WESTBROOK – With January coming to an end, municipal and school officials everywhere have already turned their attention to preparing their 2012-2013 budgets, and shrinking state and federal aid means tighter belts all around, especially in area school districts.
That financial climate makes the Sebago Education Alliance an even more welcome opportunity to cut costs and pool resources for five member districts: Westbrook, Gorham, Scarborough, School Administrative District 6 and Windham/Raymond. The alliance has saved its districts thousands of dollars a year, particularly in special education costs, which are typically a large piece of any school’s budget. Its value to the member school districts has only increased since it was founded in 2004.
“It’s been a huge savings to the district,” said Westbrook School Superintendent Marc Gousse.
According to Susan Card, program coordinator for the alliance, efforts have centered on special education, as well as professional development.
“It’s opportunities that the districts would (normally) have to pay more for,” she said.
One of the largest and most successful examples of this effort is the alliance’s Day Treatment Program. Housed at the former Frank Jewett School on Long Plains Road in Buxton, the program offers special education classes for students at all grade levels. The director, Jennifer Searway, said the program began five years ago, a brainchild of the alliance.
“We started with five students, and we’ve been steadily increasing,” she said.
The growth of the program is a testament to the quality of the education and the depth of services it offers students who need them, according to Alex Stone, a member of the Westbrook School Committee.
“This provides a lot of those different options,” he said. “Clearly, it’s doing well.”
One goal of the program, Card said, was to keep local students local. The program is located in about the geographical center of the alliance, making it much easier for special-needs kids to come to school.
And that matters. Before the program existed, Searway said, kids from the five alliance districts were traveling more than two hours round trip daily, to classes as far away as Gray/New Gloucester, Saco and Lewiston.
“It’s such a long bus ride for elementary school kids,” she said.
The kids need outside care, Card said, because the local districts don’t have the facilities to handle their needs. Linda Powell, director of special services at the Windham/Raymond school district, said students who need to attend classes in the program are dealing with emotional and behavioral issues.
While many students in the district can get help and support locally, Powell said, some are identified with having “the most extreme” needs by a local team of parents and educators who evaluate special-needs students in the district.
Those children, Powell said, need the psychological and behavioral assistance that is only available outside the district.
“It’s much more intensive in that arena than we can offer in the district,” she said.
Powell said the district sends anywhere from seven to 10 children to the alliance schools in any given year. It’s a lot easier, she said, than trying to pay higher tuitions, not to mention higher transportation costs, involved with sending kids to private special education programs.
“We’ve (now) got several kids going to one location,” she said.
High tuitions at private schools outside the member school districts created a financial burden – in some cases, as much as $100,000 per student per year.
Now, the alliance offers classes much closer to home, and for much less money. The average tuition, Searway said, is about $32,900, saving school districts anywhere from $25,000-$60,000 per student annually. When considering the program has about 36 students now, and expects 40 next year, it’s easy to see why it’s popular.
But it isn’t just about finding a place to shutter special needs students away. Searway said many of the students don’t just take lessons on the standard curriculum. They also learn how to improve their behavior or overcome other issues, she said, and many of them learn enough to return to traditional public schools, no longer needing off-site special education at all.
“Our motivation is to transition kids here to a less restrictive environment,” she said.
Powell said some of her district’s students spend the whole school day at the alliance program, but many spend only part of the day there, and many students attending the program in the past have been able to transition back full time to regular public schools.
The alliance school has six regular teachers, about 11 educational technicians, three social workers, and one full-time psychologist on staff. Linda Rao, one of the ed techs, has been at the school for four years. On Tuesday, she was helping teacher Nicole Poole work through a unit on ancient Rome.
In many ways, it looked like a traditional middle-school classroom, but with many hands-on activities, projects and small class sizes to make sure the students remain engaged with the subject. Rao said the challenge is balancing what the state curriculum requires the school to teach with what – and how – the students are capable of learning. That means sometimes finding creative ways, like the project assignments, to get the students involved.
“We target the way students learn best, and try to incorporate that into the curriculum,” she said.
Rao said many of the students have no cognitive problems, but are dealing with emotional or behavioral issues. Through time, in addition to their regular studies, she said, students develop skills that other students may take for granted, like being able to speak or read aloud in class, or even being able to sit quietly.
“For us, that’s a success,” she said.
Special education, while the most visible, is not the only area where alliance districts have been able to combine their efforts. Card noted other programs for professional development for teachers have also been successful.
For example, Bob Asselin, technology specialist at the Windham-Raymond School District, has been running a summertime series of technology classes since before the alliance was formed. Today, Card said, that program has been expanded to all alliance district personnel who want it, and this year will mark its fifth year as an alliance program.
“It’s had amazing attendance,” she said.
Every summer, for three days, faculty from alliance districts can come to learn how to use emerging technology, such as Internet-based software like Google Docs, in their day-to-day work. The cost? Just $35 per teacher.
“It’s incredibly inexpensive,” Card said.
Another similar collaborative program helps alliance math teachers. Four out of the alliance’s five districts use the same elementary math program. From time to time, Card said, there are new elementary-level math teachers in the district who need to get up to speed on what the elementary math program entails.
Rather than having multiple courses in each district for those teachers, the alliance holds “Everyday Math,” a program that provides instruction to all the teachers at once, in one place. Card said initiatives like these make for an environment that makes logical and financial sense.
Card said the alliance is not content to bask in its own success. Even now, she said, the alliance has hired an efficiency coordinator to examine insurance costs for the alliance districts, for personnel, buildings and other district assets.
Like previous efforts with special education and professional development, Card expects that the end result of the insurance examination will be new concepts that will help alliance districts cut down on other expenses, something that will make alliance districfts weather the current economic woes a little more easily.
Head teacher Nicole Poole works closely with a small group of
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