PARIS – The SAD 17 board of directors Tuesday night approved taking $50,000 from the contingency fund to hire three special education educational technicians to meet escalating needs.
The unanimous vote will allow the district to hire educational technician IIs for Oxford Hills Middle School in Paris, Guy E. Rowe School in Norway and Paris Elementary School.
The spending will reduce the contingency fund to $266,000.
Finance Committee Chairman Barry Patrie of Waterford said there was approximately $422,000 in the contingency fund when the school year began, but charter school payments have cut another $100,000 from it.
A fourth educational technician II will be hired to work with a student coming back from an out-of-district placement to the Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School Applied Academics Program. In that case, the savings will outweigh the cost of hiring the new staff member, so no additional funds are needed.
The request for additional personnel came after a presentation by Director of Special Services Jane Morse, who said the district spends $4,600,000, 12.8 percent of its $35,945,340 annual budget, for 569 special needs students.
The district has 3,482 students in eight towns.
While the figures are significant, Morse stressed that if all of the students were placed in an out-of-district school, the cost would be prohibitive.
As an example, she said the current costs for staffing the Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School day treatment program for 18 students with one teacher, three ed techs and a quarter-time psychologist is $155,000.
Placement of those 18 students out of district would cost SAD 17 more than $1.17 million, not including transportation.
“We’ve always believed we want to keep our kids in our schools,” said Morse, who has been working in SAD 17 for the past 34 years.
Morse said the budget increase is due to more personnel, more kindergarten students identified with high needs, students who stay for a fifth and sixth year of high school, specialized programs requiring high staff-to-student ratios and out-of-district placements for generally for five to 10 students.
In other business, the board approved a gift of $15,000 that will be combined with a $19,000 Homeland Security Grant to upgrade the video security surveillance at the Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in Paris.
ldixon@sunjournal.com
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