Renton Education Blog

The Renton School District plans to open two more Emotional/Behavioral Disorder (EBD) classes within comprehensive schools next year with soft openings.

Black River High School has two EBD classes, totaling about 20 students. Those classes will be closed along with the school come summer.

The district now plans to open classes at Lindbergh High School and Nelsen Middle School, said Rebecca Lockhart, director of special education services, at a Renton School Board study session Wednesday.

The idea with Lindbergh and Nelsen is to keep the classes as close to the comprehensive schools as possible to make moving out of the program easier, she said.

The EBD programs are expensive, costing about $32,000 per student annually, she said.

A regular student costs about $5,000 annually.

It wasn’t made known whether the 20 students at Black River would be transferred into the Lindbergh program, but it was said that the classes will start small. A full EBD class has 10-12 students, that ratio is smaller at Renton Academy.

Currently Renton Academy has the largest concentration of EBD students. It opened in the 2006-07 school year with 28 students and four sessions, now it has about 53 and six sessions.

The Academy was opened to save the cost of transporting students outside of the district for EBD classes.

It was also announced at the meeting that next year the whole district will all adopt the ReEd program for EBD students, after a successful run at the Renton Academy. About 60 teachers will receive training, Lockhart said.

(EBD is an academic term that works as an umbrella for several different disorders. Students with it may have anything from development disorders like autism to something like ADHD.)