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Board continues to privatize therapeutic public schools... CPS Sabotaging Montefiore Program for Special Children

Kristine Mayle - March 10, 2009

Although not officially on the list of schools to be closed next year, Montefiore Special School (1310 S. Ashland) is in danger of closing next year due to low enrollment. Based on the number of students projected to attend Montefiore next year, CPS and The Office of Specialized Services (OSS) has already drastically cut the number of teachers and paraprofessionals to be allotted for next year, effective June 30, 2009, despite Montefiore being a year-round school.

The Chicago Board of Education continued its decade-long sabotage of public schools that provide special education services this winter with its attempts to close Las Casas Occupational High School and Davis Developmental Center, and the cutbacks in staffing at the Moses Montefiore Therapeutic School (above). Montefiore, which has served boys with severe emotional and behavioral problems, has been facing staff cuts every year for the past several years, as CPS special education officials refuse to allow schools to place disruptive and disturbed students into Montefiore. The policy of the current Board of Education, which went into high gear during the time Arne Duncan was CEO of Chicago's public schools, has been to sabotage special education services, then privatize them as expensively and ruthlessly as possible. The recent appointment of Arne Duncan as U.S. Secretary of Education has many special education teachers and others worried that the Obama administration supports Duncan's "market based" (i.e., privatization) threats against public schools. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt. The cuts would reduce the number of teachers from 17 to seven and paraprofessionals from 15 to six.

According to CPS’s website (www.cps. edu/Schools /Pages/ Montefiore.aspx), “Montefiore Special School is a city-wide, year-round (12 months) special education therapeutic day school, serving male students with severe to profound Emotional Disorders (ED). Montefiore provides a technologically advanced environment which includes classrooms with laptops and personal computers, laser printers, and wireless Internet capabilities. The school has received numerous recognitions including induction into the Smithsonian Computerworld's National Museum of American History, a Beaumont Foundation Grant, and Microsoft's Digital Kids Take to the Hill Award.”

Dr. Mary Ann Pollett, principal of Montefiore explained that the number of referrals to Montefiore has dropped dramatically in recent years leading to the decline in enrollment. She says that at the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year, there were 80 students enrolled. They have only had eight students referred to them this year, a drastically lower number than they have seen in years past. As of this week, only 64 students remain at Montefiore, having lost 16 students to the juvenile detention center, hospitalization, and drug counseling programs. This loss of students to outside placements demonstrates how Montefiore’s population cannot be served within a typical school setting because the intensive needs of their students.

Las Casas Occupational High School (above) at 84th and Saginaw on Chicago's southeast side, utilizes a rented former Catholic School (St. Mary Magdeline) to provide therapeutic high school education. Las Casas serves the same types of special needs students at the high school level that Montefiore serves at the elementary level. Like Montefiore, Las Casas has been forbidden to enroll additional students by CPS Central Office. This is despite the fact that principals across Chicago testify to the need for these services in a set aside setting when students are identified who require these services. Critics of CPS suspect that the recent attempt to close Las Casas, along with the current cutbacks at Montefiore, are part of the same program to privatize as many special education services as possible, rather than provide these services in successful Chicago public schools with experienced and dedicated union staff. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.“There are hundreds of students in schools that are being denied FAPE [Fair and Appropriate Education, as described in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act] by OSS,” says Pollett. While student placements should, by law, be determined by the Individualized Education Program (IEP) team, CPS prevents individual school teams from placing students in therapeutic day schools without agreement from OSS. In order to get a student placed in a restrictive setting such as a therapeutic day school, CPS teachers must take extensive anecdotal notes, write and execute multiple Functional Analysis & Behavior Intervention Plans (FA/BIPs), and consult with CPS behavior specialists. Many special education teachers become frustrated by the process, which after months and sometimes years of work, rarely results in a more restrictive setting like Montefiore students who truly need it.

Pollett explains that “OSS has been obstructing rather than helping special education students. They use Corey H. as a mantra to destroy FAPE by denying students placement in their LRE [Least Restrictive Environment].”

Pollett contends that OSS is using the mandates from the Corey H. settlement to serve their own gains. She expressed frustration that the settlement is being used to place students in less restrictive settings that do not reflect the true needs of individual students. “All teachers and principals know that there are children that could benefit from a Montefiore setting,” Pollett stated, referring to students with severe behavioral and emotional problems that cannot be addressed in a typical public school. Pollett says that a recent, yet-be-published survey conducted by the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association (CPAA) will back up her claims. Pollett and others believe that OSS’s placement process is designed to save money. “It costs three to four times more money to send a student to Montefiore,” she says. But that extra cost is put to good use. Montefiore provides small class sizes, a full clinician team to address students’ emotional and behavioral needs, a well-rounded extracurricular program that includes both sports and academic activities. These services are necessary to serve Montefiore’s population. “36% of juvenile offenders have psychiatric disorders,” asks Pollett, “if 550 students are released each year from detention centers, why aren’t they sent to Montefiore?” Pollett says that “CPS is creating fodder for the prison system if they are not providing appropriate services.”

Teachers from Montefiore plan to attend the March 25 Board of Education meeting to bring this issue to the attention of Board President Michael Scott, who Pollett says was supportive of Montefiore in the past. 

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