X365097: First of all, why don’t you talk about the West School and the kids who go there and how it’s sort of a special program, a little bit different from the rest of the school system?
X373207: The West School is a day treatment program for students who have behavioral and emotional diagnoses, technically, so they are under special education; they have IEPs [Individualized Education Plan] and treatment goals. So basically, they aren’t able to be in mainstream school and then the next step for more individualized teaching would be a resource room in their mainstream school, and if that’s still not restrictive enough for them, then they have to go to West School, where everything’s really small: small class sizes, lots of support. There’s a teacher and two ed techs in every room, and the maximum amount of students is eight. So it’s very different from mainstream school, and they each get individualized attention based on their IEPs, and the staff is specially trained. If the students still need even more intensive support, then they are placed out-of district, so they would go to Spurwink or Sweetser [social welfare agency] programs. But what’s happening is that the school has to pay for that, and the school is lacking funding, so the kids that really should be placed out of district are not going there. They’re staying at West School, so the student population and their needs have really intensified, and our school can’t really support that at all.
