Parents Raise Concerns About Special Ed Plans In Toms River

TOMS RIVER, NJ — Plans to address special education in the Toms River Regional Schools are still in their infancy, Superintendent Michael Citta says, but parents expressed concerns about those plans and how quickly changes might happen on Wednesday night.

Citta told the audience in the auditorium at Toms River High School North and online that plans under consideration are just "concepts" at this time. But he admitted to an aggressive timeline to make changes, potentially implementing them for the start of the 2026-27 school year.

He did not share specifics of the concepts, but during a 15-minute address at the beginning of the meeting a few details came to light.

1. Toms River Intermediate North would be turned into a hub for the district's special education classes, with the hopes of bringing students who attend out-of-district programs back into Toms River. There are 116 students are in out-of-district placements, with tuition of $90,000 or more per student for the services. Some of those placements are for the district's most medically fragile students, who currently spend as much as two hours in transit from home to their school programs.

Citta said enrollment has decreased on the north section of the district in particular, and while the special needs enrollment has risen significantly district-wide, to about 3,200. He also noted that at the district's peak enrollment in the early 2000s, the district housed its then 17,000 students in three high schools and two intermediate schools, with elementary schools hosting kindergarten through sixth graders.

At that time, kindergarten classes were on half-day schedules. Toms River Intermediate South opened in 2005, and sixth grades were moved to all three intermediate schools at that time.

The district has 14,500 students currently. Full-day kindergarten was implemented districtwide in September 2015.

The district's special education budget has risen from about $39 million to an anticipated $75 million for the 2025-26 school year. The costs, which Citta said average $65,000 to $70,000 per student for those who stay in the district, include occupational and physical therapy, nursing services, paraprofessionals and other services required as part of students' IEPs, individual education programs. The services for the 116 students placed out of district cost about $13 million, Citta said.

2. Sixth graders would be moved from the district's intermediate schools back to elementary schools, and that move would also shift teachers from intermediate schools to the elementary schools, which Citta said would help to ease crowded classrooms.

3. Citta said he sees the potential for the district to create a special education hub that draws in other students from Ocean County, instead of other districts sending students lengthy distances to other out-of-district placements. If that develops it would bring tuition to the district.

The district has gone from 30 self-contained programs for special education students to "107 and growing," Citta said.

Citta insisted the idea is not to warehouse special education students in one building.

"This is not a plan to put our most at-risk kids and lock them away in a building and not provide mainstreaming opportunities," he said. "That couldn't be further from the truth. All of these things and these plans are with the intention that all of our students should benefit, including our most at- risk with more mainstreaming inclusion opportunities and more benefits to all of our students."

Parents in attendance at Toms River North raised questions about what was shared and about current issues facing special education students in the district now.

Lily Panella, whose son is a second-grader in a self-contained classroom at East Dover Elementary, said she is concerned about transparency about any plans. She said her son had mainstreaming opportunities in homeroom and at recess as a first grader but those opportunities were removed this year with no notice to parents.

"We only discovered the change by asking pointed questions at back-to-school night," Panella said. "That's not transparency. It's not how changes to a kid's educational program should ever be handled. Inclusion benefits all students, not just those in special ed. It helps create the kind and compassionate community-minded school environment we all want for our kids. To now hear that the district's considering moving special ed students into a single building feels like a complete reversal of that philosophy."

Panella said there has been a lack of transparency and inconsistent explanations of what may be in the works, which is feeding concerns about what will happen.

"The lack of a consistent, transparent message is deeply concerning," she said. "Families and staff deserve clarity. We deserve to know what is being planned before decisions are made that could fundamentally alter our children's education, which must be in a least-restrictive environment possible."

"While it may be said here that these students will only have the programs changed with significant parent input, which is what I was told on a phone call today, we've already been shown that that means nothing based on the program changes my son and his classmates have experienced this school year without any notification home or parental input," she said.

Krista Whittaker of South Toms River said she is a pediatric nurse who has seen the toll that long transport rides take on medically fragile students. But she said those placements are necessary because the district cannot meet the needs of some students.

"We've done away with LD (learning disabled) classrooms and we've thrown these kids into MD (multiply disabled) or general ed with services," and often those services, such as one-on-one paraprofessionals, are not being provided, because there are simply not enough staff members to provide them.

Her sons were in special education programs in the district, and her younger son attended an out-of-district program in high school before graduating in June because his needs were not being met.

"Seventeen times in three months his secondary inclusion teacher was pulled from his classroom to
go teach in a gened class that didn't have a teacher," Whittaker said.

She also raised concerns about what precedent would be set by turning Intermediate North into a hub for special education, in terms of what might happen to other schools in the district.

"If we can sit here and close one of our middle schools to make it a building for our special needs, what does that say for our high schools in years to come? Are we closing one of them?" Whittaker said. She said there were discussions before the 2025 school year started about removing kindergarten from South Toms River Elementary School, a step toward potentially closing that school, but that move was halted.

Citta did not address the South Toms River statement or the question about the possibility of closing schools on Wednesday night.

Another mother, Jacklyn Wyzskowski, said she was concerned about the aggressive timeline for implementing a large-scale change without data showing that programs created to serve out-of-district students in-house are meeting their needs.

"How are you going to bring students back on a concept?" she asked "We are floundering as a district in special ed since COVID. There has been a huge loss of paraprofessionals. There's a shortage. There are several children in district that are told they should have a one-to-one or they should have a shared para and we don't have the staff."

"Creating a program, providing training and showing statistical progress for children in the district before even thinking about bringing these kids back in is where I think we need to start," she said.

Wyzskowski also said she objected to the idea of the district creating a hub school for the county "to make money off the backs of special needs children."

"As a parent of one, we get that every day at therapies. We get that every day at health insurance meetings and it feels awful. People have made millions of dollars on the backs of my child and I really don't want his school district in his home to be that," she said.

"This isn't making money off the backs of our kids," Citta said. "This is taking the money that people have made off the back of our kids and taking those dollars and reinvesting it in our kids."

Some parents supported the idea of a school hub for special needs students because they already had concerns about their students transitioning to intermediate school or high school.

Justin, whose son attends Hooper Avenue Elementary, said he and his wife have been very concerned about their son moving to intermediate school because the boy is known to run out the door, called elopement among special needs students.

"He needs security that doesn't exist at the intermediate or high schools," Justin said. He said a building dedicated to special needs students could meet that need for his son to be with older students while still ensuring he could not run away.

Kristen Zalinski, whose son attends an out-of-district program that she said has allowed him to thrive, urged the board to "let parents and case managers continue to decide what is in the best interest of each student, not allow a budget to dictate it. If new Toms River programs are being proposed, have an open conversation before any decisions are made."

"Please consider what it would mean to disrupt students ... who have found success after years of struggle. These are kids with real challenges. Moving them now could undo years of progress."

"This is the first discussion," school board president Ashley Lamb said. "So I expect the discussion to be very long and very open and very transparent. I expect there to be town halls. I expect there to be meetings. I expect to see lots of parents and get lots of feedback. But the discussion has to start somewhere."

Citta said the district will be posting information on its website about committees, planned meetings and more in the coming days to encourage community involvement.

"The monthly board meeting is not a forum to develop a plan and get community input," Citta said. "This was an opportunity for me to be transparent and talk about exactly what I talked about and the concepts.

"The discussions, the data searches have to happen in open committee forums which we will start to organize for this community, ask for volunteers, put in open sessions, community-invited sessions while we work through those things and do that where we're not an arena where we're livestreamed."

Citta also urged residents to ignore social media chatter about the plans, deriding much of it as coming from "computer rangers".

"We want to make sure that we stay ahead of the curve and we talk about what our students need openly and come up with solutions together. It's hard to do in today's day and age when you have those computer rangers and the social media spitfires and the accusations and the things that come out," Citta said. "And I get it because this human nature is how does this affect me? How does this affect my kid? How does this affect my job? That's human nature. But that's why you have conversation because this isn't about me or your kid."

"This is about this community and the future, the opportunities that our kids in this community can have. And if you're willing to have that conversation and have the input and talk through this process that is at its infant stages, we can do something remarkable. And I don't mind being out in front of it, being the fodder for those keyboard rangers, okay? Because they don't matter."

Note: This article has been updated to clarify that kindergarten classes were half-days back in the early 2000s, when the district had two intermediate schools.