VOORHEESVILLE — "It’s been a totally different experience"I have nothing but good things to says," Lisa Myers said. She is ecstatic about the special-education program her teenaged daughter, Lindsay, is in now — an individualized education program that combines mainstream academic classes and one-on-one specialized teaching in a small workshop classroom.

The arrangement has allowed Lindsay Myers to remain in her home district’s high school, which has been one of her parents’ priorities.
"It has worked out as a win, win," said Robin Jacob, Voorheesville’s director for special education.

Myers’s personal special-education teacher, Kille Lewis, raved about how Myers has excelled over the past year, and credited the benefit of the one-on-one dynamic.

In regular special-education classes, students with varying disabilities are clumped together, each with their own individual needs and the teacher has to teach to the whole class.
"I get in there and teach around her," Lewis said.
Any child could benefit from a personal instructor but obviously a public school can’t afford to give every student a teacher. How does a school decide when it is best and economically feasible for a student to receive this kind of education"
Jacob doesn’t agree with the assumption that one-on-one is better. "Many children would do just as well with four other students," sharing a classroom and teacher, she said. A student with special needs can improve at the same rate in both settings, Jacob said.
"There are often many ways to get to the same end," she said.

Over her parents’ objections, Lindsay Meyers was sent for her first year of high school to a Board of Cooperative Educational Services program housed at Guilderland High School.
"The BOCES program in Guilderland is excellent," said Jacob. And the BOCES special-education programs do offer academic inclusion, she said.
There are many avenues to meet a child’s academic and social needs, she said, and "every student is unique."
There is more than one way to achieve similar benefits, with a student being "equally as successful in another program," Jacob said.

BOCES classes offer excellent academic support, she said.
It really depends on "what the priorities are for the student when they get older," she said.

A committee for special education at each school district determines what is the best placement for a child, with the goal of placing students in the least restrictive environment, as required by law.

The district begins with trying to place a child in an in-district program, Jacob said. The next level is BOCES, and then a private program such as those at Wildwood or Parsons, and the most restrictive is a residential program, she said.

Voorheesville has not had a student enrolled in a residential program for many years, Jacob said, and has not placed a child in a residence without parents wanting that. One Voorheesville family in the past did want their child to attend the New York State School for the Deaf in Rome, which had the benefit of children being integrated with other children who know sign language and, as a result, peer interaction is more spontaneous rather than through an interpreter, Jacob said.

BOCES, however, also offers excellent programs for the hearing impaired, Jacob said.

Placement

The director of special education at the Capital District Regional BOCES, Inge Jacobs, told The Enterprise that BOCES special-education classes exist to help school districts with children whose needs are "too severe" for the district to handle itself, or to help districts that don’t have enough "classified children" to make it cost efficient to create their own special-education programs.
Voorheesville "traditionally hasn’t had the numbers" to have its own contained special-education classes, as larger districts do, but does have about 11 special education teachers on staff, Jacob said.

There are four full-time special-education teachers in the elementary school, three at the middle school, and four at the high school, including Myers’s teacher, Lewis. A number of these teachers teach both special education and remedial reading.

But Jacob stresses that her department deals with more than just learning disabilities. She arranges accommodations for 13 categories of special needs mandated by the government including visual impairment, physical limitations, attention disorders, and mental health.
"Each school and program is unique for what it can offer," she said of potential placements.

It’s her job to make sure that the district is meeting the standards set by the state and federal governments and that each child’s academic and social needs are being met, she said.

The committee for special education, in addition to parents, is comprised of special-education teachers, general-education teachers, school psychologists, and administrators such as herself, Jacobs said. Factors in determining placement include evaluations, testing, and the student’s ability to relate with peers.

Voorheesville houses some BOCES classes. The Board of Cooperative Educational Services pays a rental fee to the hosting district and the district, in return, offers support services to the children in BOCES.

In the 2005-06 school year, Voorheesville hosted its first BOCES class at the high school. The school had extra space and BOCES was looking to set up a new classroom, which was good timing for Voorheesville because one local boy needed this type of class setting, Jacob said.

Voorheesville has had a middle-school BOCES class at Clayton A. Bouton for four years, Jacob said. That class is for children with significant cognitive delays but no behavioral issues, while the BOCES class at the high school is for students with cognitive delays and behavioral issues who need a more structured environment. The two classes are not set up for one to transition into the other, Jacob said.

Voorheesville Elementary School has had a BOCES class for a number of years. In 2005-06, no Voorheesville students were placed in it. Voorheesville Superintendent Linda Langevin announced at the June school board meeting that BOCES has decided to pull out of the elementary school buildings for 2006-07.

While Voorheesville doesn't have any of its own contained classrooms, there are special- education teachers who modify instruction and pull students out of regular education classes for some one-on-one instruction.
"Very few students are placed out of the district," Jacob said. Why the switch"

Two years ago, Lisa and Jeff Myers adamantly protested their daughter’s assignment to a BOCES classroom at Guilderland.

Mrs. Myers still refers to the mediation from two years ago as a joke.

In August of 2005, the Myerses met again with the district, with attorneys present, and brought in an evaluator. They presented information on why their daughter should be placed back at Voorheesville with an aid.
"Our case was pretty strong," Mrs. Myers said.

But what she believes to have made the greatest difference was the new superintendent.

Mrs. Myers said there has been a complete change in the whole atmosphere and tone since Langevin became the top administrator.

Langevin has a master’s degree in special education.
Also, Mts. Myers said with a laugh that maybe the district gave in to get her off of their back. "They knew I was not going to give up — I was a pain and I wasn’t going to go away," she said.
She hopes now that she has paved the way for other parents and students with special needs — "maybe setting a new trend," she said.

Things have been fantastic, with a lot of positive feedback, Mrs. Myers said. Also, she has been very happy, and feels fortunate to have gotten such a great special-education teacher, who complements her daughter.
This time, the district has been "very good to work with," Myers said, adding there have been no fights, no hassles.
Jacob said she’s not able to disclose what’s changed exactly in an individual student’s IEP that allowed Lindsay Myers’s placement to be switched, but she did say, "The desires of the family and the uniqueness of this child" were factors.

A major component is parents’ desires, she said.
"It’s worked out magnificently," Voorheesville’s high school principal, Mark Diefendorf, said of Myers’s being mainstreamed. He sees Myers traveling through the hallway by herself all the time and he said, "She always has a smile on her face."