Work by Matthew Stone

Jan. 10, 2010

WAYNE — Three students, sitting in chairs, are lined up before an instructor. Two other instructors bookend the students in a classroom at Wayne Elementary School.

Educational technician Sara Ham, who's in front of the group, holds up a laminated photo of one of the students, seven-year-old Sophie Dostie. "It's Sophie's turn," Ham says, articulating each word clearly.

Sophie stands up, and Ham hands her another laminated photo, this one showing the school's secretary scowling. Sophie places it in a box marked "mad."

Chris Unganst's turn is next. The five-year-old places a laminated card showing a smiling school staff member into a box marked "happy."

The third student, five-year-old Emma Thibodeau, chooses to lie on the floor as her classmates match images with emotions.

Governed by a timer, staff members swiftly transition the students to their next activity — one-on-one time with instructors — once they're done matching faces with emotions.

The three students have autism, and they're part of the Wayne Regional Autism Program, which launched at the beginning of the school year.
It's an intensive, one-on-one, treatment and education option for Capital-area students diagnosed with the developmental disorder that's the root of varying degrees of arbitrary, anti-social behavior.

The program is the Maranacook-area school district's answer to private, special-purpose programs where Maine school districts annually send hundreds of students with acute special needs. Private programs cost the state and school districts between $105 to $511 per student daily, or up to $102,000 each year, plus the cost of specialized transportation. The cost of treating students with severe forms of autism, like those in Wayne, often exceeds $300 daily.

Maine's average per-pupil expenditure during the 2007-08 academic year was $9,370, or $54 daily.

The Wayne program charges the sending school districts a $200 daily rate, or about $40,000 a year for the school year and some summer programming. Plus, Maranacook special education director Lew Collins notes, keeping students within their home region cuts transportation costs.

"We want the kids to be closer to home," he said.

And special education directors want to provide services to children at a lower cost, especially as state education officials look to save money. That's the area of education spending that's grown fastest in recent years.

"The time has come for public programs to bloom," Collins said.

A public program push

A handful of public school programs for children with autism have opened in Maine in the past decade. The Wayne program joins existing public school offerings in Gorham and Old Town, for example.

State Education Commissioner Susan Gendron told lawmakers in September that she's pushing special education directors to establish regional, public school programs for children with autism. State education officials, she said, are searching for a public model that can be replicated throughout Maine.

"You have to have enough of a population," Gendron said in a recent interview. "You have to find good staff and it can be successful."

The Wayne program — which can accommodate eight students — has access to a critical mass of children with autism by opening its doors to school districts throughout the Capital area.

This year, all three students come from outside the Maranacook-areaschool district.

Their home school districts pay Maranacook tuition, translating into revenue for the Readfield-based district.

"Our whole goal is to have these kids be as functional as possible in a public school," Collins said. "When you can accomplish that level of functionality, that's everything in the world."

Public program skeptics

But not everyone is as enthusiastic about a wide-scale transfer of children with autism to public schools.

"My concern about public school programs is that what they are doing is making it more cost effective rather than meeting the needs of a child," said Lynda Mazzola, a Winthrop speech and language pathologist and president of the Autism Society of Maine.

The private schools in Maine that treat children with autism, Mazzola said, use a variety of treatment methods to help children with the disorder. The Wayne program, she points out, uses one approach: Applied Behavior Analysis.

"They need training in more than just ABA," Mazzola said. "They need training in a lot of other approaches and a lot of other theories. They need to be more eclectic in their approach."

Applied Behavior Analysis involves teachers in identifying students' behaviors and choosing specific treatments to change those behaviors.

Collins contracted Quality Behavioral Solutions, a Massachusetts company, to set up programming, train staff members and provide regular expert consultation in Wayne.

"You want what has research behind it," Collins said, citing a 2009 report by Maine's health and human services and education departments that finds Applied Behavior Analysis overall a more effective treatment than other approaches.

For Mazzola, the best treatment for a child with autism depends on the child's specific condition.

"No two children are the same. Therefore, there isn't one methodology that works for all children," she said. "For a public school to implement a program that uses one particular approach or technique is not meeting the needs of all children on the autism spectrum."

But Lisa Kinney, a Board Certified Behavior Analyst with Quality Behavioral Solutions, says the approach used at the Wayne Regional Autism Program accounts for the three students' differences.

For example, Kinney said, when Emma began lying on the floor during class activities, she and the autism program teachers started discussing what actions they could take to change the behavior.

"This is an ABA program with individualized programs for each student," she said. "As a taxpayer, you want what's most efficient, what's most effective, what's going to get you the best bang for the taxpayer buck."

Autism more common

Maine's push for more public programs to treat children with autism comes as the ranks of those with autism are growing.

One in every 91 children in the United States has some form of autism, according to an October 2009 study in the journal "Pediatrics." That's up from a rate of one in every 150 children in 2007.

Maine has the third highest prevalence of autism in the United States. According to an analysis by FightingAutism.org, one in every 80 Maine eight-year-olds during the 2008-09 school year had some form of the disorder.

Only Minnesota and Oregon had higher rates.

Even if Maine shifts largely to educating children with autism in public schools, private special-purpose schools won't go away, education officials say.

"It is difficult to believe that simply moving funds from private special-purpose schools to the public schools and using an ABA approach will meet all students' needs," Linda Butler, director of research and special projects for Spurwink Services, wrote in December in the Portland Press Herald. Spurwink operates seven private, special-purpose schools throughout the state.

Gendron, the education commissioner, does not dispute this. "There are some kids where you need such a level of expertise," she said.

The public advantage

Mazzola, of the Autism Society of Maine, acknowledges a public school program treating children with autism offers one advantage that private programs do not.

"They probably have more opportunity to be mainstreamed with their typical peers," she said.

Kinney said the three Wayne students spend their daily recess periods with mainstream Wayne Elementary School students.

"Many of the students are motivated to interact with these three," she said.

And, Kinney said, the autism program staff members plan to start organizing joint activities with mainstream classrooms, especially as their students improve their classroom behavior.

"That's one of the nice things about having this in a public school," Kinney said. "As they're ready, they can start going in and learning."

In the four months Sophie Dostie has participated in the Wayne program, she's made strides toward functioning in a mainstream classroom, says her mother, Wendy Hochendoner.

"Now, she's talking in conversation," said Hochendoner, of Winthrop. "Before, she would respond if you were to ask her questions. Now, she's coming up and starting the conversation."

For seven-year-old Sophie, whose family moved to Maine from Oregon four years ago, this academic year is her first in an Applied Behavior Analysis setting.

"She had a lot of regression, and just took many steps back" last year, Hochendoner said. "Last year, if you asked her in the morning if she wanted to go to school, it would be a big meltdown."

This year, Sophie is excited to attend school, according to her mother, and she joins her sister in a nightly homework routine, sitting down and writing newly learned verbs and animal names.

"I don't think we ever realized how intelligent she was," Hochendoner said. "Now, we're starting to see the academic part come out."

Matthew Stone — 623-3811, ext. 435
mstone@centralmaine.com