SAD 37 plan for troubled boy appealed Cherryfield mother objects to son’s placement in KidsPeace program

CHERRYFIELD – A Cherryfield mother is challenging the ruling from an arbitration hearing that upholds the plan of SAD 37 to place her emotionally troubled son in KidsPeace rather than working with him in the public school in Cherryfield.

A national private program with a facility in Ellsworth, KidsPeace specializes in working with troubled students. SAD 37 now has two other students placed with KidsPeace and provides door-to-door transportation daily.

Charlee Ormanovich on Friday filed an appeal with the Washington County Superior Court, which was her option within 30 days of the hearing’s ruling. The filing means the KidsPeace placement, which was scheduled to start Monday, Dec. 20, will be on hold until the appeal is considered by the courts.

The woman’s 12-year-old son will continue to receive tutoring two hours a day with two educational aides, a special service that SAD 37 provides the boy in Milbridge. The aides pick him up and drop him off at his home.

Ormanovich says her son is responding well to that arrangement, but still seeks an in-classroom situation at Cherryfield Elementary School.

“I figure it’s Cherryfield Elementary’s job and responsibility to educate him in the public school,” Ormanovich said. “My options, according to SAD 37 are KidsPeace, or end of discussion.”

SAD 37 administrators say they are ill-prepared to handle a student with the boy’s special needs in any of the district’s five grammar schools.

The Ormanovich family arrived in September in Cherryfield – a place where they wish to make their long-term home, the mother said. They last lived in North Carolina, and also have lived in Iowa, Wyoming and Montana in the last two years.

The 12-year-old has been in 14 schools in at least six states since kindergarten, the report indicates. One of his problems, his mother said, is trauma he experiences when he moves and enters new schools.

“We are trying to find a place where we can stay and live, for [the boy’s] sake,” Ormanovich said.

The family and SAD 37 have been at odds since Sept. 17, when Ormanovich tried to enroll her son. But when the Cherryfield principal received a report from the North Carolina school the boy last attended, he said SAD 37 was unlikely to be able to accommodate the boy and his needs could be better met at a placement such as KidsPeace.

Represented by a Disability Rights Center attorney in Augusta, the mother asked the Maine Department of Education to arrange for an independent hearing officer to hear the case. That took place last month in Ellsworth at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.

The school prevailed in the ruling announced earlier this week.

“The hearing officer agreed that the appropriate placement for this student is KidsPeace rather than the neighborhood school,” Eric Herlan, the Portland attorney who represents SAD 37, said Friday.

When the Augusta attorney declined to work further with the family on its appeal, the mother filed her appeal in the Machias courthouse on her own.

Susan Hodgkins is SAD 37’s director of special education.

“The Individuals with Disability Education Act provides for a continuum of services, and we are providing for this student,” Hodgkins said Friday.

“Some students need only someone as a consultant, and then there are kids who need more than can be provided at a public school.

“We keep children first, no matter how diverse their needs.”