Close the deal for special needs children in Maine

In the early 1980s a group of commissioners and superintendents assembled to discuss the growing expense of educating special needs children in the care of the state, state agency clients. Separated from their families, in too many instances for horrific reasons, these children entered a foster care system marginally prepared to meet their needs in communities where the local school systems did not have special education programs in place. Sadly, these children were constantly moved in the hope of finding an educational fit that did not exist.

For just one of these children the expense could be a significant local tax burden. Their sudden arrival could be a budget catastrophe. The group came together to figure out how state children could remain in their communities, especially if the state funding catalyzed the development of local special education programs. The idea was not just educational, it was humanitarian. With full state support, these discarded children would at least have a chance at a productive life in their home community. The proposal was clearly logical and legal.

Shortly thereafter, the Legislature passed a full funding model for “state agency clients”, and local school systems directed their creative energy to designing and implementing programs for students who they knew would be with them for some time. In no place was this responsibility taken more seriously than in the Bangor School Department and a new collaborative called the Southern Penobscot Regional Program for Children with Exceptionalities (SPRPCE).

With remarkable versatility these programs have fashioned instructional plans that address a growing complexity of learning problems. The mentally retarded child in a stable home was often a blessing, but the multiply handicapped child removed from an abusive environment was a tragedy. The educational solutions, while never simple, became a complicated coordination of individualized instruction, physical and mental therapies, and behavior modification. As families have disintegrated, the number of children increased dramatically and costs rose sharply. Unfortunately, the law of unintended consequences set in.

State agency client children did not stay in their home communities. They gravitated to communities with well-conceived educational programs using the foster care guarantee of no educational expense to the local taxpayer. As real estate prices in the lower half of the state discouraged foster care development, foster care in the Bangor region went from a cottage industry to a full economic force of over $30 million.

In 2000-2001 the educational expense for state agency client children in the southern Penobscot region was $2,852,262. Bangor and its neighbors willingly worked to give these children an educational experience that would give them success and stability.

In January the Maine Department of Education proposed transferring 20 percent of the expense to local school districts. This announcement followed a tiny increase in General Purpose Aid to schools that guaranteed to cripple taxpayers. For the Southern Penobscot Region the proposed cut in state agency client support is a local tax increase of $570, 452 pure and simple. For Bangor, the figure is $204,000. Three aspects are pertinent: One, these children belong to the state. Two, the laws that created this problem were promulgated by the state. And three, while the Department of Human Services can receive supplemental funding for their home life, schools cannot get additional assistance for the very same children.

During the past week the governor offered a revised budget that included the restoration of proposed cuts to state agency client education amounting to $9.2 million. Obviously, this is good news for schools, the children, and the local taxpayer. The revised budget is before the Appropriations Committee and must compete with other proposals. It should be clear that failure to support the education of state agency clients: One, abandons children repeatedly abandoned, and two, follows the lead of the federal government that failed, in 1974, to fund its own mandate to educate special children.

Bangor and the Southern Penobscot Region Program for Children with Exceptionalities will continue to support these children. But the deal was, is and should be, we will do the hard work, if the state fully supports the expense. The governor has presented a solution to what promised to be a significant local tax burden. It is up to the Legislature to close the deal.

Robert Ervin, Ed.D is the superintendent of schools in Bangor.