Vermont doesn’t have nearly enough capacity to provide educational services in a public school setting to children with higher support needs.
That’s according to a recent piece from VTDigger, which recounts the story of the Ziporyn family from South Burlington, whose 8-year-old son has autism.
Ethan Weinstein is the education and corrections reporter with VTDigger. Vermont Public's Mary Williams Engisch spoke to Weinstein about his reporting. This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Mary Williams Engisch: First, can you describe the situation with the Ziporyn family? What difficulties did Noah have in conventional school settings, first of all, and then also in trying to get support services through South Burlington schools?
Ethan Weinstein: The Ziporyn family has a son named Noah. Initially, he went to public school for kindergarten. He went into kindergarten with a autism diagnosis. His specific diagnosis is pathological demand avoidance. One increasingly frequent symptom that Noah experienced was school refusal. It would cause him a lot of anxiety to attend school, and he might attempt to flee from the classroom or from recess. And that that posed a safety risk, obviously, if he were to leave the school.
Pretty quickly in Noah's kindergarten year, his experience with public school started to deteriorate. So by the time you got to the winter of that year, Noah's family and the district, South Burlington, decided that Noah should take a break from school.
He did, for a while, have an interventionist who met with him at home for maybe an hour or two, but that didn't last very long. And for the most part, Noah sat at home. He's been out of the classroom for more than two years, at this point. He's 8 now.
Mary Williams Engisch: School districts recommend enrolling children with Noah's support needs in something known as a therapeutic school. Can you first describe what a therapeutic school is, and then break down for us what kind of supply and demand there is for these types of schools in Vermont?
Ethan Weinstein: So, a therapeutic school tends to be a private school that specializes in providing an education and associated needs for children who might have needs that public schools can't properly provide for. Those could be something like hearing or vision loss, or in Noah's case, it could be autism. But I do want to specify that just because of Noah's diagnosis, it doesn't necessarily mean that he couldn't thrive in a public school setting. He would need more support than perhaps the average student, but with one-on-one support there is some reason to believe that he could thrive and grow into being in public school.
But advocates and families alike will tell you that Vermont doesn't have enough therapeutic schools.
They are quite expensive; tuition can be $50,000 or even $100,000. But the district will pay in most cases. But you often have to join a waiting list. And that waiting list might take years. And even when you get to the front of the line, the therapeutic school in question might decide that your child isn't a perfect fit for them. And they don't really have to explain that decision.
Mary Williams Engisch: And even despite that shortage, I understand there's a moratorium on opening new therapeutic schools with public money. Where did that law come from? And how is it impacting the push to get kids like Noah more of these types of resources?
Ethan Weinstein: A few years ago, in the wake of a Supreme Court decision, Carson v. Makin, the floodgates of public money opened up to private schools, and specifically to the concern of lawmakers: private religious schools.
Religious schools in Vermont had been receiving public money through Vermont's school voucher program for some time. But my reporting has shown that that money really ramped up after Carson v. Makin. And so one way that lawmakers decided to address what they would call a problem was to ban the creation of new private schools that would be eligible to receive public money.
And when that idea was first proposed in the House Education Committee a few years ago, they made an exception for therapeutic schools like the ones we've been talking about, but that piece of legislation didn't wind up passing. And instead, a few paragraphs were written into the state budget that created this moratorium across the board for all private schools.
Schools could create them or they they can be created and just not receive public funds. But when you're talking about programs with tuitions in excess of $50,000, that's just not affordable for almost any family.
Mary Williams Engisch: And going back to the Ziporyn family, you reported that they filed a due process complaint in March. That's essentially going the legal route and alleging the South Burlington School District hasn't provided a free and appropriate education. What did that yield?
Ethan Weinstein: That's right. So, the Ziporyn family filed what's called a due process complaint. That's sort of the highest state level complaint you can file around education.
The Ziporyns had to navigate a complicated legal process, one that is certainly not built for parents who are not themselves attorneys. But what escalating their complaint to that level allowed them was something like a bargaining chip. Through their due process complaint, they entered a voluntary mediation with the district. And with this looming judicial process hanging over those discussions, they were able to hash out an agreement that gave both sides some of what they were looking for, and ultimately resulted in a signed legal document that provided for Noah to receive more services than he had been receiving previously.
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