Special-Needs Student to Further Study With Latrobe Friends

By AJ Panian

Nick Sciullo has Down syndrome. The 13-year-old has more friends than he can count from six years spent at Latrobe Elementary School.

“He’s a typical kid. He just has some idiosyncrasies. Don’t we all?” said Nick’s mother, Regina Sciullo of Latrobe.

This week, Greater Latrobe School District will make Sciullo the first special-needs child to attend the junior high school through its inclusive education initiative.

“Nick’s the pioneer for this process at this district,” said ciullo, a family support specialist for The Arc of Westmoreland in Hempfield, a nonprofit that offers support to those with special needs and their families. “He wants to keep going to school with the people who know him.”

Sciullo helped forge the idea for the initiative from data gathered during a nine-month course on inclusive education conducted by the Institute on Disabilities at Temple University. Joining her were Cindy Soltys, district director of pupil services, learning support teacher Rebecca Dillon, and regular education instructor Jackie Hoopes. The four attended the monthly course in Cranberry beginning late last year.

“We started out by learning how state laws dictate the inclusion of special-needs children at public schools,” Sciullo said.

State law gives special-needs children the right to pursue an education with nondisabled peers in regular schools and classrooms based on the Gaskin Settlement Agreement. The formal resolution was between the state Department of Education and a group of families and advocacy organizations who filed a class-action lawsuit against the department on behalf of a group of disabled children in 1994.

The state implemented Least Restrictive Environment monitoring, a term borrowed from the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, to ensure that districts comply with federal and state laws protecting the rights of students with disabilities.

However, Pennsylvania ranks 46th in least restrictive educational settings for special-needs children, according to a study by the National Center for Special Education, Accountability and Monitoring at Louisiana State University.

While many parents of special-needs children might choose to segregate them to keep them safer from more stringent learning environments, that is not the reason for the state’s low ranking, said Stephen Suroviec, executive director of The Arc of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg.

“We’re not 46th because special-needs students need to be segregated to that extent, we’re 46th because local school districts have not embraced this as much as they should,” Suroviec said.

The Greater Latrobe group developed Nick’s individualized secondary education plan with help from his elementary school instructors.

“What we determined is that it’s important to Nick’s quality of life that he be with the friends he’s made in a school setting,” Sciullo said. “Do I think he’s going to be a scientist when he’s older? No. But this is what he wanted right now.”

In June, the district school board permitted Nick to attend the junior high. What convinced 12 faculty members from the school to OK the plan was Nick’s proficiency.

“They said that any 13-year-old coming into a roomful of teachers and speaking so well was an impressive accomplishment,” Sciullo said.

In return, Nick will receive an upgraded course load, along with all the other aspects of secondary school life, including class-to- class transition and a locker for his belongings. He will have an educational aide with him at all times and adjusted course requirements, not that they’ve proven essential so far.

“We don’t set limits on him. This is what he’s going to do,” Sciullo said. “He has a lot of qualities that a typical child would not have.”

(c) 2008 Tribune-Review/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.