could be between $1 million and $1.5 million or more, according to Henry Bermann, special consultant to the Salem County Special Services School District.

"One million dollars to $1.5 million would be a conservative number as far as savings for Cumberland County," he said last week appearing before the Cumberland County Board of Chosen Freeholders.

Andrews, Bermann and others spoke to freeholders last week about their plans since moving into the recently-vacated Fairfield Township Primary School on Sept. 1, as well as the considerable benefit in bringing a special needs school here.

There were close to 500 special needs students in Cumberland County sent to private schools elsewhere in the state last year at an average cost of $40,000 and $45,000 a head.

Not only does the law require sending districts to pay for these students' tuition, it also requires them to pay for their transportation, which sometimes costs just as much.

"Private schools have open season on public schools," remarked Cumberland County Superintendent Dr. Daniel Mastrobuono.

When the Salem County Special Services School District is completely up and running in Cumberland County, over 100 students there will be able to attend the school as an alternative to being sent elsewhere in the state.

The students who get to attend the new school will be chosen based on need.

If the county has a particularly high number of children suffering from Autism Spectrum Disorder, for example, the school may have a class specially designed for those students.

The benefits of the new school will be more than just financial.

"It's a testament to children who have to take long, arduous bus drives every week," said Cumberland Freeholder Director Doug Rainear.

Mastrobuono said some students here have to travel as far as away as Medford Lakes to go to school.

"We see some children traveling up to two hours to get to school," said Cumberland Freeholder Mary Gruccio, principal of Max Leuchter School K-4 school in Vineland.

And that's too far, supporters of the new school agreed.

Especially for students with disabilities which would impair their ability to be confined to one place for long periods of time.


 
© 2006  Today's Sunbeam
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