Last week NJ Education Report published an article about Vernon Public Schools focused on fiscal difficulties and unconventional placements for two students with disabilities in non-state-approved schools. Yesterday I spoke with Vernon Board of Education member Adina Hope, who wants to clarify the placement of her child at Flex School in Berkeley Heights, a non-state-approved school. She also said she would “welcome a conversation” with those who have criticized her boardsmanship but “they have not reached out to me.”

Hope emphasized she is speaking as a parent, not as a board member. She is an Enrichment Coordinator for Ringwood Public School and said she moved to Vernon thirteen years ago, specifically for the school system.

It’s a “misconception,” she said, that her child was placed at the Flex School inappropriately. She tried for a year, with the help of her Child Study Team and an advocate, to create the support her child needs to be successful within the district. According to state and federal law, children classified with disabilities must receive a “free appropriate public education (FAPE) in the “least restrictive environment (LRE)” yet all efforts within Vernon were unsuccessful. Her child’s needs are complex—he is both gifted and classified with a disability—and Vernon was not “structured” to meet those needs.

“We exhausted all our options,” she said. “He was not getting FAPE.” She and her Child Study Team started looking at various out-of-district placements, including those approved by the state. After examining the options she concurred with her Case Manager (the head of the Child Study Team), that the only appropriate placement for her child was at the Flex School. “There was no sort of favoritism or bribery,” she explained. “As a parent I know I have to be uber-careful to do everything properly and, as an advocate for children who are twice-exceptional, I want every parent to have the opportunity to do what I did.”

What about the district’s failure to file a Naples Act Placement, the procedure to bypass the state’s list of approved private special education schools?

“This was never a part of my conversation with the Child Study Team,” she said. “As a parent I didn’t know about the Naples Act. I had no idea paperwork hadn’t been filed until the public brought it to my attention.” She has no idea why the district failed to follow proper procedures. 

I asked her about the rapid turnover in leadership in the district; as reported earlier, over the last seven years the school board has churned through four superintendents and several Business Administrators. She feels the current superintendent, Russell Rogers, appointed a  year ago, “cares about our students. He will stick around and is really trying to put academics first. Everyone wants everything to change overnight but it doesn’t work that way.”

NJ Ed Report has asked Rogers and board president Joseph A. Sweeney for comment. As of press time, they had not responded.