Cotee River Elementary serves special needs students, but gifted children might not be among them in the future. Some parents aren't happy.
By REBECCA CATALANELLO
Published April 4, 2004
[Times photo: Janel Schroeder-Norton]
Gabriel Coronado, 5, performs his "tummy twister" exercises with Cotee River Elementary physical therapist Carrol Conway. The school was designed to serve special needs children.
NEW PORT RICHEY - Building Six at Cotee River Elementary is a place where mute children learn to communicate by using subtle head movements to flip switches. It's where a 6-year-old boy, who a year ago couldn't talk and struggled to walk, is jumping joyously high over his ability to cross his Ts in chalk.
"Down and T across," occupational therapist Marion Good says to him.
"Down. T!" bright-eyed Jared Witco exclaims as he sweeps the chalk across the green board.
In one classroom, a nurse stands at the sink, washing a feeding tube while a squirming little girl waits for lunch from her hybrid highchair-wheelchair perch. Across the hall, three adults usher four busy children with mental handicaps from the classroom, taking care to reel in the wandering 6-year-old who wants to share her waist-high hugs with every adult she sees.
In all, this 814-student school serves about 80 children who qualify for special education services, not including 55 in the gifted program. The children who need the most assistance fill 10 classrooms, and about 32 teachers, aides, nurses and therapists serve them full time.
That's still not enough, school officials maintain.
In 10 years, the number of Pasco County students who qualify for special education services has more than doubled from 5,318 in the fall of 1993 to 11,081 this past fall, state figures show. That's a 108 percent increase, compared with an overall enrollment growth rate of 50 percent in the same amount of time.
"I am just running out of space," said Carole Baird, principal at Cotee River, one of a handful of elementaries built specifically with severely handicapped children in mind.
But the people at the school most likely to feel the squeeze of that shortage are Cotee River's 55 gifted students in grades 3 through 5.
In order to free up three more special education classrooms, the district is moving the school's gifted program to Mittye P. Locke Elementary in Elfers. Because Cotee River already has the people and equipment for special education, school leaders say, it made financial sense to simply make more room there than to try to start a new program somewhere else.
Just as Cotee River draws students from across school zones into its special education programs, it also offers one of eight gifted elementary programs in the district and pulls students from other school zones for that.
"Some parents have said point-blank to me that "I don't really care if they go to Cotee River or Mittye P. Locke,' " said Tony Kostogiannes, a parent of a gifted fourth-grader who has attended Cotee River for the past five years.
But Kostogiannes is part of the other camp.
"We want everything to be left alone," he said a day after mailing a March 31 letter to school officials describing parents' plans to contest the change. "There's no question that all the students in the system are entitled to the best that they can get. But I don't feel like we'd be getting something at (others') expense if things were left alone."
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The explosion in the numbers of students identified with disabilities over the past decade is a national phenomenon.
One of every 12 U.S. children and teenagers - or 5.2-million - has a physical or mental disability, according to 2000 census figures.
Experts point to a variety of reasons for the high numbers. Medical advances mean children with birth defects or those with low birth weights can live longer. Increased research has raised educators' awareness of a long list of learning disabilities that at one time were more likely to be chalked up to simple disciplinary issues.
Then there are the skyrocketing increases in the number of children identified with autism - a 121 percent rise since 1998 in Florida alone, state Department of Education figures show..
"We can't just say it's an awareness thing," said Oma Pantridge, a supervisor in Pasco's Exceptional Student Education division, who also oversees the district's gifted program. "There seems to be something else happening."
Pantridge said she believes a by-product of the high-stakes testing movement might very well be an increase in the number of students now identified as needing the more intense, one-on-one attention that is provided through special education programs.
Whatever the reason, schools are bound by federal law to educate special needs children, making whatever accommodations a child's parent and the school district agree are necessary for that child to learn.
"It's one of those areas where we have to be flexible because we just have to deal with whoever walks in the door," said Susan Rine, who oversees elementary schools for the district.
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When a dozen parents of gifted students gathered at the Seven Springs Country Club on Monday, they were abuzz over the brief letter they'd gotten 10 days earlier from Baird.
Their children's program would be moving to Mittye P. Locke "due to space constraints" the letter read.
That was pretty much it.
"That the gifted parents were in a tizzy, so to speak, is a logical response," Kostogiannes said. "It's very possible in my mind that the School Board has a more than legitimate reason for doing it. But one of the problems is we don't know what the reasons are."
Involved parents like Rita Vanderhoof expressed their love of the Cotee River school, their sadness over learning they might lose some of the program's teachers in the process of the move and their anger over being informed without being included in the decision.
Parents began speculating about what else could be behind reason for the move.
Perhaps, some parents offered, shifting out 55 gifted children would increase chances of the school becoming Title I - a federal designation given to schools that serve large populations of students on the federal free and reduced-price lunch program. Title I schools draw down additional federal dollars.
"That is not accurate at all," Rine said of the theory.
Cotee River has 48 percent of its students qualifying for free and reduced lunches. Because the district is required to funnel the Title I money to the schools that have the highest poverty needs, the schools that are scheduled to receive that money in 2004-05 have between 97 percent and 60 percent of their students in poverty.
There are many more schools that will qualify for the federal dollars, Rine said, before Cotee comes anywhere close to the numbers that would make it eligible.
The theory also assumes most gifted students don't use the lunch program and that most disabled students are poor enough to qualify.
At the heart of the gifted parents' concerns was a feeling that they had not been included in the decision and they were informed after the fact.
"We could have done a better job with that," Rine said. "The decision to make the move and the reasons for making the move are exactly right. But I think we could have done a better job of preparing the parents and the students for the move."
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Cari Witco calls what the teachers have done for her son in the past year a miracle.
Jared came to Cotee River at age 5 after three brain surgeries designed to help relieve the symptoms of epilepsy and a benign brain tumor. Doctors eventually removed half of the child's brain - an attempt to put an end to the 12 to 20 seizures the little boy suffered each day.
He entered the school unable to talk. His walking was interrupted by a limp. And he wore a helmet to help protect him if he fell.
Now, one year later, Jared is one of the joys of the school. He is quick with a laugh and an animated smile. He learned how to talk and use his left hand. His limp has lessened, and he practically jumps out of his skin with excitement every time they pull up to school, Witco said.
"Anybody I meet, I tell them Cotee River is incredible," she said. "They've done absolute wonders with Jared."
* * *
Special education students who come to Cotee River sometimes have sustained traumatic brain injuries. They often have severe hearing or sight problems, orthopedic impairments, mental handicaps, or a combination of disabilities that limits their ability to move or communicate.
Educating these students means having room for wheelchairs and giant, colorful exercise balls. It means having quiet spaces where children can work on their speech, open spaces where they can strengthen their muscles and padded places for them to roll around.
It means having room for sinks and laundry facilities, stoves for special food preparation and extra-large bathrooms with enough space for lifts to help move children in and out of wheelchairs.
"It's beyond numbers of students," Rine said.
Serving special education students requires teaching them in multiple settings, depending on each child's needs.
Still, under the state's SMART schools building program that encourages districts to build economically efficient schools, special education accommodations are minimal compared with the extraordinary facilities provided at 10-year-old Cotee River.
Since 1998, Pasco County has built eight schools that comply with the SMART schools plan, said John Petrashek, director of new construction for the district.
Rine and Pantridge, the special education supervisor, said they are hoping to modify Pasco's SMART plans in the future to make more space for the increasing special education population.
Where there are now four classrooms in an elementary school designed for special ed, there might soon be six. Where handicapped bathrooms are currently at 100 square feet minimum, they might soon be increased to 160 square feet to better fit lifting equipment.
For the short-term, however, moving the gifted from Cotee River to Mittye P. Locke is the most cost-effective way to address the problem, Rine said.
School officials from Mittye P. Locke and Cotee River expect to meet with parents of gifted students on April 21, a day after School Board members are set to approve staffing changes that would result from the move.
- Rebecca Catalanello covers education in Pasco County. She can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6241 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6241. Her e-mail address is rcatalanello@sptimes.com
