On Monday, the school board made a change that it hopes to overturn as soon as possible.

Warren County School District’s alternative education program is going to become alternative education for disruptive youth.

While the school board approved that change on Monday, the members are not particularly happy about it and expect it to be short-lived.

Board Member Arthur Stewart said there were some “treasured” aspects of the district’s alternative education program before the changes.

In the program, students had to live up to rigorous standards “that set them up for success to return to a regular school setting.”

“If the board’s only choice now is to send them to the Virtual Academy, are we losing that?” Stewart asked.

The change was not the district’s idea.

“The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) requests that it be called alternative education of disruptive youth (AEDY),” Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Eric Mineweaser said.

That the Pennsylvania Department of Education requested that district’s change the naming of alternative education programs to alternative education for disruptive youth was another problem.

“I thought it was odd that we would stigmatize this program,” Stewart said. “Why put that label on the student when we would let students voluntarily enter into the program?”

The district is obligated to provide a free and appropriate education to young people in the district, according to Solicitor Chris Byham. That includes students who are expelled.

“In order for a student to go to AEDY, they have to meet the definition of a disruptive youth,” Byham said.

About 80 percent of district students in AEDY are there for drug- or alcohol-related offenses, Superintendent Amy Stewart said.

There are students in the district’s alternative education program that will enter the AEDY program.

There will not be students added to that list.

The district’s Virtual Academy is the vehicle by which required free and appropriate education is delivered to students who are expelled or are going through the expulsion process.

“In the near-term, we’re going to be expelling students to the Virtual Academy,” Amy Stewart said.

Once the existing alternative education students are out of the program, the district may make more changes.

“Once the Virtual Academy replaces the AEDY, there may be a request to (get rid of) AEDY,” Byham said.

Like the board, administrators “do not want to miss turning a rock over… in terms of what are we losing,” she said. “We don’t want them to not be successful.”

The district will look for a way to provide a program that will give students who are expelled a chance to practice the kinds of “behavior that will get them back into the regular classroom,” she said.