Smaller schools/school districts for autistic students

Post Reply New Topic

I hope I haven't told this story yet.

I grew up in a town about 50 miles from New York City. I was mainstreamed in my local school district in only the first and tenth grades. The other years were spent out-of district, which is common in the New York suburbs. In my "in-district" years, I had the fortune of having a short bus ride to school (and on the "big bus") but often I was miserable and overwhelmed. In the first grade, I had an extremely unsympathetic principal, a teacher who I was terrified of because she was young, of all things, and a classroom that drove me nuts. In the tenth grade, it was a matter of also being miserable and overwhelmed. I was in a social group I was not an official member of and I should not have been in that group in the first place. Both years I was suspended for some reason.

The story took a sharp turn in the summer of 2006, when my mom and stepdad uprooted me and my brothers and relocated us to Brushton, in Northern New York, where I live today. I graduated from the school there in 2008. The entire K-12 student body would have comfortably fit in my old high school, with rearranged classrooms for proper size reasons. I went from a high school of 1200 students to a school district of 900 students. And somehow, this impoverished school district managed to meet my needs better than the schools I used to attend. I was more comfortable, and even with slightly bigger class sizes in some cases, I felt welcomed and not ignored. And almost never was I overwhelmed. Some of the teachers might have been not as experienced as they were downstate, but I also had the comfort of teachers who didn't look at me differently.

Part of it might have been the fact that I was no longer unwelcome/a stranger in my own community. I became involved in many activities in the school, and in my senior year served as class secretary. I was also a National Honor Society member, something that I would not have been able to do had I lived downstate. Another thing I was able to was take college level classes, which would have been near impossible had I lived downstate (I was planning to if the move never took place, but it would have meant for a very painful schedule).

Anyways, I want to put my money where my mouth is on this one: I wonder if students with any form of autism (any place on the spectrum) and others with developmental disabilities do better in smaller schools/school districts, and if there is research to prove it. Parents could easily choose smaller, slightly more rural suburban communities for their children. Of course this is part opinion and I will do research to find out if my idea is valid.

Any comments?

If anyone wants the name of the suburban town where I grew up, please feel free to PM me.

Hello,

I have Asperger’s and although I’ve never been in large schools (not even now, in college), I do know the small school experience. My family actually moved into upstate New York (in Washington County) just after I finished second grade. From third grade to my graduating year in 2009, I went to a central school that never topped 1000 students, total.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find that smaller schools are better learning environments for people on the autism spectrum in general. Although it wasn’t a great experience (I didn’t get along with my classmates anywhere near as well as it sounds like you did) there were fewer distractions and most of the teachers seemed to genuinely care.

I wasn’t aware that the college level courses weren’t as easy to get into downstate as at the schools upstate.

I've seen a lot of benefits having my children attend smaller schools. They don't seem to fade into one of the masses, and have been able to develop supportive bonds with some teachers/counselors that can stay intact through the years. There is a drawback in terms of lack of elective choices, but I feel it's the best place for them.

I did much better in small town schools vs city schools. I had to move with my mother after the divorce when I was 11/12 and the people there though I was slow, and I was naive to words like "ho", which I formerly knew as a farming tool. It made me question my intelligence for sure, and probably made my problems with math worse since they were using totally different books and were on a different subject. People seemed harsher, yet more accepting in small town schools.