State and federal laws require school districts to serve children with disabilities as soon as they turn 3.
That requirement has prompted the School Department to add 13 early-childhood education classrooms since the school year started and now is prompting the need to reopen a closed school.
“New students eligible for these services are identified daily, and we must continue to add enough capacity to serve them all,’’ Matthew Wilder, a School Department spokesman, said in an e-mail. “Closing achievement gaps for students with disabilities is one of our primary goals, and these high-quality services allow us to offer a great and early start for these children.’’
The lawsuit was filed by Massachusetts Advocates for Children on behalf of two families. The School Committee is scheduled to discuss that lawsuit in private shortly after its meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. The vote on reopening the Fifield would occur later in public.
Jerry Mogul - executive director of Massachusetts Advocates for Children, a nonprofit group - said yesterday that he did not have enough information to comment on reopening the Fifield School.
But he said he was pleased that the School Department appears to be acting proactively in anticipating demand for future placements.
“Time will tell if they will be able to meet the demand this year,’’ Mogul said. “This is the time of the year, winter and spring, when they have not had sufficient placements.’’
The lawsuit, which was filed in September, said the School Department subjected more than 200 preschoolers to illegal waiting lists for placements and cited a School Department memo last spring that said 65 special education students were waiting for preschool assignments.
The School Department has contended that the lawsuit is unnecessary because the district has added preschool classrooms this school year to accommodate the increase in demand, some of which it says occurred because the city is more proactive in getting students identified for services at a younger age.
Since Jan. 3, the district has opened 10 classrooms to serve about 80 students with disabilities, and reopening the Fifield School would provide an additional 56 seats for such students. Class sizes can run quite small. For instance, a new autism classroom at the Lee Academy in Dorchester will serve just eight students.
The Fifield School closed last June as part of a previous budget-cutting measure that left six other school buildings empty. But five of those buildings, including the Fifield, are slated to reopen in coming months for new educational purposes.
Tonight, the School Committee is also to hear Superintendent Carol R. Johnson’s budget proposal for the next school year, which calls for spending $856.6 million, a 3.1 percent increase over this year.
But the proposal is expected to include some spending cuts, because the School Department is facing a $28 million shortfall amid reductions in some federal grant programs and increases in salaries and other expenses.
