Leftover CDC students could return to traditional schools

LYNN – Select high school students who attended class at the Career Development Center last year may be headed back into the city’s traditional high schools come September as budget cuts have forced a reduction in the successful program.The CDC, along with the Alternative High School, Welcoming Middle School and the LEEP program, serve as alternatives for students with special needs, behavioral issues or other problems that make it difficult for them to perform in a traditional classroom setting.Students who attend the Alternative High School and Welcoming Middle School are considered special needs, while the CDC caters more to students with behavioral or learning problems who would otherwise have dropped out of more traditional high schools.Due to budget cuts in fiscal year 2009, the School Committee voted to reduce and combine the Alternative High School and the Welcoming Middle School with the CDC next year and form the Fecteau-Leary Junior Senior High School at the former Classical High School on North Common Street.The move allowed the district to save money by moving the middle and high school programs out of their current location in the JB Blood building at 20 Wheeler St., where they were paying rent, and into the city-owned Fecteau-Leary building.Although students in the three programs will attend separate classes from one another, the move has allowed the district to reduce and combine staff from all three schools and slim down to one principal, Alternative High School Head Maureen Horgan.The reduction of the CDC was particularly hard for district administrators to accept, as the program has enjoyed immense success in recent years.Every student at the CDC passed the MCAS test in 2007, and the program boasts a 100 percent graduation rate of students who would otherwise be on the street.Superintendent Nicholas Kostan was not happy about the decision to reduce the program, but said the cost of running the CDC at its current size was just too much for the district to absorb in the wake of a $6.5 million deficit.The reduction cost the program 23 staff members, and perhaps more importantly, forced a cutback from 120 students to approximately 40.Of the 80 students who were cut from the program, 40 graduated this year and Kostan says he has been meeting with principals and guidance counselors to discuss the possibility of allowing the other 40 either back to their district high schools or in to other programs such as the LEEP night school program at Lynn English.”Some are going to remain at the CDC and the others will be split up and many will go back to their district high schools,” said Kostan. “We are in the process of determining that and trying to split them up between various programs.”Kostan said that even though the program has been reduced, it is important to keep its infrastructure in tact so that it may be expanded if things turn around for the district financially in the coming years.”Hopefully we are going to be able to keep it going because the CDC was a great program,” Kostan said. “It was very well run and very effective in working with kids that need an alternative education. It is down now, but we are trying to keep the foundation in tact so we can build it back up in the future.”