Wayne Burton, president of
North Shore Community College in Massachusetts, has made it a personal mission to provide more college opportunities to students with intellectual disabilities.
Most students with disabilities who continue with higher education come to community colleges, Burton said.
“Community colleges are absolutely the appropriate place for these students because we have a student-centered culture and we are focused on student services,” he said. “Community colleges are places where everyone is welcome, and we’re already set up to provide developmental education."
A consortium for advocacy
Burton is passionate about serving students with intellectual disabilities. He has been to Washington, D.C., several times in the past couple of years to ask Congress and the U.S. Department of Education for more support to serve these students. He plans to meet with Walter Bumphus, president and CEO of the
American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), to discuss how AACC can strengthen its relationship with the Community College Consortium on Autism and Intellectual Disabilities and increase its advocacy efforts for community college programs targeting students with disabilities. (Burton co-founded and chairs the consortium, which has about 45 member colleges.)
Among the consortium’s key successes has been securing a new grant program to help colleges serve students with intellectual disabilities, due to the advocacy efforts of William Duncan, president of
Sierra College in California, and David Miller, a trustee at
Northern Virginia Community College, as well as Burton and other community college leaders.
Despite the success in having Congress create the new program, Burton is disappointed that only five of the 27 lead grantees that received TPSID grants were community colleges. He said that while the intent of Congress was to give priority to community colleges, the
U.S. Education Department used criteria that favored applicants with residential programs and research components, which gave an advantage to four-year institutions. He is urging the department to give community colleges priority for funding in 2012, although it is uncertain if more grants will be awarded.
Another issue the consortium is working on is making sure students with disabilities—who often attend college part time—are eligible for Pell grants and other student financial aid.
Linking to K-12
Burton’s activism on this issue stems from his family background, which includes autism. Even before taking the helm at NSCC, he was working on similar issues. As a legislator in New Hampshire, he co-wrote the state’s special education law.
Burton noted that there is a disconnect in federal public policy. For example, the federal
Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) requires public K-12 schools to provide a free and appropriate education to students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment. But when students who have received services under IDEA get to college, those services are not required.
“We’ve taken on this mission [to serve students with disabilities] without the resources to deal with it,” Burton said.
He added that he would like to see the federal mandate for K-12 schools extended to community colleges, though he acknowledges that would be a hard sell in the current budgetary belt-tightening climate.