Wellness plan would help keep special ed in house

EAST ROCKHILL >> In the 20182019 school year, 891 of Pennridge School District’s special education students had their classes in Pennridge schools, while the district contracted with other providers for the rest.

In 2019-2020, it was 945. This year, it’s 970.

“We want to keep our students in Pennridge School District,” Director of Pupil Services Cheri Derr said at the Pennridge School Board’s March 8 Finance Committee meeting.

In order to help do that, four programs involving special education students were added this year and another four programs

“We do have an awful lot of really talented, caring professionals already in the building that are able to support their students and so for us to find a way to maximize the students’ ability to access that and get what they need both academically and from a mental health standpoint is the goal.” — Pennridge Schools Superintendent David Bolton

are being proposed for next year, she said. While the district would have new costs for the proposed new programs, there would also be less costs for the contracted out services, resulting in an overall decrease in the district’s costs for those programs, she said.

Planning is also beginning for the creation of what’s being called the Pennridge Academy for Student Wellness and could start for the 20222023 school year, she said.

The majority of the students in the program would be ones who are now attending alternative schools or are hospitalized, Superintendent David Bolton said in a followup telephone interview. There would also be some students currently attending classes within the district who would be able to get additional help from the program, he said.

“As of right now, we have 29 students that we thought would be perfect for this wellness academy,” Bolton said at the meeting. “Besides the savings that would mean to have them here, the ability for those students to interact here with our classes and their peers as well as get the services that they need here in their high school is the goal for this.”

“The district continues to do what we can to educate the whole child,” Bolton said in the telephone interview.

That includes meeting the academic, social-emotional and mental health needs, he said.

“We do believe that having students in their home school surrounded by their friends, their supports, their teachers, is best for them,” Bolton said, “and so the hope is by creating the Pennridge Academy for Student Wellness that more of our students can be fully successful here within the walls of Pennridge High School.”

The services provided to students in the program would be very individualized, he said at the meeting. The district will be looking into different models for how the services will be provided, he said in the phone interview.

“We think that we could pretty easily service 30 to 50 kids within this academy without a whole lot of additional staffing,” he said at the meeting.

“We do have an awful lot of really talented, caring professionals already in the building that are able to support their students and so for us to find a way to maximize the students’ ability to access that and get what they need both academically and from a mental health standpoint is the goal,” he said in the phone interview.

While the number of special education students in the district is increasing, total enrollment decreased by 3 percent this year, Bolton said.

“With that enrollment drop-off, it gives us the opportunity to be able to do a lot of these things that we might not have been able to do before if we didn’t have the space,” Finance Committee Chair Megan Banis-Clemens said.