Our school systems cannot fund one-on-one assistance to our children as we pack 20-30 into a classroom. Our teach attrition rates are 50% in the first five years alone in the public school system. Each year more autistic children are born and they need 1:1 special therapy, but with funding the way it is today in our schools that is highly unlikely in happening anytime soon.

One parent writes in an email;

“As you can imagine, school districts, such as mine, do not want to pay for any 1:1 intervention, claiming that their programs are more than satisfactory. And if they do employ some 1:1 time, it is usually with an aide who often lacks the experience and capability to facilitate lessons. In New Jersey, districts only have to provide an “appropriate program” — a very subjective term. The proposed school program is indeed appropriate if the goal is to have my son in a group home upon my death.”

You can certainly see the issues involved in supporting our autistic children and the need to better educate now to save money later. This same argument could be applied to mentoring of kids at risk, to prevent them from getting into gangs, drugs, crime and costing society a lot more in the future. Most people can see this dilemma and the funding issues in our schools and the training required to properly help our autistic children along, as they are a huge asset to our civilization and scientists are just starting to learn that as well. Consider all these points and think on this in 2006.

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