By Eileen Oldfield Staff Writer
The Manville Board of Education will use tuition charged for two out-of-district students to help pay for local special needs students attending classes in other districts.
The two special education students, one from Bound Brook and the other from North Plainfield, will each pay $15,000 tuition payments, said Board Administrator and Business Secretary Richard Reilly. One student will attend Alexander Batcho Intermediate School, while the other will attend Weston School.
Information regarding the students’ educational needs was not released.
The Board of Education accepted the students and the tuition payments which are higher than the district’s actual costs per pupil at its Dec. 18 meeting.
”It’s income for us,” said Mr. Reilly. “The tuition cost offsets the out-of-district amounts for Manville students sent elsewhere.”
According to Mr. Reilly, the board approves a tuition amount for students coming to Manville between April and June of each year.
State law allows the tuition payments to be greater than the district’s cost-per-pupil; during the 2005 to 2006 school year, the district charged other districts $12,650 in tuition per pupil for special education students, when the average cost per pupil for in-district students was $11,241.
The tuition money Manville receives is then used toward tuition for Manville students who need to be sent to other schools.
”It’s a benefit for both schools,” said Mr. Reilly. “It benefits Manville because we’re able to offset our out-of-district tuition costs, and for Bound Brook and North Plainfield because it can be less expensive to send their students to Manville.”
Manville schools budgeted $922,137 for special education in the 2007-2008 school year, including the tuition for seven students sent to other districts.
Each year, Audrey Press, director of special services, evaluates the program to determine the number of students, if any, Manville can accept in its special education program, said Mr. Reilly.
When districts cannot fulfill their students’ needs, they look to other area schools rather than paying for expensive private schools.
”It can be cheaper to send students to specialized areas than to send them to a private school,” said Mr. Reilly.
Ms. Press did not return requests for comment for this story.

