This official also cited the expense of busing students from their home school. Whether or not the receiving school had an appropriate program was a detail that did not stop the district. They would have to make their move late in the school year to minimize an organized parent response. Without letting parents as a group know, school officials held individual IEP meetings with unsuspecting parents. In these meetings parents were informed of program options in the coming year and persuaded to change IEPs accordingly.
Parents now say they went along with suggestions without sufficient information.
With half of the students in one class out of the way, district officials closed it and moved the rest of the children into a remaining program, which nonetheless had to be reconfigured to accommodate a wider age range. The closed program vacated space needed for another learning center. The plan almost worked. At the last minute, parents were able to organize and confront district officials. The uproar that resulted seems to have delayed the installation of a learning center.