Old Town officials seek help with special education costs> Baldacci hears about problems with unfunded mandates

OLD TOWN — The Old Town School Board and City Council told U.S. Rep. John Baldacci at a joint meeting Wednesday night that something had to be done about unfunded federal and state mandates pertaining to special education.

Baldacci listened as one official after another spoke of skyrocketing special education costs in Old Town.

Superintendent John Grady said that for 1995-96, $1 million of the $8.5 million school budget was earmarked for special education costs. Little government funding is available to carry out state and federal mandates for special education.

The federal government provides $56,248, approximately 6 percent of the total expenditures for special education in Old Town.

Assistant Superintendent Owen Maurais pointed out that state rules provide for free and equal public education for all between ages 5 and 20. Federal law requires schools to provide a free appropriate public education, regardless of the severity of a student’s disability.

Council Chairman Virginia Fortier told Baldacci that there is a deep concern about what special education is costing taxpayers.

Councilor Robert Fiske said Old Town had one of the strongest special education programs in the state, but the cost was becoming extraordinary. He asked Baldacci for his assistance in helping the city reduce that cost.

No one proposed doing away with special education. What they were asking for, said Fiske, was that the state and federal governments honor the commitments they made when the mandates were handed down. The federal government had promised to pay 40 percent of the costs, but today it pays only 6 percent.

Councilor Albert Duplessis said employees of the city’s two largest employers, the University of Maine and the James River Co. paper mill, have not received raises in three years. Fortier added that the city’s tax rate had gone up $5 per $1,000 valuation during the last two years.

Maurais said this year officials found that when school opened two new families had moved into the community and the town faced a $250,000 cost for special education placement of two children in out-of-state programs. The money had not been budgeted.

Baldacci was presented with cost breakdowns of the entire special education costs for Old Town. He asked if anyone had a solution. Could the program be changed?

Maurais said that several years ago the Bangor area schools regionalized and created the present Old Town program. He did not advocate changing the program.

Grady said the problem was one of money. He asked about the possibility of federal block grants to help pay the costs.

Baldacci said that the majority in the U.S. Senate was talking about scrapping many federal school-related programs and turning them back over to the states. He predicted that if the Senate succeeds in killling the Women and Infant Care program or school lunch funding, President Clinton would not sign the bills into law.

Baldacci said he was for more school funding, even if the money had to come from the CIA and military budgets. The House of Representatives is talking about cutting $100 million from special education, he said.

Maurais suggested establishing a maximum level of spending for communities that would trigger an in-flow of federal funds if it were exceeded.

Grady said that a state law triggers funding supplements to communities when a certain cost level is reached, but the measure was never funded.

Baldacci said he was aware of the problem and it was affecting towns all over the state, not just Old Town. He said if the law was good enough to be a federal law, then the federal government should be a helping partner in implementing it. The state is strapped for additional funds and dedicates 50 percent of its budget to education, he said.

Baldacci advised the town officials to contact Kay Rand in Gov. Angus King’s office and ask her to arrange a meeting with the commissioner of education and Sue Bell, the state’s liaison with the congressional delegation.

That way, he said, they will have local, state and federal officials coming together to solve the problem. He urged them to communicate with other communities throughout the state with similar special education costs.

Some attendants brought up discrepancies in school funding between southern and northern Maine, but Baldacci cautioned them against getting into disputes with southern Maine communities.

“Maine is just one state and there are just four of us in Washington. We have to work together. I would hate to see fighting going on back home,” said Baldacci.