More schools, programs for students with autism opening in NY

From the intro to a story in the NY Times Oct. 12:

WESTBURY, N.Y. — Tom Holohan, a 16-year-old with autistic symptoms, grew up
paralyzed by fear and anxiety about leaving his family’s home. But for the last two years, Tom has had to commute to a Connecticut boarding school that specializes in treating his disability, returning on weekends to his home in Farmingdale, N.Y.

“There’s always this thing inside you that you want to be home,” said Tom, who attended five day schools here on Long Island and tried home schooling before his local school district sent him to the Connecticut school, Devereux Glenholme. “I mean, I got used to living there, but every day I think about what’s going on at home. It’s really difficult.”

Next year, Tom is hoping to attend Westbrook Preparatory School, a $2.5 million institution that will be New York State’s first residential school for students with high-functioning autism and that was founded after intense lobbying by parents, including Tom’s mother, Maureen Holohan, 48, who is on the school’s governing board. The new school, serving 24 middle and high school students with average or above-average intelligence but in need of significant emotional and social support, is part of a statewide push to bring special education students back from out-of-state
private schools by creating publicly financed alternatives closer to home.

Since 2005, out-of-state placements by school districts and social service agencies have dropped to fewer than 650 from more than 1,200, even as the number of special education students has risen slightly to 410,000, or 12 percent of the total student population. Besides Westbrook Prep, a half dozen New York City schools for the disabled are planning to add residential programs in the next few years.

“New York is a great state. Why should our children have to be sent out of state for services?” said Lester Kaufman, executive vice president of Birch Family Services, a nonprofit agency that runs a network of schools for students with special needs, which is starting a residential program for 12 high school students in Flushing, Queens, next year. “We should be able to create those services locally where the families and children live, and this is exactly what this program is about.”

As part of the government’s responsibility to provide an appropriate education for all children, school districts routinely send those with severe disabilities to private schools at costs of up to $200,000 a year per student. A New York State law requires school districts to exhaust all in-state options before considering an out-of-state placement, which is usually reserved for children with severe emotional and behavioral problems or multiple developmental disabilities.

But there were precious few local options for those students, with the shortage of residential schools particularly acute in New York City and Long Island, where it was difficult to build because of limited space and high real estate costs, as well as local opposition in some cases.

By 2005, according to state lawmakers, the price tag for out-of-state placements had reached roughly $200 million a year.