{Back-to-School Series} "Public Schools Educating Kids with Autism'
Question: How are the Public and Private Schools Educating the Kids in your Community School District?
Remember, your tax dollars help pay for the education of Students.
Are you seeing a return on your annual academic investments?
Are the youth in your community receiving a 'world-class' education?
{via OSEP Centers PBIS News Media} August 15, 2007
Like a lot of 11-year-olds, Austin Wright likes junk food. This handsome redhead munches on chips and squirms on the couch next to his mother, Sara Wright, while she talks about how she and her husband, Jerry, learned that Austin had autism. She says that by the time Austin was 3, his vocabulary was limited to a few words: dada, mama. Other kids were zooming past him developmentally.
Their pediatrician said Austin was just a slow learner, but his parents knew otherwise. A Boston area specialist saw him, and immediately recognized the signs. She told the Wrights that Austin had a form of autism, and that he needed special educational therapy right away.
There are more than half a million children in this country diagnosed with some degree of autism, and that number keeps on growing. Many of the most severe cases must be educated in private schools, and local public schools must pick up much of the tab. But now, many public schools are preparing to educate these kids themselves. The May Institute, a Boston-area research and education center for children with serious developmental delays, is helping them get ready.
Austin was admitted to the May Institute shortly after he was diagnosed.