Past Principal Points

Over the years AKCS has worked with dozens of special needs children. Indeed, many parents transfer their children to AKCS after they have begun to experience difficulties in a public school. In most cases, simply placing the child in a structured, disciplined, loving environment using direct instruction methods has produced dramatic results. We have seen “D” students become Honor Roll students without any special intervention.

While our policy manual states that as a general rule we will not admit students with severe learning disabilities, we have nonetheless ended up with some because they had never been properly diagnosed. We also have a policy to admit only two or three students with mild to moderate needs in any one classroom, but again, have sometimes exceeded this not realizing at the point of admissions exactly what difficulties a child might face. Sometimes students enter at kindergarten, and it is only later that we discover serious learning or behavioral issues.

Because of our successes with these children, we sometimes forget the limitations we face. There are good reasons why our policy regarding special needs children sets some limits on the kinds of children we accept. Even with tuition, we receive only 2/3 the operational funding available to children in the public system to say nothing of the costs of putting up buildings. Without these funds it is difficult to hire the trained personnel to provide the kind of support needed to develop appropriate programs for special needs children. Public schools have an entire infrastructure of trained consultants, para-professionals, and training opportunities which we lack.

In recent years, our increased enrollments have led to larger class sizes. Even though we have added teacher-aides to our classrooms and a reading teacher to our staff, there are certain children who cannot function as well in these larger classes (notably very distractible ones.) So even while we are able to provide for many more children than in previous years, there are still numbers of children who don’t have a suitable program at AKCS.

Our dream, once we have the space and the enrollment to provide additional funding, is to have a complete program for every child regardless of their abilities. We want to have a qualified special education teacher on staff with well-trained special needs aides. We want to have good access to occupational therapists, speech therapists, and psychologists to provide support and training for our teachers and aides. Our goal is that no child would be turned away due to special education needs.

In the meantime, however, we must recognize the existing limitations of our program. We generally do very well with children who are behind because they have “fallen through the cracks” or children who have mild learning disabilities or have somewhat below average abilities with a good work ethic. Children who don’t fall within this range often struggle in our school, and we have had limited success. As painful as it is, sometimes we need to acknowledge our own weaknesses and recommend another school for these children. It’s grievous, and not our ultimate plan, but an honest assessment of where we are as a school today. Please pray that over the next few years, God will enable us to develop the ability to meet the needs of every child.