Specialized Special Education Schools

Specialized special education schools provide comprehensive special education services for students with disabilities. Many are created around students within certain disability groups, for example, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), or with special learning, behavioral, or emotional needs. For students on the autism spectrum, a specialized school may provide a more structured environment and may offer the opportunity to work on academic, behavioral, and social goals throughout the day in a coordinated and integrated way that might not be possible in a typical school. Specialized schools are generally much smaller than public schools, may have a higher ratio of teachers to students, and teachers and staff, as a whole, may have more experience with students with disabilities than their counterparts in public school. Additionally, some students, particularly those who experience self-esteem issues, may benefit from attending a school where all students have unique needs.

Specialized schools are expensive to run, however, and it may cost your school district a lot of money for your child to attend. Cost should not be a factor in determining educational placement, but parents should be aware that this may be a concern of other members of the Individualized Education Program (IEP) team. Also, because specialized schools are expensive, there are fewer of them. This may mean that your child will have to travel a great distance to attend one, which could mean a long bus ride twice a day. Some specialized schools are residential, which reduces travel time for the student, but means that the family is split apart while the student with disabilities is in school.

Some specialized special education schools are known as Approved Private Schools (APS). An APS is a private school that is licensed by the state and which has been given special status by the state to educate children, who, by the nature of their disabilities, cannot be appropriately served in public school special education programs. School districts receive state money to help pay for APS placements. Nonetheless, if there is a specialized special education school in your area which is not an APS, you may still be able to have your child placed there if the placement is deemed appropriate by your IEP team.

Students placed by the IEP team in a specialized school are entitled to all of the same procedural safeguards that would apply if they attended a public school, including but not limited to the timelines for reevaluation and revising the IEP, mandatory IEP team membership, and discipline rules. Parents may also pay for a specialized special education school on their own, but, if they do so, the procedural safeguards normally do not apply.

Recommended Link:

• CAR Resource Directory (Search for Education)