LEWISTON — The School Department will hire one special education teacher and one education technician to accommodate more special education students at Lewiston High School.

On Monday night, the School Committee approved the hires for the remaining school year at an estimated cost of between $46,000 and $50,000 for both positions, including benefits, Assistant Superintendent Tom Jarvis said Tuesday. The cost will cover about half of the school year.

The money will come from the existing school budget, Jarvis said.

The new positions are to help nine more students with special needs who have moved to Lewiston, officials said.

At the high school’s life skills classes, “we found we were having more students than allowed by special ed law,” Jarvis said. “We needed to get back in alignment with the appropriate number of students.”

The School Department’s student population is about 5,577, of whom 978 need special education, Special Education Director Pam Emery said.

Last year, the high school had 29 students who needed life skills class. This fall the number rose to 38, Emery said.

The new teacher and education technician will teach skills to students with the most significant disabilities. 

The class helps students who need to learn “very basic, standard skills,” Emery said, such as brushing their teeth, zipping coats, shaving and counting money.

In the past, these students would have been placed out of the school district at a cost of $230 per day per student, Emery said. The School Department is building and expanding more in-house programs to keep students in school near their homes and to cut costs.

The cost of the life skills program is essentially the salaries, Emery said.

“If we did not get funding, we would have had to look for alternatives for the students, which would be exploring outplacement,” she said. “We did not want to go that route.”

In other business Monday night, the School Committee honored Transportation Director Butch Pratt with a certificate of appreciation.

In addition to overseeing transportation, Pratt works to reduce truancy by knocking on doors encouraging students to go to school. Pratt was praised for his compassion and work to help students and keep them safe, while saving taxpayers money.