Parents and schools struggle to find a place for more and more autistic kids.

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In a recent special-ed class for first-grade level children with ASD disorders held at Cypress Grove Charter High School, a girl diagnosed with autism spent the entire morning running back and forth, shaking her arms and moaning. She couldn’t enunciate any words, but was clearly distressed. A teacher’s assistant followed her and gently attempted to bring her back to the circle of students, but without success. The other students in the class seemed to lose interest in whatever they were doing every few minutes, and each one needed a teacher or assistant to help them refocus on the task at hand.

“The key to working with these kids is to realize that each one is totally different,” says Joe Potter of Tucci Learning Solutions, an agency that contracts special education coordinators. “You kind of have to come in everyday with a clean slate. It’s not like regular education, where everyone’s on the same chapter. In here, teachers really have to adjust to each child.”

ASD teachers work intensely with students to develop their auditory and verbal skills, which are generally lacking. For many students, such methods do bring positive results. But it’s a costly process.

The MCOE’s budget for ASD courses has risen dramatically, from $2 million in 2003 to $3.2 million in 2005, says Michele Saleh, director of the special education department. And new cases are arriving fast. Saleh says that last week, another 12 students were referred as possible ASD cases.

It’s unclear how the office’s budget will be affected if Monterey Peninsula Unified School District (MPUSD), which supplies one-quarter of the county’s ASD-diagnosed students, starts to pull its students back into district-run programs. Jeff Gabrielson, special education director for MPUSD, confirmed that MPUSD is planning to do just that during the next four to five years.

Currently, MPUSD pays the county office of education about $24,000 a year to educate each of the approximately 200 special education students it refers.

Gabrielson says keeping those special education students at MPUSD instead of referring them to county programs would make it easier for those children to transition into district programs. Another benefit for MPUSD would be that it could keep about $3.9 million it now pays to MCOE to educate special education students, plus about another $1 million in state attendance funds, if it stopped referring students to the county. That equals nearly $5 million in savings, or 9 percent of the district’s total $55 million annual budget.

Some parents are weary about such a change. Susan Oros, president of the MCOE Special Education Parent-Teacher Association, says that because MPUSD is facing tough financial times, she fears that the district will not be able to handle this big responsibility. 

“I fear that the special education students will eventually get pushed aside as other district needs weigh on [MPUSD’s] administration,” Oros says.

To make things even harder, Gabrielson says, the state and federal governments rarely pay districts what they promise for special education costs.

Last year at MPUSD, for example, the district had to cough up an additional $5 million (besides the $5 million that went to MCOE) out of its general fund to pay for special education services.

“Special education is an unfunded mandate,” Gabrielson says. “Few people know just how poorly funded it is from the state and federal governments.”