Program may see autistic pupils taught in-district
BY MARK ROSMAN
Staff Writer

FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP - A new special education program may be able to be offered in-district under an initiative to be pursued by school administrators.

In what Board of Education President Rosina Hary called "an amazing opportunity," the board voted 8-0 on April 18 to enter into a lease agreement with the Douglass Developmental Disabilities Cen-ter, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, for instructional space at the Freehold Township Early Childhood Learning Center, Stillwells Corner Road, from July 1 through June 30, 2009.

In a presentation to the board prior to that vote, Barbara Selikoff, Freehold Township's director of educational services, explained that the Douglass Develop-mental Disabilities Center would enter a partnership with the district to provide a class for six children who have been diagnosed with autism.

Selikoff said later that the board's vote gives district administrators the approval they needed to negotiate a lease with the organization, with the hope of starting the class in September. She said this partnership will be the first for the Douglass Developmental Disabilities Center with a New Jersey public school district.

As part of the partnership, Douglass Developmental Disabilities Center educators will provide training for Freehold Township staff members who instruct pupils with autism, she said. The goal of administrators is to expand Freehold Township's special education program and to provide special education pupils who presently receive instruction in out-of-district placements with an education in township schools, Selikoff told the board.

In order to pursue the partnership, the district will have to expand the position of a half-time school psychologist to a full-time school psychologist, she added.

A written proposal presented at the meeting indicated that Assistant Superin-tendent Sandra Brower, Business Admin-istrator Sean Boyce and Selikoff "have been in communication with Dr. Jan Han-dleman and Rita Gordon.

"Handleman is the director of the Douglass Developmental Disabilities Cen-ter of Rutgers University and professor of psychology for the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology. He has been with the center for 30 years. He is the author of a number of books and is well known within the field of autism research.

"Gordon is the director of Douglass Out-reach. She is considered an expert in the area of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA).

"ABA is a scientific approach to teaching in which procedures derived from the principles of behavior are systematically applied to improve socially significant behavior to a meaningful degree. Strat-egies include the use of functional analysis, antecedent interventions, functional communication training, discrete trial instruction, incidental teaching, fluency based intervention, natural environment training and task analysis," according to the document.