o Previously: The Evergreen district has served behaviorally troubled students at several sites in Vancouver-Portland.
o What’s new: Starting in September, a district-owned building adjacent to Burnt Bridge Creek Elementary School would house most Day Treatment students.
o What’s next: District leaders will attend a June 8 meeting of the Burnt Bridge Creek Neighborhood Association,
7 p.m. at the grade school.
A plan to relocate behaviorally troubled students to an office building next to Burnt Bridge Creek Elementary School has raised eyebrows and stirred alarm.
o Previously: The Evergreen district has served behaviorally troubled students at several sites in Vancouver-Portland.
o What's new: Starting in September, a district-owned building adjacent to Burnt Bridge Creek Elementary School would house most Day Treatment students.
o What's next: District leaders will attend a June 8 meeting of the Burnt Bridge Creek Neighborhood Association,
7 p.m. at the grade school.
But Evergreen district leaders say moving 30 to 35 students to the district’s current special education headquarters at 14619 N.E. 49th St. is no cause for concern.
Close watch and new fencing will keep the emotionally and behaviorally challenged students apart from young Burnt Bridge Creek pupils, officials say.
Some parents and neighbors have voiced doubts at recent Evergreen public forums over what’s informally been named the “49th Street Academy.”
Superintendent John Deeder fielded more direct questions last week. He agreed Evergreen could have “communicated better” with parents and the surrounding area as it weighs program and budget changes for the 2010-11 school year.
That opportunity should come soon, at tonight’s Burnt Bride Creek School parent-teacher organization meeting, and the Neighborhood Association meeting on June 8, also hosted at the grade school.
District officials due to attend believe their answers should put guests’ fears to rest.
“I don’t believe they have anything to be worried about. We’ll be well-prepared,” said Cindy Christensen, Evergreen program coordinator for special services (including special education). “We certainly will not have any unsupervised students, at any time,” she said.
Evergreen would place one teacher and one assistant in each of five classrooms in the 10,800-square foot building, to be remodeled this summer. The building is adjacent to the grade school, but a driveway and parking lot separate the two.
Two or three intervention coaches would be stationed there, while mental health and other specialists would come and go, Christensen said.
All current and newly hired staff persons will get extensive new training, she said.
But job postings that demand intervention skills and experience are what bothers Cindy Olson, mother of a Burnt Bridge Creek kindergartner.
“We are very concerned,” Olson said of school parents. “We don’t want these older kids.” She worries the new center is “going to label our school” and bristles at Evergreen’s “hush-hush” plans, she said.
The proposed set-up would resemble that at Vancouver Public Schools’ Fir Grove Children’s Center, which lies across busy Falk Road from Eleanor Roosevelt Elementary School and the district main office.
About 30 Fir Grove staff members oversee 61 troubled students there, about half of whom are bused from Evergreen and other area school districts.
Currently, Evergreen houses its “Day Treatment” students at Fir Grove (about five), in part of the Mountain View High School campus and at other Vancouver-Portland care centers.
Special education director Jean Anthony said a centralized facility would provide an improved, complete program for students who “need a chance to learn some (behavioral) skills so they can get back to the neighborhood schools,” she said.
Downsizing at Evergreen’s main offices on Northeast 28th Street offered vacant space to absorb Anthony and nearly 20 special services workers.
That left the 49th Street building open to handle nearly three dozen high school- and middle school-age Day Treatment students. Another 10 or so elementary-age pupils would relocate there in the future, Christensen said.
The shifts were not prompted by budget cuts, but could shave $50,000 from $850,000 spent this year on Day Treatment, Evergreen leaders say. The district’s total special education budget this year is $32.5 million.
Steve Townsen, neighborhood group president, predicts the June meeting should dispel most doubts. He, too, was caught off-guard and said residents “want to be part of the conversation.
“The rumors run, and they’re always more interesting than the facts,” he said. “I don’t think (residents) are upset, they just want to know what’s going on.”
