A year ago, consultants told Superintendent Bill Webster that Lewiston schools could save $1 million by teaching up to 50 more special education students in-house instead of sending them away for instruction.

Lewiston pays to educate close to 100 students out-of-district each year. That’s more, Webster believes, than any other district in Maine.

He has tentative, complicated plans to fix that: redistricting, a new elementary school and more leeway in special education teachers’ pay so they stay longer.

Across the river in Auburn, the number of students identified as having special needs has gone down over the past few years.

Yet that budget has crept up.

The average instruction cost is $10,400 annually per special ed student, about $6,000 more per year than other students.

“(Special education) is always on the front burner,” Auburn Superintendent Katy Grondin said. “We have to keep an eye on the regulations. We have to keep an eye on the costs. We have to keep an eye on placements.”

As another school year starts, Maine continues to face one of the highest rates of special education enrollment in the country — and the ensuing high costs — despite reforms meant to temper those numbers.

The state currently ranks third — behind Rhode Island and Massachusetts — in percentage of students enrolled in special ed. Ten years ago, Maine had the same third-place national ranking.

For the 2010-11 budget year, the state and Maine’s school districts spent a total of $290.5 million on special education instruction for about 30,000 prekindergarten to grade 12 students, 25 percent of total instructional spending on 15.6 percent of the student population.

On the local level, it means districts are spending substantial percentages of their instructional budgets on special education costs, in many cases almost twice as much, on average, per pupil, as on other students. For example:

— Lewiston is spending 35 percent of its $29 million instructional budget on 16 percent of its students, according to state records.

— Auburn spends about 33 percent of its $20 million instructional budget on 17 percent of its students.

— RSU 10 (including Rumford, Buckfield and Dixfield) spends 28 percent of its $17 million instructional budget on 17 percent of its students. (See chart.)

State officials say changes implemented over the past several years more closely align Maine’s rules to federal ones. That might mean there will be fewer students identified in the future as having special needs; it might cut costs; and it might take Maine out of its perennial spot among states having the highest special education populations.

It’s a lot of “mights.”

Something wrong or something right?

Since 2008, the number of special education students in Maine has dropped, slightly. Webster, Grondin and Paul Stearns, president of the Maine School Superintendents Association, said they couldn’t point to reforms pushed by former Education Commissioner Susan Gendron in 2010 meant to save money and claim any savings as a result.

“It’s very difficult to quantify,” said Stearns, superintendent in SAD 4, which includes Guilford. “There are so many variables.”

For example, a crop of “very, very needy” students is coming up, he said. “We’re seeing a spiked increase in that statewide, and at younger and younger levels. That results in expense.”

Maine adopted a special education system after 1975, when the federal reform was signed into law. For at least the past 20 years, the state has had among the highest rates in the country of students identified as having special needs: 17.3 percent of all students in 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics.

Jill Adams, executive director of the Maine Association of Directors of Special Education, can’t say why.

“We’ve always been accused of being high,” Adams said. “I’m not sure if we’re high or we’re doing a good job. It could be either.”

Each decision to place a child in special education is made by a team of educators, she said, one student at a time.

Jaci Holmes, a federal/state legislative liaison and special ed specialist in the Maine Department of Education, said reforms since 2006 have aligned Maine closely with federal regulations in most instances. But, that change moves slowly.

The 2006 reform, for example, which helps more children in general education before transitioning them to special ed, didn’t hit rule books until 2007 and districts “had until 2011 or 2012 to start really ramping up their intervention strategies,” Holmes said. “So we would only be beginning to see the (results) . . . and is that changing the percentage of students whom they’re determining are disabled.”

She said the state also has stepped up to provide more guidance to school systems, even in simple measures like standardized paperwork. Special education services, and identifying who needs them, have become more uniform statewide, Holmes said — one frequent complaint during Gendron’s efforts.

“Our learning disability rate has dropped the last few years,” said Laurie Lemieux, director of special education for Auburn schools. “I think a lot of it had to with the tightening up of the disability criteria.”

Students who might not be in special ed now receive accommodations in the general education classroom to make that work, she said, when it’s appropriate.

Officials said other changes are being — and can still be — instituted.

This fall, Holmes will work on the next round of proposed special education changes, a “major substantive rule” involving what’s known as Part C, birth to age 2. Hearings start next month.

And there are two areas in which Maine still doesn’t line up with federal regulations, and won’t unless new reforms are proposed: rules on 5-year-olds and teenagers.

By federal law, when a child receiving early-intervention help turns 5, he or she transitions from Child Development Services to kindergarten in the local school system. In Maine, parents of children turning 5 between July 1 and Oct. 15 have had a choice: one more year of CDS or kindergarten.

The cost of an extra year of CDS for about 100 children adds up to $800,000 to $900,000 a year, Holmes said.

The state has repeatedly tried to remove that choice, but the Legislature has refused. This past spring, however, the Legislature did decide the choice would no longer be left to the parent, but to the child’s team of providers. Any savings won’t begin to appear until this winter.

Federal rules also require educators to map out a plan by age 16 for each special education student’s future — school, living or training. In Maine it’s done by freshman year, Adams said. The difference is more time spent, sooner.

One goal: ‘Equal services, less cost’

As the state makes its reforms, local school districts face their own challenges, and are attempting their own fixes.

Lewiston has about 800 special ed students and a $12.2 million budget, up $700,000 from last year. Of that, $4.6 million this year will go to outside tuition for 100 students. (Auburn will pay $1.8 million to school about 40 special education students out-of-district, when the right environment isn’t available in-district.)

In August 2011, Ohio-based American Educational Consultants, hired by Lewiston, found that the city could bring 40 to 50 of those 100 students in-house, hire the necessary staff and train them and save more than $1 million a year.

That can’t happen overnight, Superintendent Webster said. There are no spare classrooms, which could be addressed in redistricting talks and a potential new elementary school. A committee is working on whether to suggest Martel Elementary School be expanded, combined or built anew; it’s on the state’s future funding short list.

“I’m hopeful that in the next few years, we will cut the out-of-district placement in half, providing at least equal services but at less cost,” Webster said.

The next budget cycle will raise questions on how to get there, he said.

Holmes said she couldn’t speak to the reason for Maine’s high, longstanding national ranking when it comes to special ed. Aligning to federal rules and reaching students earlier in general education before referring them to special ed “may decrease the rate over time,” she said.

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