EDITORIAL: Maine can't reorganize its way out of problems in helping kids with disabilities

Nov. 21--The LePage administration is planning a major overhaul in the way the state delivers special education services to preschool-age children with disabilities: It wants to move responsibility for special education services for 3- to 5-year-olds from the state to local school districts.

The Maine Department of Education and Child Development Services, the state entity currently charged with providing those services, have been open about the current system's shortcomings. They admit that some children aren't receiving the services they're entitled to receive under federal law, that it takes too long for some children to start receiving services, and that specialists in some areas aren't available to provide needed services to young kids with disabilities.

But shifting the responsibility of delivering services such as occupational, physical and speech therapy, and early special education for about 3,500 children to local school districts won't automatically solve the problem.

For years, Child Development Services has been in a state of limbo. The Baldacci administration tried twice, and failed twice, to reorganize the agency in much the same way the LePage administration proposes. As state revenues tightened in advance of the Great Recession, the Legislature cut a third of its state funding in 2006. In 2010, Child Development Services stopped being able to bill MaineCare -- the insurance program for low-income residents, which the federal government funds with the state at about a two-to-one ratio -- for many of the services it provided children with disabilities. The Maine Department of Health and Human Services had altered MaineCare rules to clarify that it would only cover "medically necessary" services, as opposed to more education-oriented services.

For much of the last decade, Child Development Services' budget has rarely balanced.

Throughout it all, the agency has been subject to the same legal obligations to provide special education services to children who qualify for them.

But over time, what was once a high-performing system relative to the rest of the nation has slipped. The state has become one of the slowest when it comes to screening infants and toddlers to determine their eligibility for special services and setting them in motion. The number of children served over the past decade has slipped at more than double the pace of the state's population decline among children younger than 6.

When children with disabilities don't receive intervention early in their lives -- while their brain circuity is still developing -- to address autism, speech delays, or delays in the development of motor skills, children are shortchanged. Intervention early in life can prevent some developmental problems from escalating. Children who don't receive that early intervention potentially miss a chance at living more normal lives as they grow older.

From the state's perspective, a more normal life for a child with a disability means less reliance on state services and special education. Indeed, much research has shown that early intervention pays off. A study of a behavioral intervention for young children with autism, for example, found that the intervention led to savings of $19,000 a year once the intervention was finished. The intervention was expensive, but it paid off within a few years.

The number of Maine students with autism has increased more than 500 percent over the last two decades.

Whatever the model Maine uses to provide services to young children with disabilities, it needs to be a robust one. It's in Maine's financial interest to spend the money needed to ensure children receive services more promptly and to ensure needed services are available by paying service providers more.

If the state shifts responsibility for many of the services to local school districts, it can't expect Child Development Services' problems to simply disappear. But Maine can have a robust new setup for intervening early in the lives of children with disabilities with the right level of investment.

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