It wasn’t too many years ago that children facing physical, mental and behavioral disabilities were herded into a single classroom in the local elementary school. They spent their days in that room, attended to by aides, and mixed with mainstream students only in brief moments when they left for lunch, or to board the special bus they rode home. A more enlightened community committed to ending such segregation, and with the nudging of federal law, said good riddance to that approach to special education.

Now, special education entails a host of programs and approaches aimed at reaching those students with disabilities, each working toward moving them to a less restrictive environment. It’s a noble endeavor. And it’s costly.

Maine enrolls about 35,000, or 19 percent of its students in special ed programs, the second-highest percentage in the U.S. In the state fiscal year 2006, $282 million was spent on special ed, up 3.5 percent over the previous year (though much steeper increases were recorded in the 1990s).

One area where public funds and programs may actually reduce later special ed needs – and ultimately save public money – is in prenatal care. Too many children suffer from serious developmental delays because their mothers drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes or used drugs during pregnancy. There are screening stops in various social service programs that seek to alert expectant mothers to the risk they take by engaging in such behavior, but more could be done.

William Shuttleworth, superintendent of the Bath school system, which is on its way to becoming Regional School Unit 1, speaking at a recent Maine Center for Economic Policy conference on streamlining state government, suggested a simple but profound step to combating rising special ed costs. Provide for all the health care needs of pregnant women who do not have health insurance. That health care could include nutritional screening, and referral to social service programs that provide free food and vitamins for mothers-to-be.

In such a program, there would be ample opportunity to counsel the women – and perhaps their partners – about the importance of steering clear of alcohol and drugs.

Dr. Shuttleworth also suggested that Maine schools may be overidentifying special ed students, especially boys. Despite what pharmaceutical representatives would say, boys are supposed to be boisterous, inquisitive and active. Displaying those characteristics does not necessarily make them in need of drugs for attention deficit disorder.

With rising costs and limited state resources, these are reasonable suggestions that could also improve education for thousands of children.