BRATTLEBORO -- School districts will have more input, but also possibly pay more money, when students are sent to the Brattleboro Retreat for short-term services.
The Vermont Department of Education announced recently that it was changing the way school districts establish an education plan when a student is hospitalized at the Retreat for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.
The change does not affect children who are enrolled in the Retreat’s school full time.
The change was made because the state was improperly considering those children who spent time at the Retreat as state placed.
The statute was not changed, according to Deborah Quackenbush, assistant director for Student Support at the Department of Education, but the state realized it should not have been identifying the students as state placed.
The sending school districts will now be more responsible for the day-to-day education at the Retreat, and the district will also be billed directly for those services.
When the student was state placed, the state would cover costs incurred at the Retreat.
"There was a mistake in our interpretation, but this will be better for kids in the end," Quackenbush said. "The people who know the kids the best are in their own school district and it makes sense for them to follow through on the services."
Prior to the change, teachers and education specialists at the Retreat would work with the students, and set up an education
Now the school district will be required to be in close contact with Retreat staff, and districts will be billed for services received.
"We know it is time-consuming to stay in communication, but it is important for the school district to follow through," Quackenbush said. "The Retreat did a good job, but they are not educational decision-makers. That is not their job."
Even if the state had not realized that the rule was being misinterpreted, Quackenbush said the education department might have worked to change the rule so that the school districts had more input into the services that the Retreat provided.
"When kids were at the Retreat, there was less connection than we had hoped with their local school districts," Quackenbush said. "It’s important that schools are involved so kids get the services they need."
Retreat spokesman Pete Albert said the change has meant more work for the hospital.
According to Albert, Retreat staff members are spending between three and four hours a day, talking with school administrators and producing the documents to make sure schools are billed for the services the students receive.
"Anytime we have to go though more steps to secure funding for services, it is never a good thing," Albert said. "We should be streamlining this and not making it more complicated."
Since the new rule went into place this summer, Albert said Retreat staff has been scrambling to complete what he said has become a daily exercise of talking with school districts and tracking the services that are delivered.
"The extra work is labor intensive and tedious. Anytime a principal is doing administrative work like this, they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing and that is working with children," Albert said. "Right now, we want to make sure that families and children don’t get caught in the middle, and children get the services they need."
Howard Weiss-Tisman can be reached at hwtisman@reform-er.com or 802-254-2311 ext. 279.
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