Lynn Public Schools are spending somewhere between eleven and twelve MILLION dollars a year on out of district placements. I heard last night there is an effort to hold down that cost. It is a budget buster.
What I did not hear was what they actually meant by "hold". These out of district placements are federally mandated because of either services we don't provide or expertise we do not have. You cant "hold down" expenses by denying services. We have been down that road, time and again we have lost. Losing is not cheap.
We need to start talking about training we are going to take, programs we are going to develop, and positive steps we are going to take. You can't wish these problems away.
Amen Brother! An interesting correlation is that since the opening of the Fecteau- Leary and the Washington schools our out of district placements have increased. These programs were created to keep kids in Lynn (I think someone should tell them that they're not working).
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