Lessons Learned in Letting Go

This week, our school staff had to make the difficult decision of advising alternate placement for one of our students.  We found ourselves unable to meet his needs (explosive behavior episodes) while also keeping all the other students safe.  Faced with the harsh reality that we were not the right fit for him, we let the parent know it was not going to work out for her child at our school.

As our director of admissions & counseling was relaying to me the details of her phone call with the student's mom, I became painfully aware of two lessons that I don't think we would have learned without this heartbreaking situation:

1.  We need to better communicate/advertise the "challenge" aspect of our program.  When we say we balance challenge with support, we mean we challenge students to grow by pushing them outside their comfort zones within a safe and supportive environment.  We believe there can be no progress without the discomfort that comes with pushing boundaries.  Our students come to us with social challenges.  Therefore we provide direct instruction in social skills, facilitate guided practice, encourage feedback exchange, and assess progress as students apply the skills we teach.  This is an uncomfortable process for students with social skill deficits, but without it, their progress would stagnate.  We believe in their capability enough to help them grow.  The mother on the phone insisted that if we kept her child "happy," he would not be as explosive.  However, we realize she must have misunderstood that we believe that just keeping kids "happy" is not conducive to their long-term success, and is therefore in conflict with our philosophy.

2.  We need to better communicate/advertise the school-parent partnership aspect of our program.  For some reason this year, several parents have hinted or outright stated some form of "we pay so much money in tuition, so why isn't the problem taken care of already?"  In other words, they seem to feel they are paying for a miraculous cure or instantaneous change.  They want our school to be a one-stop-shop that replaces any outside therapies or at-home efforts entirely.  I find this consumer mentality to be one of the most difficult aspects of the private school world.  I want to do a better job of emphasizing that what parents are paying for with their tuition is a specialized school environment designed to suit their child's needs, a team of educators who have expertise in special education, and a community of passionate advocates who are eager to team up and work together to accommodate and work through learning challenges.  We are in it together.  It takes a fluid school-home partnership to educate any student, let alone a student with special needs.

So, is it too late to get these messages to our current parents?  What would be the best way to communicate and clarify these points?