NEWPORT — Newport Independent Schools is severing an agreement with the state to run a treatment center for troubled students, blaming a lack of funding.

        After 26 years of operating the Newport Day Treatment Center, the school board voted last week to not renew its contract, which expires June 30.

        Newport Superintendent Dan Sullivan said the state is not paying its fair share to cover the center's costs.

        “They can't seem to find enough funding to keep this thing running,” he said. “As a result, it's a drain on a school district that's already losing enrollment.”

        Kentucky's Department of Juvenile Justice supervises 26 day-treatment centers around the state in conjunction with local school districts. Students are referred to the centers by the courts.

        The department provides counseling and other social services for the students, while the school districts provide academic instruction partially funded by the Kentucky Educational Collaborative for State Agency Children (KECSAC), an agency within the Kentucky Department of Education.

        Newport has provided three teachers and a part-time administrator, and the program is housed in the district's building on Columbia Street.

        District officials have been asking the state to pitch in more dollars to cover the center's costs, especially for teachers' salaries.

        The center's teachers work 224 days a year, while Newport's regular teachers are on 185-day contracts. Mr. Sullivan has been asking the state to pay for those extra days.

        State officials, however, say they don't have extra money.

        KECSAC, established in 1992 to supplement programs such as the day-treatment centers, helps fund 131 programs around the state with a $10.8 million budget.

        The state Education Department has not increased the organization's budget in the past four years, said KECSAC Director Norman Powell. However, the need for new programs is growing, he said, with more than 30 on a waiting list because of limited funding.

        KECSAC is asking the state Education Department for an addition $4.5 million for 2002-03 to start new programs and increase funding for existing ones.

        “Newport may be the beginning” of several school districts that opt to close programs because of lack of funding, Mr. Powell said.

        Meanwhile, state officials are looking at other ways to continue offering a program in Northern Kentucky.

        “We're hustling because we have to find some way to educate those children,” Mr. Powell said.

        Newport's center has about 30 middle and high school students from around Northern Kentucky. The district will have to find other placements for its students who attended the center, either at its mainstream schools or at other alternative programs, Mr. Sullivan said.

        “We have enough avenues to take care of our needs,” Mr. Sullivan said. “We just don't seem to get enough value (from the center) for the money.”

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