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Schools: Out-of-District Tuition Costs To Exceed Budget
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District officials say they’re projected to spend nearly $600,000 more than budgeted this fiscal year on out-of-district tuition—a line item that can refer, in part, to when public schools pay for the education elsewhere of kids with disabilities. New Canaan Public Schools regularly sees 14 to 18 students “out-placed” each year, Assistant Superintendent of Pupil and Family Services Darlene Pianka said at Monday night’s Board of Education meeting. This year, four additional students around whom the district “had issues of concern around safety” have been “placed in therapeutic settings,” Pianka said. “And in addition to those four students, there have been a number of students in the late summer and in the early fall that the district has been in mediation with over unilateral placements that students’ parents have made—some for other than educational purposes, and others just in their requests for placement that the district disagreed with,” Pianka said at the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. According to data supplied by the district at the meeting, $2.7 million had been budgeted for out-of-district tuition this year, and that’s about $579,851 short of what the schools now are expecting to spend.