As Yorkville School District 115 prepares to take care of its own special education program, the district is expecting to hire about 160 former Kendall County Special Education Cooperative staff.
In addition to the extra employees, Yorkville expects its special education costs and revenue to go up as the Kendall County co-op dissolves and the district creates its own program. All told, the new special education program is projected to cost the district about $2.1 million more for the 2017-18 school year than the district had budgeted for special education this year, Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations Dean Romano said.
“(It’s) one of these cases where we really don’t have any choice,” said Director of Human Resources Troy Courtney. “It’s a population of students that we absolutely have to take care of, just like any other students.”
Yorkville’s hires and programming come as the Kendall County co-op prepares to disband at the end of June. Oswego-based Community Unit School District 308 moved to withdraw from the organization, taking almost two-thirds of the cooperative’s students with it, and the remaining five districts voted to dissolve the organization.
Four of the districts – Plano Community Unit School District 88, Newark Community High School District 18, Newark Community Consolidated District 66 and Lisbon Grade School District 90 – have formed a new organization, the Plano Area Special Education Cooperative.
Yorkville, meanwhile, has planned to provide most special education services in-house. The district’s director of student services, Hassan von Schlegell, has said Yorkville is able to provide its own services because it is larger than any of the Plano area districts. The district has changed since the Kendall County organization was formed, and it no longer made sense to be part of a cooperative, he has said.
Von Schlegell has said some students will continue to receive services in other districts if those services are not provided in Yorkville.
Yorkville expects to pay more to cover special education, including technology, services and other costs. But it also expects to bring in additional money, largely from federal grants that used to go to the cooperative and more federal reimbursements from filing better paperwork, Romano said.
Total, the district expects to spend more than $4.5 million above what it brings in, he said – about $2.1 million more than it projected spending for this year.
The cost of bringing in the 160 Kendall County co-op employees – many have already been hired – is expected to be “fairly close” to the fees the district paid to the Kendall County cooperative to cover salaries and benefits, Courtney said. The district also had to hire some additional positions to comply with state laws, he said.
The largest cost increase would likely be in providing benefits to the new employees, he said. Many support staff did not enroll in benefits at the co-op, but the district is anticipating they will in Yorkville.
Of the Kendall County cooperative employees Yorkville is hiring, about 102 are support staff and roughly 39 are teachers. The district also hired therapists, social workers and others, Courtney said.
“I wish we didn’t have to hire so many people, but the fact of the matter is the people that we’re hiring are already working in our district,” Courtney said. “It’s just that they’re working in the Kendall County cooperative, and we’re paying a fee.”
Romano said bringing the program in-house will allow the district to have more direct involvement with special education. He is excited to have staff members become Yorkville employees and to work more directly with them, he said.
“We see it as a positive for our programming,” he said.
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