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E-mail StorySchools try to keep up with autism
As more children are diagnosed, schools work to meet needs
| Saturday, Mar 10 2007 8:40 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Mar 16 2007 5:36 PM
Justin Baggs stopped talking at the age of a year and a half
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Speech pathologist, Beverly Patton helps Justin Camacho with a lesson in Concetta Argentino's special education class at Frontier High.
Dominic Puget concentrates on a lesson in Concetta Argentino’s special education class at Frontier High.
One day, he was singing "Old MacDonald Had A Farm" and then nothing.
"Those were the last intelligible words I heard him say for two and a half years," said his grandfather Carl Twisselman.
By the time he was 3, he was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
Baggs is doing much better now, 13 years later, thanks to intensive educational intervention at Kern County schools.
During that same time period, however, the number of Kern children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders has skyrocketed. About one out of every 150 children in the country is now being diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder.
Experts agree special education is the best hope for these children, but money from the state and federal government hasn't kept pace, leaving the school districts to pick up the slack.
Tough choices might be coming soon if the situation isn't fixed.
Will children like Justin get the same level of services in the future?
At what cost to programs for other children?
School district officials don't know yet. They only know they have identified more autistic children to serve than ever before, and costs are rising fast.
The Kern High School District spent $4.9 million last school year on what the state and federal governments didn't cover for special education, said Kern High Special Education Manager Steve Moyer. He estimates that figure will rise to $5.5 million for this school year.
The Bakersfield City School District spent about $1 million last school year, said Chief Business Official Teri Schallock.
Kern High School District has about 600 percent more autistic children than it had eight years ago, Moyer said. The Bakersfield City School District has about 165 percent more, said Bakersfield City Special Education Director Julius Steele.. In the same time, KHSD's enrollment has increased by about 27 percent and BCSD's has stayed about the same.
Twisselman wants Baggs, now 16, to get the education he needs at Taft Union High School, but he also has 12 other grandchildren who are not autistic. He doesn't want them to miss out either.
At this point, most school districts don't have to choose between special education and other programs, but more autistic students are knocking on school districts' doors.
"I don't know what we're going to do," Twisselman said. "We're going to be overwhelmed I'm afraid."
The mystery of autism
Autism affects millions of Americans, but for the most part, the disorder is still a mystery.
No one knows exactly what causes it. It affects people of all races. There's no known cure, and no one knows for sure why more children are now being diagnosed.
Experts disagree on many of these issues.
Some experts believe more children are coming down with autism spectrum disorders than in the past for genetic and/or environmental reasons. Other experts say in the past, doctors simply labeled these children schizophrenic, retarded, anti-social or eccentric.
Experts do know, however, many autistic students need more educational attention, money and resources than the average child.
That's because the brains of children and adults with autism perceive the world differently than most. They have problems communicating. They don't understand social situations and are sometimes super sensitive to noises, sights, smells or touch.
Some people with milder cases on the spectrum -- sometimes called Asperger's syndrome -- have been known to hold jobs, get married and even become professors and authors. They just might have problems reading social situations.
"What you can end up with is a person who can do OK academically and in school but can't hold a job," said Jeanette McAfee, an autism expert and author who recently spoke in Bakersfield.
At the other end of the spectrum, people with the more severe cases of autism -- what experts sometimes call low functioning -- cannot talk or survive independently.
"Imagine yourself in a dark closet with a radio blaring," said Gerald de Claro, a marketing representative at Valley Achievement Center, a Bakersfield school for autistic children. "That's what it's like for them. How long could you sit in there without losing it?"
So far, most experts agree, intensive, early education is parents' best shot at teaching their autistic children how to become part of the world around them.
Falling behind
But the number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders is growing faster than some educational services to help them.
The Autism Society of America puts the growth rate of autism spectrum disorder diagnoses at 10 percent to 17 percent a year.
There's no sign of slowing either nationally or locally.
The Kern High School District now has five classes at its high schools for 63 students with autism spectrum disorders. It had only eight such students in 1999-2000, Moyer said. The Claude W. Richardson Child Development Center, a public preschool that serves special education children, also now has five classes just for children ages 3 to 6. Richardson Center Principal Brian Cortez said he plans to add a sixth class before this school year ends. He said the campus will likely need more classrooms soon.
"I suspect this 3- to 5-year-old age group will pick up steam," said Kern Regional Center Associate Director Jeffrey Popkin. The regional center funds three after-school programs for autistic children in Bakersfield. Two of the three have waiting lists.
The Valley Achievement Center, a nonpublic Bakersfield school for children with autism, recently had almost 40 children on its waiting list, said director's assistant Stephanie Borrilez.
Parents are dying to get their kids into school immediately after they're diagnosed, largely because early intervention has been shown to be so effective.
Twisselman said his grandson finally started talking again around the age of 5, after spending time at the Richardson Center.
Baggs can now read, write, use a computer and likes to talk about animals, his grandfather said.
When Dominic Puget was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder more than a decade ago, doctors told his mother she might want to consider institutionalizing him.
Instead, he started preschool at the Richardson Center at the age of 2. Before he got there, he screamed a lot and didn't talk.
"There was no eye contact. There was no communication," said his mother and Kern Autism Network President Ramona Puget. "There was lack of awareness of others and objects around him."
By the time he left preschool he was saying a few words. Now, he's 15 and can read, write, surf the Internet, go on vacation with his family and attends special education classes at Frontier High.
His mother partly credits early special education programs.
"It makes sense to have good education early on so we can maximize their potential," said Bonny Hulsy, a co-founder of the Valley Achievement Center and parent to a teenager with an autism spectrum disorder. "We need to look at this because it's going to be costing taxpayers millions and millions of dollars for these kids."
The price tag
It costs the Bakersfield City School District about $30,000 to $35,000 to educate each autistic child each school year, Steele said. It costs about $8,000 to educate an average student, Schallock said.
Moyer said it costs KHSD an average of about $30,000 per autistic child. Even many other types of special education students, such as blind, deaf or mildly retarded children, cost only about $6,000 to $10,000 each to educate, Moyer said.
Much of the money for autistic education goes toward paying staff. A classroom with severe children might need about one adult -- a teacher or aide -- per child. Even classes with higher-functioning students might have a ratio of two or three children to every adult.
In a more intensive classroom at Frontier High, a teacher and four aides serve four students.
In that class on a recent school day, 16-year-old Jeffrey Norman, who wears yellow headphones over his ears because he's sensitive to noise, became overwhelmed as the day began. He retreated to a rocking chair, where he rocked and made noises to calm himself.
An aide followed Norman and handed him a toy to further calm him.
Around the same time, education specialist Cheri McMahan crouched beside 14-year-old Brian Holmes. McMahan gently guided Holmes' right hand to write his name at the top of the paper.
Minutes later, student Devin Waite randomly sprang from his seat and tried to walk toward the board in the middle of the lesson. An aide gently guided him back.
All this happened as aides tried to teach the students how to construct sentences using pictures.
Even next door, in a higher-functioning class, four aides, a speech pathologist and teacher attended to six students.
All six students were boys. Autism strikes boys about four times as often as girls.
The students sat calmly in their desks taking turns reading aloud.
"Treasurer: Keeps track of the club's money and reports how much the club spends and makes," 15-year-old Dominic Puget read.
"That's really good reading!" teacher Concetta Argentino said.
Puget smiled and clapped at his accomplishment.
The students spent a chunk of the day learning such sentences in preparation for a recycling club meeting with regular education students.
"It's so they have something to fall back on," Argentino said. "The rehearsed commentary helps them if they have a problem communicating."
The school districts will serve these students until their 22nd birthday, in accordance with the law, but many won't get diplomas. One of the main goals is to teach them how to interact with the rest of the world, how to hold jobs and how to care for themselves.
"The one notable difference with these students is their sense of innocence," said KHSD special education coordinator Patricia Young. "We all feel this need to protect them and make sure they're happy and have a good quality of life."
Quality of life is one of Twisselman's top hopes for his grandson. He would like to see Baggs learn as much as he can in school to lead a happy, productive life. He hopes Baggs learns enough to work on his family's ranch after high school.
But Baggs' time in the public school system is running out.
"You hear lots of people complain about the school system, but I know here in Kern County they work hard and do what they can," Twisselman said. "I know how hard it is, and I'm just dealing with my own. Down the road we're going to need the support of everybody."