BY DANA DiFILIPPO
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Some Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) leaders have criticized Project Succeed Academy, the district's school for chronically disruptive students, as too expensive and too ambitious.
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Some students, they say, might be better served in community-based programs that specialize in treating troubled kids.
But many community groups are saying no thanks.
Most are partial-hospitalization programs, in which kids must be deemed by a mental health worker to be mentally incapacitated.
And with Hamilton County officials' recent decision to place a mental health levy on the November ballot that is $1.8 million lower than what mental health leaders sought, most of those programs have no money to take on the district's discards.
"They need to understand the distinction between what they can handle and what the community's capability is, and the private sector is overloaded," said Richard Sorg, vice president of professional services at Beech Acres, a child-focused family service agency. "But if the schools can't do it and the private sector is limited in its resources, then what happens to these kids?"
Project Succeed started as an alternative school two years ago to educate students with long records of unexcused absences, detentions, suspensions and other discipline problems.
Its inaugural enrollment was 300, but demand drove it up to 460 last year. The school now has a waiting list of 800 to 1,000, said Lionel Brown, the district's director of student affairs and the academy's founder.
Mr. Brown requested additional money to boost enrollment to 500 this year. But school board members instead cut $217,000 from the academy's budget when they approved the 1998-99 district budget last week. They blamed the expiration of state grants supporting the academy and tight finances district-wide.
That means the academy will lose 20 instructional assistants, 3.5 coordinators and one custodian, which Mr. Brown says will force him to cut enrollment to 400.
But some board members say the academy may be trying to do too much, considering the severity of some students' problems.
"We should be partnering more closely with Beech Acres and other community and social service programs that really are equipped to handle severely disturbed students, which is not what Project Succeed is supposed to do," board member Lynn Marmer said.
"The children are the community's children -- they're not the public school system's children. We are first and foremost an educational organization. We can't be all things to all people at all times." While some social service leaders agree with that sentiment, some say they have no room.
St. Joseph Orphanage's two programs are full, Executive Director Dr. Robert Wehr said. At Beech Acres, 35 students are enrolled in a partial-hospitalization program, and 155 are in another program -- budgeted to accommodate 150 -- in which students are screened to determine whether they need partial hospitalization, Mr. Sorg said.
Children's Home of Cincinnati, which runs a partial-hospitalization program in Madisonville, usually is full or nearly full, said Carolyn Simon, director of operations. Its capacity is 48, and most are CPS students, she said.
And many social service programs are more costly than Project Succeed, because they're partial-hospitalization programs. This year's budget for Project Succeed is almost $3 million, district Treasurer Richard Gardner said.
That includes $70,000 in donations; $1 million in federal Title 1 money, which supports schools with high concentrations of poor students; and $1.9 million in district money, Mr. Gardner said. It doesn't include donated services such as nursing, pediatric and psychological care.
That works out to about $7,500 per pupil, if 400 students are enrolled, or about $6,600 per pupil if 450 are enrolled. The district's average per-pupil spending is $4,800 at the K-8 level, Mr. Gardner said.
St. Joseph costs about $50 a day to educate a student -- plus $116 daily in mental health care costs, Dr. Wehr said. For a 180-day school year, that's almost $30,000.
At Hope Academy -- a Springfield Township school that perhaps most closely mirrors the Project Succeed model -- annual tuition is $10,800, Principal Kelly Hughes said. Chartered in 1994, the independent, alternative school serves about 60 boys from Hamilton, Butler, Clinton and Warren counties with severe behavior problems and other disorders, Ms. Hughes said.
"Project Succeed appears to me to be a bargain," Dr. Wehr said. "I think that what the Cincinnati Public schools has done is an impressive intervention for children who are at risk for being suspended or expelled or dropping out."
And Dr. Elizabeth Betemps, director of the academy's Family Health Clinic that screens students for behavior and cognitive disorders, said past efforts to refer kids to community social service programs have failed.
"Community systems haven't worked, whether it's because of transportation problems, parents' resistance, agencies' bureaucracy, whatever. That's why we need this school," she said. "When the services are delivered in the school, we are more successful." School board member Sally Warner said further investigation is needed.
"We need to determine where is the best place for the child," Ms. Warner said.
Ms. Marmer agreed: "We raise $54 million every year for the (United Way and) Community Chest, and we pay for a very large mental health levy. Maybe we ought to be working more with those agencies. We're not neglecting these kids, we're not walking away from them, but they may need more than we can provide."
