School district will offer treatment

Northern Lights Academy will offer day treatment to students in the ninth and 10th grades at Carlton High School, a local option to help older students who struggle with mental or emotional issues that don’t require 24-hour care.

NLA is a special education cooperative serving 12 districts, including all Carlton County schools.

Cloquet superintendent Michael Cary told board members during Monday’s meeting that this will provide an alternative to sending students to Duluth, where there is a wait list.

“We have Northern Lights Academy downstairs, it’s a good Level 4 program that serves some of those higher needs for those kids in grades K-8, but we felt there was a gap in grades 9-12,” Cary said. This will give older kids another option, besides transferring back to their home school districts.

Cary said sharing the cost of these prohibitively expensive services will make them affordable for all the school districts in the cooperative.