By Claire Walla

The Child Development Center of the Hamptons (CDCH) operates out of a small two-story building on a modest parcel of land, surrounded by a grove of pine trees lining Stephen Hands Path in Wainscott.

What began in 1997 as a pre-school, catering primarily to special needs students whose needs were not met by local public schools, has now grown to incorporate elementary classes through grade five, as well as multimedia classrooms and designated occupational and physical therapy rooms. What’s more, as the school’s supervisor Dr. Christopher Long explains, CDCH uses a co-teaching model that’s “the first of its kind in the state,” he said.

CDCH staff invited members of the press to tour the school’s grounds on Friday, December 5 and introduced Long-Island based non-profit Family Residences and Essential Enterprises (FREE), which this year gained charge of the school from Services for the Underserved (SUS), a non-profit operating out of Manhattan. Dr. Long — who is Chief Operations Officer for FREE, and has taught special education in the past — said partnering up with CDCH “was a strategic decision that we [FREE] made.”

He added that the organization’s mission statement “to help individuals of all abilities to realize their full potential and prevail over life’s challenges” aligns well with the goals of the school.

CDCH is a charter school, which operates like a public school in that there is no tuition and all students must meet state assessment standards. The school gets its funding from the community like any other public school in the sense that the total cost the district pays for each student to attend the public school in their district will follow that student to CDCH. This “per pupil amount” pays for over 90 percent of what it costs to operate the school, according to Dr. Long, and the rest of the school’s operating budget comes from fundraising efforts.

However, unlike a typical public school, CDCH is free to meet the state’s education goals in whatever way it sees fit, such as with a co-teaching model like that now being used at the school.

This model ensures that each classroom be equipped with two main teachers who have teaching certifications in both special education and at least one other core subject area. Though the co-teaching model has been used since the charter school was founded, it had never been advertised by the school’s previous chief operating officer. Plus, Dr. Long noted that he made special efforts this year to ensure that both teachers in the classroom have expertise in subject areas that compliment one another, such as math and English.

Dr. Long came onboard last year when CDCH transitioned from its previous service provider, SUS, to FREE. Dr. Long said that SUS “provided a very strong foundation” of academic programs, which gave FREE the liberty to make more creative enhancements to the school overall.

For example, Dr. Long instituted a reshuffle of the teaching staff, which more accurately aligned teachers to the areas they specialize in. The current kindergarten class, with 17 students, three teaching aids and two head teachers, this year united a former first-grade teacher with a former second-grade teacher, “both [of whom] have expertise in teaching kindergarten,” Long said.

Plus, with the addition of Smart Boards, Long added that CDCH has instituted “smart classrooms,” which allow for more dynamic lessons that tap into the different ways in which students learn. This is especially important for the school, as it is comprised of both special needs students and “typical” students, Long noted. (Of the school’s 106 students, the ratio of special needs to typical students is nearly 50:50.)

While standing in a fourth grade classroom, Long’s enthusiasm abounded as he pointed to each corner at the front of the classroom, where two teachers’ desks were situated, and waved his arm before the smart board on the wall in between them. With this configuration, teachers can use visual, auditory and kinesthetic teaching tools all at the same time, he added.

“If they were going to do a lesson on the 50 states,” he said, “the students could have maps on their desks, they can stand on the map on the floor [a rug] and [the teachers could project] a map using the Smart Board.”
Dr. Maria A. Taliercia, whose official title is “education leader,” but might more commonly be referred to as the school’s principal, added that the school has also added a new resource library this year.

“I just love this room!” she beamed. Filled with a wall of books, miniature-sized sofa chairs and giant white board, she explained that teachers have their own library catalogue, which they can use to plan their lessons according to library resources.

In addition, the school received a new audio library from the Stephanie Joyce Kahn Foundation. The waist-high, yellow wooden cabinet contains several books on tape that the students, each of whom received a cassette player and headphones, are free to take advantage of.

“It helps children with autism,” she said, “because it keep the kids focused on the tapes.”

Parent Leslee Melamed has two sons, seven-year-old twins Lee and Alec, currently enrolled at CDCH. Both boys were diagnosed with autism and have been coming to CDCH since they were two years old.

Melamed, who lived with her husband and sons in Manhattan, said she couldn’t find a school in the city that combined special needs students with typical students, but also had the speech, occupational and physical therapy components she felt her sons needed. So when they learned about CDCH through their sons’ pediatrician, the family moved to their second home in Montauk on a full-time basis.

“[CDCH] is really filling a void,” she said.

In the future, Dr. Long said he will be working to build more partnerships with the local community, such as universities that might want to fund research on the co-teaching model. He also plans to connect with other private organizations on the national level that offer school grant money.
“When you have the resources that CDCH has, you can better meet the needs of the diverse learner than one teacher in a classroom of 26 kids can,” Dr. Long

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