Beaufort County Schools knows budget cuts are coming. Just how deep those cuts will be depends upon what the North Carolina General Assembly does – or does not do – to funding for public schools.

Beaufort County Schools leaders are preparing for those expected reductions in funding, as they should. Different areas of the school system will be affected by those budget cuts.

When it comes to one area, we hope those cuts remain as they are now ą╩ nonexistent.

After spending several hours last week with four special-needs, or exceptional, students and seeing the benefits they receive from the school system’s program for students with physical-developmental and/or mental-developmental challenges, we are convinced it’s one program that should remain untouched during any upcoming budget cuts. What makes these students so special that they should not feel the effects of budget cuts the school system will have to make?

If one had spent those hours with them last week, one would have the answer to that question.

Beaufort County Schools has wonderful teachers who work with “exceptional” students to help them overcome their disabilities. Two come to mind: Ginny Batts and Jennifer Woolard. We know first-hand of their work with such students. Batts took four of her students on an excursion to the Transition Fair at Beaufort County Community College last week, then to the North Carolina Estuarium. The fair was designed to give students with challenges or disabilities exposure to agencies that may be of assistance to them after high-school graduation.

The school system’s program for such students helps make them more self-sufficient. The more self-sufficient these people become, the less of a burden they place on taxpayers because they do not require as many government-provided services and programs that other, less self-sufficient people with disabilities often require.

It’s cheaper in the long run for the school system to have a program for special-needs students than to not educate and prepare these students so they are as self-sufficient as possible when they leave the school system and won’t be such a burden on already-overburdened and costly programs for adults with special needs. Investing in them during their younger years so they become more self-sufficient will be less expensive than not preparing them to face life as adults with special needs.

If Batts, Woolard and other teachers in programs for special-needs students can provide the caring and commitment these students need, there must be a way to keep such programs up and running. We urge school leaders ą and the Legislature ą to find that way.

The return on that investment is beyond measurement.