Voters at the special Town Meeting on Monday night took action to keep some of the money they spend on special education in the town.By an overwhelming 157-3 tally, the Town Meeting transferred "up to $86,625" to establish a tuition-based substantially separate classroom program at the Assawompset Elementary School. The money, which came out of the town's stabilization account, will pay the tuitions for Lakeville special education students.In establishing a special education elementary level separate classroom, Lakeville is not only trying to save money by keeping their special needs students in town, but also using the program as an income producer by providing seats in the classroom to students from neighboring towns.

The program will run from January to June, once the Freetown-Lakeville region provides the full-time teacher. The region provided one teacher for Lakeville and one for Freetown.The teacher for that classroom in Lakeville started today and we're interviewing for the teacher to be hired for Freetown," Superintendent of Schools John C. McCarthy said. "When the students return from Christmas vacation, that classroom will be operating.Selectman Nancy Yeatts explained that this is the way of the future.

Not only will we keep our own students in the district, but we'll also have seats for children from other communities and that will generate some revenue," she said.It won't be self-supporting, but we'll have some money coming in so the total cost is not on the backs of the taxpayer.McCarthy explained the goal of the program is to address the needs of current Lakeville students.We have some students that we would have to place in out-of-town programs, so that will save money for the town right there,McCarthy said. "If we didn't have this program, we could be facing tuitions of up to $30,000 and transportation costs that could also be $30,000 for each student. This is a significant savings to do this ourselves.

There are also two current students who are being schooled out of town and the school system is beginning the process to integrate them back into the town program, but McCarthy said that could take some time to do.Most parents would prefer to have the students in our school if we have the program," McCarthy said.The likelihood that we would fill the program with all of our own students is unlikely. We could fill the rest of the class with students from other towns and that would make the program less expensive.

We save on transportation and, if they are in our own system, there's a better chance of re-introducing them into the system.Special Education Director Anne St. Pierre had previously explained to the selectmen, "Right now we have five youngsters who have critical needs. We can build and create our in-house program or we end up sending these five students to out-of-town placements at double the cost.The program is being funded from January to June and then must be included in the budget discussions of fiscal 2011. McCarthy had said previously that the Freetown-Lakeville region could help out the local school systems, as it is doing with the hiring of the teachers to run this program.