District outlines Brown Schools funding

Under the school district's plan, Brown Schools would keep most state funding and hire its own teachers.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 19, 2000

INVERNESS -- In a meeting Tuesday, Citrus school officials proposed that Brown Schools officials hire their own teachers and provide their own educational program for the facility they plan to open near Beverly Hills in coming months.

Under that system, Brown Schools would keep most of the funds the state is expected to send to educate the teens in the residential treatment program, and the school district would collect a small amount to provide administrative oversight. The amount discussed Tuesday was 90 percent of the state funds to the Brown Schools and 10 percent to the school district.

That is the same kind of arrangement the district has at the Cypress Creek Academy in Lecanto, the juvenile offender program operated alongside the Citrus County jail.

The only other method of providing the educational program would have been for the district to keep the state dollars, hire the teachers and run the educational program at the new Brown Schools facility. But school district officials have said they weren't interested in that option.

"We had a pretty good hour-and-a-half meeting and agreed to meet again next week," said Neal Weiss, director of exceptional student education for the district. "We talked about the general set-up of the educational component.

"They're certainly being open and seem like they're doing whatever they need to do to let us have a good comfort level." From the school district's perspective, the program at the Brown Schools needs to be at the same service level as the exceptional student programs provided for emotionally disturbed children in the district. But school officials don't want the program to drain money from the already-tight district budget.

That was why district officials expressed serious concerns last week. Brown Schools officials announced Friday they would pay for any summer educational program needed by their young residents, avoiding a potential problem for the district, which would have had to use its own budget to operate the school's summer program.

On Tuesday, officials got into a more detailed discussion of just how the educational program would work. Weiss cautioned that nothing is in writing, but Brown Schools officials seemed to want to arrange the program in whatever way worked for the school system.

Weiss said the district told Brown Schools representatives that they might have to seek speech, physical and occupational therapy from outside vendors rather than the district. Those details have not yet been settled.

Also at Tuesday's meeting, Weiss said the officials discussed details of their program, including techniques for crisis intervention and the level system used to modify residents' behavior. Those are similar procedures to ones used with exceptional students in the Citrus schools, Weiss said.

At the next meeting, Weiss said, Brown Schools officials will share with the district contracts the company has with other school districts. Citrus officials will provide Brown Schools with a copy of the contract they hold with the Cypress Creek Academy.

Weiss predicted that working out a contract might take a couple more meetings with Brown Schools officials. The School Board ultimately will have to approve whatever agreement is worked out by the parties.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.