11/30/2008
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Staff Photo by Jim Evansfrom the Kennebec Journal
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The Margaret Murphy Center for Children serves 70 students who require some of the most intensive educational and emotional support available in Maine.
The students -- most with autism -- cannot function in public schools. They exhibit aggressive behavior. They sometimes injure themselves and destroy property if left alone, according to director Michelle Hathaway.
Providing these students with the one-on-one attention they require costs the 20 public school districts that send them to its centers in Auburn, Lewiston and Monmouth more than $500 per student each day, plus the cost of transportation.
"The kids that we serve are really challenging kids who need this placement," Hathaway said.
But in a season of cutbacks, it will become increasingly difficult for public school districts to meet their costly responsibility to students with special needs so acute they cannot remain in their schools.
Public-school alternatives to specialized private programs, which would save districts the high cost of specialized transportation, are among the money-saving choices being considered by state officials. The Department of Education is counting on school-district consolidation to make it more feasible for districts to introduce such specialized programs.
Maine schools place hundreds of students each year in outside-of-district programs that serve children with autism, mental illness, rare learning disabilities, emotional disorders and other needs.
Nearly 70 percent of these special-needs students in recent years have attended private programs, like the Margaret Murphy Center, which charge per-student daily rates between $110 and $518.13. Public schools pay on average $46 each day to educate most students, according to state figures.
School districts paid $30.7 million to place students in private programs during the 2007-08 school year, out of total spending of more than $978 million. State government assumed another $30.1 million that year to place students in private, special-purpose programs, according to the Maine Department of Education.
"These are programs that are taking really severe kids with really severe disabilities," said Nancy Connolly, who oversees private, special-purpose programs for the Maine Department of Education. "The service they provide is invaluable to students and their families."
Budget challenge
Programs like the Margaret Murphy Center operate year-round, rather than only during the academic year.
"Transitions are really difficult for them," Connolly said. "It needs to be consistent for them."
At a $518 daily rate per child for education and day treatment, the program can cost school districts more than $100,000 in a year. Specialized transportation can add tens of thousands of dollars more to the price tag.
Private, special-purpose programs on the less expensive end of the spectrum can cost districts approximately $25,000 per year for each student, plus transportation costs.
The districts pay the first $32,000 -- four times the state's average per-pupil expenditure -- in program costs, according to Department of Education Management Analyst Tom Coulombe. The state pays the rest.
Gov. John Baldacci earlier this month unveiled more than $27 million in cuts in state aid to local school districts this fiscal year. More cuts could follow next school year.
State and federal law requires that school districts provide the services special-needs children require. Due to the legal obligation, it's not an expenditure that can be easily cut when budgets need to shrink, Connolly said.
Parents, special-education directors, teachers and others participate in meetings to decide which program best suits a child with special needs.
"That's all a decision that's made by the individual planning team," said Jill Adams, executive director of Maine Administrators of Services for Children with Disabilities. "You always go where you think the children will benefit from their education in the least-restrictive environment."
"It doesn't always come back to, 'I want to send my child to a private placement,'" said Cathy Dionne, program director at the Autism Society of Maine. "It comes back to what are the needs of the child."
Controlling costs
As lawmakers looked last winter to make up a $190 million budget shortfall, Department of Education officials asked private, special-purpose programs to stem rate increases.
"Because funding was so uncertain, we voted to freeze all rates to their previous year's tab," said Connolly.
When department officials meet next spring to set private programs' rates, another rate freeze is possible, the officials say.
In another effort to control costs, legislators also will likely discuss capping program administrative costs, Education Commissioner Susan Gendron said.
"As we look at school districts and others, we've focused on administrative costs," Gendron said. "It does seem appropriate that we look at administrative costs for special-purpose, private programs."
While absorbing another rate freeze would not be easy, officials from private programs said they would understand if it became necessary.
At Spurwink, which serves more than 300 special-needs students at seven locations in Maine, a freeze would likely cause the organization to defer building improvements, spokeswoman Donna Murphy said.
"For us, it just means we have to be very cautious in any spending that we do," she said. "We aren't able to provide salary increases in the way that we'd like to be able to do."
Spurwink operates programs in Auburn, Brunswick, Casco, Chelsea, Cornville, Portland and South Portland.
In Bath, Providence's Merrymeeting Center will limit hiring, perhaps relying on current staff members to assume extra responsibilities, executive director Lora Perry said.
Providence's Merrymeeting Center serves 23 students from ages 2 to 21. Perry said the center has avoided rate increases for the past nine years.
At Margaret Murphy, Hathaway said, there is limited flexibility because most students require one-on-one attention. Instead, the school will have to look at cutting a healthy-snacks program, eliminating public outings and laying off secretarial staff.
Public alternatives
Longer term, Department of Education officials say they hope to see additional public alternatives develop to serve special-needs children.
"We've actually been encouraging districts to look at other types of solutions for quite some time," Gendron said.
When districts provide specialized services in their schools, they can often provide the services at a lower cost, Connolly and Gendron said. Districts would save most from reducing the cost of transporting children outside of district boundaries.
Adams, of Maine Administrators of Services for Children with Disabilities, said school districts prefer to keep special-education students inside the district when the necessary services are available.
"We're really required to think long and hard about" sending children outside the district, Adams said. "We want the kids in the buildings, the public schools, as much as possible."
Still, it has to make sense for school districts to start programs serving students with autism and other acute special needs, Gendron said.
"Sometimes, it's not cost-effective if you only have one child who needs that program," Gendron said. "When you have three, four or five kids who need that program, then it becomes more cost-effective."
In recent years, districts have collaborated when creating special-needs programming in order to have a critical mass of students.
In 2004, schools in the Bonny Eagle, Gorham, Raymond, Scarborough, Westbrook and Windham districts partnered to create the Sebago Educational Alliance. Old Town has long provided public programming for students with autism and other special needs.
When Gendron served as superintendent of Windham's schools, she said the district saved $10,000 per student when it started serving some special-needs students in the town's schools.
When special-needs children enroll in programs in their home districts, parents can more easily be involved in their children's education, said Donna Madore, special-education director for Augusta's schools.
"When their students are here in Augusta, they have access to the program and the staff more readily," she said.
Madore has run a program for autistic children at Augusta's Lincoln Elementary School for seven years. It serves 11 Augusta students during the school year and 15 days during the summer. The approximate daily rate, Madore said, is $187 per student. The district also has to pay costs for transportation, but only within city lines.
"It certainly isn't $65,000 per year, per student," she said.
Madore said the district developed the program when two autistic students moved into the district after attending private programs. Now, because Augusta's schools have enough students who require the services, it makes financial sense to operate the program, Madore said.
"Larger districts can make it happen since we have more students," she said.
As Maine's 290 school districts consolidate into 80, there will be more large districts with students requiring special services, Gendron said.
"There will be new opportunities," she said, "because they'll have significant numbers of children."
Matthew Stone -- 623-3811, Ext. 435
mstone@centralmaine.com
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