And there could be other challenges. The term "learning disabilities" can mean a lot of things; the state's special-education statutes refer to them as "perceptual or communicative disabilities," which in turn are defined as "a basic disorder in the psychological processes affecting language and/or learning, [which] may manifest itself in an impaired ability to listen, think, attend, speak, read, write, spell or do mathematical calculations."
What the term does not include, according to the state statutes, are "students who have learning problems which are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor handicaps, or limited intellectual capacity or significant identifiable emotional disability, or who are of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage."
Brett Amole
Jessica Hughes, Alicia Long, Erick Mudge and Wendy Ginther are students at the Center for Discovery Learning.
Brett Amole
Gayle Civish was hired to develop a new special-education program at CDL.
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The broadness of the definition could make funding such a school difficult, Griffin says. It took Jefferson County Public Schools a few years to figure out how much to charge other school districts for the kids outside of Jeffco who wanted to attend the Magnet School of the Deaf, which opened in 1997.
"Jefferson County had to pay for their kids, but they didn't want to get stuck footing the bill for kids from Boulder who were going to the school. They needed to set up a formula for out-of-district costs, and it took legislation to solve that. That's been done now, but all of those kids have a similar disability, and services for them are relatively uniform," Griffin says. "Another type of school for special-needs kids would have a wider range of disabilities and a wider range of costs. The state would have to figure out a funding formula for that."
For now, life goes on at the Center for Discovery Learning.
Fourteen students between the ages of twelve and eighteen are lounging on a mismatched assortment of ragged but cushy couches and chairs. Posters of Pink Floyd, Bob Marley and Walter Payton decorate the walls. The seven boys and seven girls lay their backpacks and books on coffee tables; their laps are their desks. It's 8:30 a.m. in Lisa Pasquale's research and literature section of "Astronomy and Astrology: What's in the Stars?"
Another twenty students are across the hall learning the math and critical thinking part of the course; after two hours, the two groups will switch places. Pasquale, whose students address her by her first name, tells them that two assignments are due soon: First they'll have to make up their own constellation and write a myth about it; then they'll have to write a biography about a historical astronomer. The students receive the news with groans and questions.
"Can we just make up a myth right out of our head?" one girl asks. Pasquale explains that, yes, that's the idea. Most students begin to warm to the notion of letting their imaginations guide them, but some look a little worried about the actual task of putting their ideas on paper. That's where Susie Broderick comes in. Although she's a regular-education teacher, her background in special education enables her to go into classes and help kids who need extra attention.
She's in Pasquale's class to help students write their papers and at the same time prepare them for the writing portion of the CSAP, which students across Colorado are taking this month.
"You're all on a continuum of writers. Do you perceive yourself as writers? Some of you may say, 'I'm not even close. I hate to write.' That's one continuum. Some of you may keep journals or like to write e-mail in your free time. That's the other continuum," Broderick says, pausing to hand out papers that outline the six traits of effective writing. "This is stuff you already do in class, so it's nothing new, but you'll be evaluated according to these traits in future tests."
And while the students ponder how they'll score on the CSAP, the staff at CDL wonders what their future will hold.
