BY PATRICIA A. MILLER
Staff Writer
BRICK TOWNSHIP – Reducing the number of classified students and bringing those who attend out-of-district schools back home will be the primary uses for a $500,000 state grant the district recently received.
“We are looking at systemic change,” Allen Ferraro, Brick’s director of special services, told the Board of Education at the May 10 board meeting. “The goal is the inclusion of special education students and disabled in the general education population.”
School officials credited Bruno Associates, the district’s grants writer, and Ferraro with helping to obtain the funds, part of the Governor’s Initiative: Enhancing and Expanding In-district Options for Students With Disabilities program.
“I thought maybe I would pass by to give a little good news,” John Bruno of Bruno Associates told the crowd at the meeting.
The Brick school district was one of 28 districts throughout the state to receive funds from a $9 million state Department of Education (DOE) pot and only one of five districts to receive the maximum of $500,000, he said.
“Our application was considered one of the best applications in the state,” he said.
“Are you done writing grants for the year?” asked board member Daniel Rosa.
“Absolutely not,” Bruno said.
The money will go toward the training of general educators in the school system to help them assist special education and disabled students, Ferraro said.
“This will allow children to participate in an inclusion model,” he said. “This will reduce the number of improper classifications. We do not wish to mislabel children.”
It will also return students from out-of-district placement, he said.
“They will come back to the home district,” Ferraro said.
“We were lucky,” Ferraro said. “Maybe not lucky. It was a lot of hard work. This grant is something special.”
Board member Cynthia McCarthy said the district’s experience with returning children to the district has “been very difficult.”
“What’s different this time?” she asked Ferraro.
“Systemic change through training,” he replied. “Arming people with materials, all the tools they need. This grant has it all.”
Schools Superintendent Thomas L. Seidenberger cautioned that the grant money could only be used for its intended purpose.
“This $500,000 doesn’t replace things in an operating budget,” he said. “This $500,000 fills in a lot of spaces for us.”
Brick was shut out of funding from a $15 million state DOE grant program in February. That prompted 10th District legislators Sen. Andrew W. Ciesla and state assemblymen David W. Wolfe and James R. Holzapfel to push for more funding for Brick, which has a higher percentage of autistic children than most towns.
“After the request by Brick schools for additional autism funding was denied, we vowed to work hand in hand with the school district to ensure that future grant applications are given the proper consideration,” Ciesla said.
The grant program was established to assist school districts to develop and implement programs that will help educate students with disabilities locally in a general education setting.