Education association focuses on special ed funding, school safety

For each of these issues, a task force that reports to the General Assembly started meeting in July. CABE's respective positions on these issues are that students acting out shouldn't be removed from the classroom with no supports, and that there are a lot of problems with pooling money for special education.Overall, CABE Deputy Director and general counsel Patrice McCarthy said, "Solutions generally involve money, and the other solution is no new mandates."She sat down for more than an hour with The Day editorial board on Tuesday, along with CABE Executive Director Robert Rader and CABE board President Robert Mitchell, who also is chairman of the Montville Board of Education.In June, then-Gov. Dannel Malloy vetoed a bill that would have created a process for removing a student who violated "daily classroom safety.""We hear from principals and superintendents that they are seeing more children at a very young age so impacted by the traumas in their lives" that they act out in the classroom, McCarthy said, citing biting and throwing furniture as examples. CABE had opposed the bill, which the organization originally was told would not be moved last session.