ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — An upstate New York school district’s contingency budget is nearly gone just a quarter of the way through the fiscal year.
A mishandled transition in the way students with disabilities get services has already used up nearly all of the Rochester School District’s $5 million contingency budget for 2014-15 because it has nearly 40 more special-education teachers than anticipated.
The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reports (http://on.rocne.ws/1swRmbo ) the special education department hoped to shift half of the nearly 2,500 students it helps instruct from co-taught classrooms to a “consultant services” model, where one special education teacher gives less intensive support to students in several classrooms.
But district teachers and specialists were not educated about the new consultant model, and not as many students were assigned as expected.
