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Round up: A look
at residential schools in
New England
MAINE
(October
2004 Issue)
In the state of Maine, there are only five residential schools
for special education children. It's not that the population of
the largest state in New England is shrinking, but that the state's
Department of Education has made a huge effort in recent years to
change the way these children are educated.
Under a program created in the late 1980s, the department has worked
to keep SPED youngsters out of residential programs. According to
Christine Barlett, consultant for exceptional children for the department,
very few children are placed in residential schooling by the state
for special education purposes. Of the few who are, they are mostly
placed in one school, the Elan School in Poland, which is licensed
by the state of Maine as a private, special purpose residential
school.
If children who need special education schooling are placed in
residential homes for other reasons, she adds, the goal is to have
them attend their local public school where they are living.
Children may be placed in these schools by other agencies, of course,
for reasons other than educational such as behavioral issues or
instability at home. In these cases, the Department of Education
would only cover their education if they attend the local public
school.
"Almost all of the students are placed in these residential schools
for treatment reasons by what is now the Department of Health and
Human Services," says Bartlett. "They oversee services to children
with developmental disorders."
The goal of mainstreaming children is to help them survive in situations
more closely approximating what they would encounter in the world
outside the residential schools, to prepare them for the "real world."
"We've been chipping away at having kids be totally segregated,"
Bartlett adds. "There's a concept here of offering the least restrictive
environment and keeping these kids, if at all possible, in their
homes and communities."
The Department of Health and Human Services has also recently created
a task force to look at the way children in state custody are placed
within the system, also with the idea that the children should be
in more permanent housing.
Catherine Robertson Souter
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