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Winchester’s Alternate School Shuffle
By Joe Cadrain, Winsted
Winchester’s Alternate School has been in operation for approximately 23 years and during that time I have seen nothing official that indicates Alternate School students have made adjustments or progress that would allow them to be transferred to regular classrooms. I find it hard to justify that most students are keep in a box for four or more years until they become 18 years old.
When I was elected to the Board of Education I volunteered to become a member of an existing Alternate School/ Alternate High School Relocation Committee. I was willing to participate and do what I could to help find a new location for the school. Most meetings were held in the superintendent’s office and were controlled by the superintendent, the Alternate School principal and our committee chairman. No formal records were kept, and some regular committee members were left out of the information loop. After approximately three months I resigned because I was out of the loop, and I was receiving more information on what the committee had decided at Board of Education meetings when the committee chairman gave his verbal report.
It appears that all suggestions and requests from the Board of Education concerning sending our Alternate School students to Gilbert School were squashed, forgotten or misdirected. I base my reasoning on the fact that Gilbert School representatives have indicated many times that they are willing to accept Alternate School students, but not Winchester’s alternate education program.
An article in the Litchfield County section of the August 24 Republican-American [School’s location near bar criticized] contained the following statement: "school board members who voted for the relocation [to Rowley Street] say they had no choice as school administrators had no alternate plans." I have trouble with the logic of this statement, as clearly another option was to send the students to an established school named Gilbert.
I have come to the conclusion that school board requests to our superintendent to verify if Gilbert or Regional would take our Alternate School students were misdirected and compromised, as we found out later that Gilbert would have and will take our Alternate School students! School administrators, however, have informed us that there is no room for our Alternate School students at Gilbert or Regional.
To me the fate of our Alternate School students and the Alternate School location shuffle has been one of the most mismanaged concerns in our school system. One ongoing problem is that the community is divided on the issue of sending Alternate School students to Gilbert. The State of Connecticut has directed a policy related to a recently settled class action lawsuit that states: "Each school-aged child with an intellectual disability or another disability is entitled to be educated with non-disabled children for the maximum extent appropriate." This policy, which was made available at the recent school board meeting, had little effect on the board’s decision to send our alternate education students somewhere other than Gilbert School. I believe the new state policy will have a large effect on our Winchester’s education future.
Have a nice day.
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