About a dozen parents and community advocates Monday night discussed how special needs children may be affected by the Butler School District’s consolidation plan this fall.

The district closed five elementary schools this month and will open an alternative and special needs school at Center Avenue School in September.

These leaders answered questions from parents: Ricki Hood, a nurse with Community Care Connections; Philip Rosenbauer, an education advocate with The Arc of Butler County; Lonni DePolo with the Mental Health Association; and Cindy Duch, an adviser with the Parent Education and Leadership Center.

The Local Task Force on the Right to Education organized the meeting in response to some recent concerns. The task force is a volunteer group that works to tell parents about procedural educational issues and shares those issues with the state task force and the state Department of Education.

“Advocates expressed they were getting increased calls (about the consolidation plan),” said Melissa Allen, a co-chairman of the Local Task Force.

Parents had concerns about how the new Center Avenue School would operate, about special needs classrooms being reduced at the elementary schools, and about transportation.

The leaders assured parents that the needs of elementary students would be met with less special needs classroom space.

“Special education is portable,” Duch said. “It’s a service, not a place.”

DePolo said push-in learning methods are being used more than pull out learning methods, meaning students are learning in the traditional classroom with help rather than being taken out of the classroom to learn separately.

“It’s keeping the student in regular education among his peers,” DePolo said.

Rosenbauer said, “Space isn’t as big of a deal as it was 10, 15 years ago. That being said, I think special education is going to be very hectic this coming year.”

One parent asked how the Center Avenue School would operate. Some parents had concerns about if all special needs students being mainstreamed would be sent to that school.

The school will have dual functions as a special needs and alternative school. However, the emotional support program will be geared for students who usually attend schools outside of the district, such as Clarence Brown and Pressley Ridge.

“We’re keeping them in their home school district,” DePolo said.

Parents asked the most questions about transportation, which has been an ongoing problem for some. One parent said her 6-year-old son rode the bus more than an hour each way to an elementary school six miles from his home.

Another received multiple notecards in the mail in past years about her 15-year-old daughter’s bus stop with differing locations and bus stop times, even though her Individualized Education Program (IEP) stipulates she must be picked up in front of her house.

Parents were urged to speak with school officials to receive closure or solutions on those matters.