Town Meeting day has come and gone but a clear message was sent to the towns this year: Manage your school budgets or they may not pass. Thirty-five school budgets were voted down this year and for many it was because of the increase in the unfunded federal mandate for special education services. Some towns saw school budgets increase by 21% with most of these increases directly attributed to special education.
There are many reasons for the growth in special education across the state, but one clear and undeniable trend is the increasing number of students who come to the classroom with serious social, emotional, behavioral, and developmental needs. As every classroom teacher knows, a child will have a difficult time learning in school if they are depressed, hyperactive, hypersensitive, socially isolated, and/or under extreme stress due to family divorce, drug use, family job loss, multiple relocations, or chronic family poverty. And all of these conditions are on the increase in rural Vermont.
The good news is that every school in Vermont has a partner in their community committed to working with them to help students with special needs. The 12 community mental health centers in Vermont, working with the Agency of Human Services and the Department of Education, established the Success Beyond Six program in 1992 to expand community mental health and behavioral support services into public schools. Over 54 of the 60 supervisory unions in the state have contracts with their local community mental health centers to provide mental health clinicians and behavioral interventionists in their schools. Most students receiving these services are also provided additional supports with their mental health center to ensure the child and family have comprehensive care including: psychiatry, case management, family therapy, in-home support, crisis services, substance abuse treatment, respite, after-school programs, and summer programs. Without the mental health clinician in the school, they may not have accessed these services. For FY 2013, over 3,610 children received mental health services in the schools through the Success Beyond Six program, with about 7% of those students being on the autism spectrum.
The Success Beyond Six collaboration between schools and community mental health has been shown to control the cost of special education by ensuring kids get the positive emotional and behavioral support they need to succeed in school by having a professional mental health worker available when they need help. Our staff can help reduce the number of students placed in alternative school settings due to behavior issues. They reduce the number of kids placed in residential or out-of-state programs and they help bring kids back from residential placements earlier. They provide early and easy access to essential and comprehensive mental health services that a child may not get if services were not offered in the school. We provide preventive and early intervention services and we work with school administrators and teachers to develop “Positive Behavioral Supports” programs. In short, we partner with schools to help students succeed in the classroom.
Health Care and Rehabilitation Services (HCRS) is the community mental health center which serves school districts in Windham and Windsor counties. This year we have 43 staff working in schools across the two counties, serving 515 children and youth in their school.
If you are a school board member, selectboard member, parent, or school administrator and are concerned about the increase in the cost of special education due to increasing emotional and behavioral issues in the classroom, call or email us. We will be glad to come and talk with you about how we can help children and youth in your community receive essential mental health and behavioral services. Our goal is to ensure that every child in Windham and Windsor County has the emotional and behavioral supports they need to grow up successfully in their hometown.
Will Shakespeare, Director of Children, Youth and Family Services at HCRS.