SAUGUS — The school district is seeing a mental-health crisis as well as increased need for special education, according to an administrator.
Dawn Trainor, executive director of pupil personnel services, spoke at the School Committee meeting last Thursday about her concerns for students’ mental health and increasing special education costs.
Going back to full-time, in-person schooling revealed the mental health challenges and crises Saugus students are experiencing.
“The mental health concerns are very real,” Trainor said.
Some of them are impossible to deal with in a public school setting, she said, and the district has to sit at the table and be honest with families.
Even students in general education settings are struggling, she added. Some of them are not ready to be learners due to a mental-health crisis or extensive learning loss and it causes emotional and behavioral dysregulation.
“When that happens, we typically have outside partners we can go to,” said Trainor, but because the situation is not unique to Saugus there are waiting lists “a mile long” for counselors.
“We don’t have a lot of resources to go to in the district when students are experiencing that,” Trainor said.
The town, however, is trying to find ways to help students who struggle, even if it has to send them out of district.
One mechanism it is using is extended evaluations, when students are sent for about 45 days to a mental-health setting or educational setting with a bigger teacher-to-student ratio. As a result of such evaluations, the district receives a report that helps make decisions about the next steps and strategies to help students and keep them in the district.
This year, however, they had to send a lot of students out of the district to get them the resources they needed, Trainor said. A lot of students also moved to Saugus with outside placements already and the district had to pick up those expenses.
Thus, special education expenses in the budget are increasing, Trainor said. Currently, special education accounts for more than 30 percent in the school budget.
Seeing the situation, Trainor filed for extraordinary relief from Circuit Breaker in November 2021 to get additional compensation from the state. Circuit Breaker is a state program that reimburses school districts for some of the incurred special-education costs.
She is also asking the state to provide coaches who could help local teachers deal with these extraordinary times.
Trainor also said that in April she is going to conduct an internal audit of the town’s special education programming with the help of local special-education directors. The audit will look at the services offered and the staffing model from kindergarten to 12th grade.
The district is working hard to bring students back into Saugus schools, Trainor said, and she is expecting two students to re-join the district.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity for these students to come back and work and live and enjoy their community,” said Trainor.
Her department is also exploring various therapeutic models to be able to keep special-needs students in the district.
Trainor is also counting on three students graduating this year with Saugus High School diplomas, which will help bring some costs down.
“That doesn’t always happen and I’m really proud of that,” said Trainor.
“Ms. Trainor is working incredibly hard right now,” said Erin McMahon, superintendent of schools, adding that the internal audit will help the district to provide the services that are required for special education students.
