WESTFIELD– The White Oak School on North Rd. hosted local legislators and their aides at their “Invite Your Legislator to School Day” Friday, in an attempt to bring awareness to the needs of special education and its funding.
The event presented several students, families and educators and highlighted the benefits of the White Oak School’s special education programming, as well as its struggles due to funding. In attendance was Rep. John Velis, while an aide of Sen. Don Humason attended in place of the senator, who had a family matter to tend to.
The White Oak School is a private school that works primarily with students that have language-based disabilities. According to the school’s website, the institution “provides effective research-based instruction for students with specific learning disabilities and related learning differences,” and students come from many different locations throughout the state, from Westfield to Westborough, to attend the school.
Rep. John Velis talks with White Oak School students and faculty
“This is a population of kids with great hearts and great minds but the they don’t believe in themselves,” David Drake, headmaster of White Oak School, said of the students. “These kids fight hard.”
Drake said that the school helps those with learning disabilities become better students through individualized and specialized programming, leading to higher MCAS scores and “85 to 90 percent of the students” attending college.
According to Jim Major, the executive director of Massachusetts Association of 766 Approved Private Schools (maap), the school needs the assistance of the legislators in an attempt to improve funding for the school and others like it, which are known as Chapter 766 (C776) schools. The name is derived from the Massachusetts state law that “guarantees the rights of all young people with special needs (age 3-22) to an educational program best suited to their needs,” according to the mass.gov website.
“We need your help and that’s what we want to talk to you about today,” Major said.
Major requested that legislators consider attempting to overturn a rate freeze that is being proposed by Gov. Charlie Baker for C766 schools, as well as get a 1.5 percent tuition increase for staff for cost of living expenses.
“Sixty-four percent of our schools operate in a deficit because the state sets a tuition rate which is lower than our cost,” he said. “This causes teachers to be paid $24,000 less than public school teachers.”
Major added that this is contributing to the high turnover rate that White Oak and other C766 schools see in their educators, which he said is at its highest since 2005.
“Students pay the price for that,” Major said.
