MADAWASKA – Tish Henry says she has walked a tightrope the last two years trying to get a better educational experience for her now 11-year-old autistic son.

She tried working through local officials, went to federal authorities seeking redress under civil rights statutes, and plans next to turn to the courts in her battle with the Madawaska School Department and its special education director.

Her estranged husband, James Henry, said recently he has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division seeking an investigation into the conduct of the school department and its agents.

The Henrys’ struggle can be viewed as an extreme example of the problems faced by some families dealing with autism in Maine, where educating students with special needs is the law, but no statewide standards or protocols exist specifically for autistic children in schools.

Tish Henry said she and her husband attempted two years ago to have their autistic son’s education program changed to eliminate summer breaks, explaining that interruptions in the educational pattern cause regression very quickly in autistic children. Both of the Henrys’ sons had special needs, but most of the couple’s efforts were on behalf of their elder who had been diagnosed with mild retardation and autism, she said.

The Madawaska School Department, which was in a period of upheaval based on financial and policy disagreements with the school board, refused the Henrys’ initial request in 2005 through special education director Barb Pineau. Subsequent requests in 2005 and 2006 to interim Superintendents Carlton Dubois and Raymond Freve and the Madawaska School Committee also were denied.

“We will go to the ends of the Earth for our son,” Tish Henry said. “We wanted him to get the best possible education.”

Autism

Autism is a developmental disability that appears in young children and affects the normal function of the brain. The impairment affects development of social interaction and communication skills, causing difficulties in verbal and nonverbal communication, and social, leisure and play activities.

Maine’s Department of Education indicated recently there are 1,760 autistic children in Maine schools. In 2003, the department offered services to 1,018 autistic children.

There are no standards or specific protocols to help children and adults with autism in Maine, Nancy Intrieri-Cronin, executive director of the Autism Society of Maine, said Monday.

“However, it is typically very important to have year-round programming for children with autism,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Predictability and sameness often reduce anxiety and injurious behaviors and allow children on the spectrum to change and learn.

“An unstructured summer can set children back in their education by months,” she wrote.

Dr. James Killarney, professor of psychology and education at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, agreed with Intrieri-Cronin’s comment on standards and protocols.

“There are no protocols that I know of in Maine, but there are consultants that work with schools in the St. John Valley who are very effective in assisting children with autism,” Killarney said Monday. “There are recommendations out there, but no standards.”

Killarney said each child is unique, but a high degree of structure and routine is effective. He said summer programs should be available, but funding is not what it should be, and that’s a gray area.

He said schools are suffering in Maine, and there are pressures from administrations to keep numbers of special education children down at times. He did not know whether this applies in Madawaska in the Henry case.

A new turn

Henry said the school department, in turning down her requests for program changes, claimed there were medication issues with her son and that she planned to leave the area anyway.

But Henry said her son’s doctor indicated her child’s health was stable and there were no medication issues. She also had no plans to leave the area, she said.

While Henry has continued to push for what she thinks her son needs for education structure, the school department, whose superintendent left three years ago, has had three interim superintendents in as many years. The Madawaska School Board, which would be another normal avenue for Henry to pursue, has been deeply divided over the superintendent matter and has experienced changes in membership.

For Henry, it was as if she had to keep starting over with each new superintendent and was making no progress. Then the situation took a new turn. Special education director Pineau filed at least one report with the Maine Department of Health and Human Services in late 2006 alleging that Henry was leaving the autistic child home alone in the evenings. DHHS investigated but took no action.

Henry said DHHS found the child was unhappy in school and the allegations against her were unsubstantiated.

Investigations

Last month an investigator with the Boston office of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights concluded that Madawaska School Department officials had retaliated against Henry when they filed abuse and neglect charges against her with DHHS on two occasions in late 2006.

Henry feels vindicated by the report and says she will pursue the matter, civilly and criminally, in Maine courts. She said her attorney, Richard O’Meara of Portland, is preparing the paperwork for her to seek monetary damages and the ouster of the special education director.

“They have tried to make us look bad,” she said. “This situation has been swept under the rug by two superintendents and the Madawaska School Committee.”

O’Meara did not return multiple telephone calls.

Henry claims her autistic son became suicidal and was hospitalized for 13 days because of the school department’s actions against the family. The child and his brother now live by choice with Henry’s estranged husband in California. The boy is being educated in an autistic program in that state, she said, and is doing better.

“I have an extensive file on what Pineau and the school department did to us,” she said. “They tried to get my parental rights removed. … She [Pineau] should not be working with students.”

Pineau did not return multiple messages seeking comment.

Paul Malinsky, who became interim superintendent of schools at Madawaska just before the report from the Office of Civil Rights became public, said Wednesday he knows few of the primary details of the Henry case, but he intends to look for a solution to Henry’s complaint after the controversy dies down a little.

He didn’t know whether Henry’s son was the only autistic child in the department, but Malinsky is convinced that parents need to work in tandem with school officials to take care of problems. He would have liked to have seen the Henry case go to mediation for a possible solution.

“I need to sit and talk with Mrs. Henry to learn from this situation,” he said Wednesday. “We can only go so far with special education, and we have pupil evaluation teams for special education personnel, professionals and parents. There is also [the] appeals [process] if parents do not agree.

“After things calm down a bit, I will try to sit and talk with Mrs. Henry,” he continued. “I realize her child is no longer in the department, but I would like to see what can be done for the future.”

While Pineau has not returned the newspaper’s telephone calls, she has publicly denied making two reports to DHHS. She claims to have made only one report.

According to the St. John Valley Times, a weekly newspaper published in Madawaska, Pineau again denied recently at a school committee hearing that she had made the second complaint to DHHS. At the meeting, attended by about 40 people who were mostly educators and supporters of Pineau’s, she could not explain why the U.S. Department of Education report showed she had made a second call.

Pineau blamed the problem on the conflicts in the Madawaska School Committee. She met with the committee in executive session that evening, but no action was taken afterward.

Carolyn F. Lazaris, program and administrative manager for the Region 1 Office of Civil Rights for the U.S. Department of Education, wrote in her six-page report that a “preponderance of the evidence” in her investigation shows that “more likely than not the retaliation [against Henry] had occurred.”

According to Lazaris, the district filed abuse and neglect charges with Maine DHHS on Sept. 18, 2006, and on Nov. 29, 2006, resulting in a DHHS investigation of Henry in December 2006. The school department did not give Lazaris the reasons the complaints against Henry were made.

A complex issue

The Madawaska School Department has agreed to a consent agreement as a result of the finding that calls for developing a nonretaliation policy, its dissemination and training of personnel. It also must file annual reports on its progress with the Office of Civil Rights and review its policy on mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect for consistency and compliance.

Yves Dube, chairman of the Madawaska School Committee, said recently he had hoped another resolution could have been found for the situation.

“It’s a complex issue,” he said. “I believe this could have been resolved much earlier if the parents would have gone to mediation with their issues with the school department.”

Instead, people are only looking at the Office of Civil Rights report, he said. He said his views are his own and not those of the school committee.

He is sure Pineau made the first telephone call to DHHS and is not sure who made the second call, but that it was made from the local school. He said he did not have enough information to determine who made the second call.

“The family feels the school did something wrong, and if there is culpability, we may have to seek counsel,” Dube said. “They feel they were not well-served by the school.”

Dube felt confident that the Henrys’ problem could have been resolved through mediation with a neutral person appointed by the state. The family refused mediation after the school department gave them “information steering them in the wrong direction,” Dube said.

“Instead of using legal directions offered them, they went in a bad direction,” Dube said. “That’s unfortunate.”

Dube said the state reviewed the Madawaska Special Education Program in May and felt the program was working well.

“Parents have a right to sue the school,” he said of the Henrys’ decision. “I would rather find another solution.”