The Trenton Times published the following article on April 14, 2013. To read the full article, click here.

‘They are the forgotten bunch’: Trenton school district’s Life Skills program has gone off the rails, a teacher’s aide alleges

By Erin Duffy/The Times of Trenton 
on April 14, 2013 at 7:30 AM, updated April 14, 2013 at 7:34 AM

TRENTON — It started as a transitional program, a way to teach special education students with developmental disabilities how to handle personal finances, find a job and live independently once they left school.

But in the last several years, the Trenton school district’s Life Skills program has gone tragically off the rails, one teacher’s aide is alleging.

Students mindlessly copy answers teachers have written in textbooks. No curriculum exists. The students, all high school age, sometimes color sheets of Disney characters in lieu of classwork. There’s no rhyme or reason as to who graduates or who stays on for another year.

One special ed student from Liberia is robbed by classmates on a near-daily basis. And another student, a 19-year-old with behavioral issues, is instructed to clean and mop the school during classes on Fridays. Teachers don’t know how to handle him, so he’s treated like an unpaid, makeshift janitor.

“It’s a population of students that don’t have a voice,” Deborah Downing Fortson said. “Their parents don’t speak for them. They are the forgotten bunch.”

These allegations were detailed to The Times this week by Fortson, a district paraprofessional who works with the Life Skills program housed on the fifth floor of Daylight/Twilight High School, Trenton’s alternative high school.

Fed up with the cheating, the low expectations and what she called a complete lack of learning within the program, Fortson has lodged complaints with a barrage of state and local offices, including Gov. Chris Christie’s office, the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office, the state Department of Education, Trenton state fiscal monitor Emily Capella and Trenton Superintendent Francisco Duran.

These kids aren’t being stimulated at all. They don’t stand a chance. They’re doomed.

“This isn’t right. These students cannot read, cannot write,” she said. “How are you guys passing students and giving them diplomas if they can’t read anything on that diploma except their name?”

Duran, Capella, Daylight/Twilight principal Hope Grant and DOE spokeswoman Barbara Morgan did not return calls for comment on Friday.

Fortson said she’s been trying to tip off school officials about the problems for the past six or seven years, alerting everyone from program supervisors to superintendents.

“They simply listen and that’s it,” Fortson said. “‘We’ll get on it, we’ll get in touch with you.’ But there’s never any questions.”

Since she’s started speaking out at staff meetings, she’s seen subtle signs of retaliation.

In the past year, she was written up for excessive tardiness and the Division of Youth and Family Services were called to investigate her for allegedly hitting a student while confiscating her cell phone. She was later cleared by DYFS, she said.

“It’s their way of trying to get rid of me,” she said.

Since she spoke last month to Capella, the district’s new state fiscal monitor, there has been some renewed interest from the district. Capella, Duran and several assistant superintendents dropped in to observe a Life Skills class on Wednesday, she said. The next day, with just two months left in the school year, several teachers were told to draft a curriculum, she said.

Capella has asked Fortson for copies of photos showing the 19-year-old student from the Dominican Republic mopping a hallway.

“They make him clean Fridays without getting paid,” she said. “He cleans the entire fifth floor, cleans, mops, he cleans the bathrooms. All to keep him from disrupting class.”

Another photo shows several male students cleaning two weeks ago, pushing brooms and holding dust pans. On Friday, a group was cleaning the bathrooms and had a custodian’s key ring, Fortson said.

“These kids aren’t being stimulated at all,” she said. “They don’t stand a chance. They’re doomed.”

Over the past decade, the district has spent millions of dollars to revamp its special education programs after damning audits in 1998 and 2010 prompted state penalties and demands to change the way Trenton educates its sizeable special education population.

The proposed budget for the 2013-2014 school year sets aside $18 million for special education instruction, in addition to millions more spent on child study teams, occupational therapy and other services. Two years ago, 2,173, or 17 percent of all Trenton students, were classified as needing special education services.

Stuart Barudin, the district’s special services director from 1998 to 2005, said he came on in 1998 to create a correctional plan for the district, win back federal funds revoked by the state and promote inclusion in classrooms.

But in the midst of this overhaul, he began holding professional development workshops on something called the Life Center Career Education Curriculum for students with moderate disabilities who weren’t on the college track.

“It was a per diem curriculum that was basically geared on activities for daily living, to enhance independent living skills,” he said. “Math was counting money, there were personal hygiene lessons and those kinds of things. Job hunting, putting a resume together … I really thought it was a very good curriculum for kids having that need.”

Now the head of special services for the Hackensack school district, Barudin doesn’t remember much about the program or its staff. He said he had much more to look after than that.

But reaching the life skills students could prove difficult, especially in an urban district with high rates of poverty, unemployment and limited English, he said.

“Any child with a disability is going to have a more difficult time grasping common core standards,” he said. “The issues of an urban district magnifies that.”

Fortson began working as a paraprofessional for the program in 2005. Then, students enrolled in the program were taught out of Trenton Central High School West.

When Barudin was still on board, the program ran as it should, Fortson said. Mornings were spent on academics — math, reading, science and social studies lessons, all tailored to the abilities of each student — and afternoons revolved around independent living. Students learned how to wash their clothes, cook simple meals and fill out a job application.

“We taught them how to dress,” Fortson said. “We had kids who couldn’t man a zipper, whose fine motor skills just weren’t developed.”

But when Barudin left, the program began to flounder, she said. Supervisors were brought on and quickly became overwhelmed with the task of overseeing some of the district’s lowest functioning students, who could range from 14 to 21 years old. Some have been diagnosed with autism or fetal alcohol syndrome, Fortson said. Two current students are classified as legally blind.

For the past several years, since the program was run out of the former St. Joseph’s Grammar School and moved to Daylight/Twilight in 2009, program administrators have shuffled in and out. The program currently has no supervisor, Fortson said, and is instead run by a special education teacher. There are no guidance counselors, social workers or behavioral specialists who specifically work with the Life Skills students.

She estimates 35 to 45 students are enrolled in the program at any given time. Three teachers and three paraprofessionals provide instruction. Students often miss days and weeks of class at a time, though, and Fortson said sometimes only a handful of students will show up for class. Some of the higher-functioning students, bored by the repetitive lessons, just stop coming to school.

Students are exempt from passing the High School Proficiency Assessment in order to graduate, so portfolios of their work are compiled instead to show they’ve mastered certain skills, she said. But those deemed ready to graduate can often barely read, she said. Just 7 percent of Daylight/Twilight students graduated in 2011-2012, according to recently released school performance reports.

“We have kids that come in just 60 days out of the year, that still pass, that walk along that stage at graduation, and it’s going to happen again this year,” she said.

She contends little is taught on the fifth floor. Students dutifully copy paragraphs out of biology, geometry and algebra textbooks, over and over. Answers for math problems are provided by teachers and aides like Fortson.

“These students are at a level where they need phonics, sounds,” she said. “Maybe they can only add single digits, so we start there and we build on it. But that’s not what happens. Instead, it’s copy this down, so if someone comes in you’re busy.”

Fortson said she refuses to participate in sham lessons. For the past six months, she’s taken to bringing in novels every day and reading them.

“I’m being paid to read every day because I don’t work,” she said. “I’d love to work, but all they do is copy, every day.”

Fortson knows she’ll probably get fired for speaking out and admitting to reading instead of working. She said she doesn’t care.

“I want people to pay attention,” she said. “I want people to wake up. If these kids aren’t educated, where do you think this town is going to be?”

Contact Erin Duffy at (609) 989-5723 or eduffy@njtimes.com