by Dave DeMars
You have probably driven past the large, square building at 517 Second St. S., without paying it much mind. In an odd moment you may have mused about what goes on there, or thought that since it had the title Education District in the sign on the side of the building, it was somehow an extension of the Sartell-St. Stephen School District. Like the men in the poem The Blind Men and the Elephant by John Godfrey Saxe, you would be partly right – and yet you would be wrong.
That large square building houses the Benton-Stearns Education District. It’s a special school district with its own special number, 6383, and its own board of directors (commonly called a school board), which is drawn from six member schools: Sartell, Sauk Rapids, Foley, Holdingford, Rocori and Kimball. Alicia Jepsen is the executive director of the district. She is what would commonly be referred to as the superintendent. It has no football program or basketball court or even any buses, and yet it is a school district in its own right.
“At MDE (Minnesota Department of Education) anything that we do with our paper work, our data submissions – all are aligned with that 6383,” Jepsen explained.
A bit of history
BSED took shape during the 1980s when the State of Minnesota paid some special attention to the needs of kids with special challenges. Article XIII, sect. 1 of the state constitution states, “The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it is the duty of the legislature to establish a general and uniform system of public schools.”
That article directs the State of Minnesota to establish a public-school system. But even more important is Article I, sec. 2, which states that “No member of this state shall be disfranchised or deprived of any of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof . . .”
For years, kids who were challenged in unique ways such as sight, hearing, motor skills, intellectual capacity and other ways were “deprived of the rights and privileges” ordinary kids who were not challenged were given as a matter of right. It was a slow process, but eventually state government came around to understanding its responsibilities for all its citizens, not just those who had no special needs.
During the 1980s, the state looked for ways to serve its citizens better. The real challenge for the state was to ensure small cities such as Sartell, Foley and Kimball were accommodated in their effort to carry out the education mandate delineated in the constitution. To that end, special-education districts and cooperatives such as BSED were established and funded.
To be sure, the federal government also acknowledged its responsibility to its challenged children, and to that end, it created all kinds of laws and directives that were handed down to the state and then filtered down to the local school districts about how challenged kids were to be educated and treated. In 1975, Congress passed the “Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975.”
According to Clare McCann’s 2014 study entitled Federal Funding for Students with Disabilities: The Evolution of Special Education Finance in the United States, “Congress agreed that as much as 40 percent of that excess cost could be covered by the federal government. (To date, Congress has never “fully funded” the complete cost of special education.)”
“Funding is definitely very complicated from a special-ed perspective,” Jepsen said. “It’s a challenge – the funding is definitely a challenge. Special ed is mandated from a federal perspective, but the federal government has never provided the federal funding they have always promised.”
BSED benefits
Every school district in the state of Minnesota is directed by law to have a special-education director to oversee education of challenged students. That cost can be prohibitive in small districts, so the state allowed the establishment of cooperatives, collaboratives and education districts such as BSED. In effect, the six districts achieved an economy of scale and are better able to provide for the education of all children. Even under these circumstances, funding is still a challenge.
“What we can do is to help our six districts with the special-ed directors’ fees,” Jepsen said, “and also a bunch of the different kind of staff that are very hard to secure are our staff.”
Staff such as occupational therapists, physical therapists, hearing-impaired therapists, teachers of the visually impaired, therapists that work with autistic children – these are a few of the service areas BSED provides. The work is done primarily within the six districts. The therapists and teachers go directly to the schools and districts and work with the students in that setting rather than busing children to the building in Sartell. BSED has a staff of 54 different therapists and teachers who provide services to member districts as those services are needed. Member districts then reimburse BSED for the services provided.
Jepsen explained there were two levels of service: those of low incidence and those of high incidence. What it refers to is the frequency of a particular type of challenged student occurring in a district. Visually impaired or blind students are a low-incidence occurrence. It occurs infrequently. Students with emotional and behavioral issues are high incidence because they occur quite frequently.
For certain, BSED is driven by large amounts of data. Data helps determine how services will be apportioned, where the need is greatest and how costs will be apportioned within the six districts.
“We look at the percentage of kids in a school district who are in special ed,” Jepsen said. “The state average is around 14 to 15 percent. If you’re around the state average, you’re probably hitting your mark. A higher level of kids in the district with disabilities would mean the costs would be higher.”
BSED provides services in the following areas: assistive technology, coordination services, deaf and hard of hearing, early childhood screenings, school psychology, physical impairments, physical therapy, occupational therapy and visual impairment. BSED’s “Help Me Grow” is a specialized program addressing development needs of children from infancy to age three. It provides evaluation, and a plan of development to address your child’s strengths and needs.
A second program is the Voyager Program which is housed in Sauk Rapids at the converted Sacred Heart school site on Third Avenue South. The program has three separate components. One component deals with students with autism, a second component deals with students having learning difficulty related to emotions and behavior in a regular classroom, and the third component deals with 18- to 21-year-old students to help them transition to adult life, and students often work in the community.
Transportation to and from the sites is primarily the responsibility of the home district.
Staff challenges
Jepsen said getting their name out so parents are more familiar with what they do is one of the big challenges. Sometimes parents don’t even know Benton-Stearns exists on a day-to-day basis.
“Usually parents find their way to me when there are concerns,” Jepsen said. “They work their way up the hierarchy through their coordinator, their principal, and maybe they even call MDE or PACER Center (a group that advocates on behalf of children with disabilities).”
When they express their frustration, that is when they get told about us and how to contact their special-education director at BSED. That’s when they find their way here, she said.
“We have had random people stop in, but they are usually lost,” she said with a chuckle.
Then Jepsen stopped and thought for a moment.
“The biggest challenge for BSED on a daily basis is the stresses students face every day when coming to school,” she said. “There are so many things that have an impact on a student. It could be something at school, or it could be something at home. Trying to understand the issue from the point of view of the student so we can teach them how to deal with the problem and give them a tool to work through the problem, that’s a real challenge for the school . . . For Benton-Stearns it is how do you stay ahead of the game when you are trying to support kids and their families,” she said. “Students don’t walk in and out of the building every day and then go home and there aren’t any difficulties.”
And the problems can start as early as birth.
“That’s why the home visitors (with the Help Me Grow program) are out in those homes supporting the families, dealing with their daily stressors,” Jepsen said.
There is no such thing as a typical day, Jepsen said. While there are many people who carry the title of therapist, each staff person’s day is unique. Every day brings something new and while that is exciting, it’s also taxing on the staff members. Each covers issues in six different districts and each district deals with things a bit differently.
Successes
The biggest success in the BSED cluster of programs is really not big at all. Rather it’s the way the staff goes out each day and cares for the caregivers and the child with a disability every day. It’s little things that are achieved that when added together make a larger success. That’s a pretty amazing thing, Jepsen said. There are so many relationships that are built through that process.
“It’s pretty amazing when a child ages out of a program and they (the staff member) will receive a letter from the family thanking them,” Jepsen said. “Or they’ll receive a donation. Last summer we received several donations from families for materials. Those kinds of amazing things happen all the time.”
She tells the story of how one of the physical therapists hooked up with St. Cloud Community and Technical College two years ago. Students at the Tech College adapted several battery-operated cars so students with various physical challenges can ride in the cars and drive them just like other kids.
In the second stanza of her poem, We Never Know How High We Are, Emily Dickinson wrote;
“The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king.”
“Those kinds of things happen all the time,” Jepsen said.