A bill proposed to help children with disabilities actually represents a “staggering” loss of funding to public schools in the form of a “blank check,” would be a hit to rural districts, and unconstitutionally routes state money to private institutions “at the discretion of private individuals,” according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The voucher program in is also “antithetical to both quality and equality” in education, the plaintiffs said.

In the lawsuit, the Montana Quality Education Coalition, or MQEC, and Disability Rights Montana allege HB 393 is unconstitutional in four different ways, including by directing public money to “private actors” not under control of the state, and by directing cash payments to some students “to the direct disadvantage of others.”

“HB 393 is part and parcel of a recent national effort to privatize education with public funds that cannot be squared with the spirit and letter of the Montana Constitution,” said the lawsuit, filed by the Upper Seven Law firm.

“Indeed, the Montana legislature is obligated to ‘provide a basic system of free quality public elementary and secondary schools’ and to ‘fund and distribute in an equitable manner to the school districts the state’s share of the cost’ of those schools.”

The nonprofit MQEC is one of the largest education advocacy organizations in the state, representing more than 100 school districts, six educational organizations, and educators in urban and rural areas.

Disability Rights Montana is the federally mandated advocate protecting and advocating for the civil, legal, and human rights of people with disabilities across Montana.

The lawsuit said the bill will harm Disability Rights Montana by hurting the students it needs to protect: “Not only does it make serving students with disabilities who remain enrolled in public school more difficult, HB 393 does not ensure that students with disabilities who opt for an ESA (education savings account) and leave the public school system will receive a free and appropriate public education.”

House Bill 393 was controversial in the most recent legislative session.

Passed by a two-vote margin in 2023, the law allows parents with students who have special needs the ability to be reimbursed with taxpayer money for their child’s education in homeschool or private school or an online nonpublic school.

In a reimbursement program slated to open next school year, school districts take money from their general funds, largely property taxes, and put it into an education savings account with the Office of Public Instruction.

Parents can be reimbursed from the fund for expenses for their child, such as tutoring or test preparation — or they can let the money accumulate until it hits a maximum $125,888, adjusted for inflation, when the child hits 19, the lawsuit said, although families have access to the fund until the student is 24.

“Masquerading as aid to students with disabilities, HB 393 takes public money out of local school district accounts and hands it directly to private individuals with little to no oversight,” said Upper Seven

In the 2023 legislative session, opponents supporting the public education system if the bill was signed into law. One opponent, Tal Goldin, described HB393’s “education savings accounts” as a way of laundering public money.

“This bill does not help Montanans with disabilities,” said Goldin, director of Advocacy at and attorney for Disability Rights Montana, in a statement about the lawsuit. “Instead, it reduces public school resources while offering no assurance that students with disabilities who leave the public schools will receive appropriate educational services that meet their needs. It’s a lose-lose situation.”

The lawsuit, filed against the State of Montana and Republicans Gov. Greg Gianforte and Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen, notes the bill authorizes “any other educational expense approved by the superintendent,” or “standardless spending.”

It also represents as much as $140 million a year redirected from school districts to private individuals if all students who are eligible participate, the lawsuit said, pointing to the cost estimate filed with the bill.

“While HB 393 provides no assurance that students with disabilities will receive the services and education they need, it assuredly provides that public schools will have fewer resources to serve their students, with and without disabilities,” the lawsuit said.

That’s because the cost of public education remains the same — the power bill for a classroom wouldn’t change, for instance — so school districts have to make up the difference, the lawsuit said. In other words, the payouts “compromise the economies of scale” that allow schools to provide a quality education, the firm said.

“MQEC cares about quality public education — full stop,” said Doug Reisig, Montana Quality Education Coalition’s executive director, in a news release from Upper Seven. “Strong public schools foster strong communities. HB 393 is the Montana Legislature’s attempt to shirk its obligation to provide free quality public education to every child in Montana.”

In an email from her office, defendant Arntzen said she is a daughter of a special education teacher and has always supported children of all abilities.

“Local accountability starts with the family. Montana parents know the educational needs of their students better than the government,” said Arntzen, who termed out of the superintendent job but running for the Republican nomination for U.S. House in Montana’s eastern district.

The Governor’s Office said it also doesn’t generally comment on litigation but stressed Gianforte’s . Gianforte is making a bid this year for a second term.

“The governor believes each child is unique and deserves access to the best education possible to meet his or her individual needs, especially for the more than 18,000 students in Montana who require specialized education services,” a spokesperson said.

HB 393 is one of several that was controversial during the most recent legislative session. Another bill, HB 562, is under a temporary injunction after a separate lawsuit alleged it would unconstitutionally outsource public education and divert public school tax dollars to private schools.

Upper Seven is representing plaintiffs in that lawsuit as well. Tuesday, the firm’s executive director said HB 393 also runs contrary to Montana’s promises for students.

“Like our public lands, public schools are one of Montana’s most precious resources,” said Rylee Sommers-Flanagan, Upper Seven Law’s executive director and attorney for the plaintiffs. “The Montana Constitution guarantees a quality education for all students, regardless of background or circumstance. HB 393 hollows out this promise. The law cannot stand.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com. Follow Daily Montanan on and .

By the time Kelly Santos found the Education Freedom Account program, she felt out of options.

The Hudson resident had fought for years for disability accommodations for her son James at his public school, beginning in the first grade. By his fourth grade year, she had arranged letters from teachers and had paid $5,000 for a neuropsychological exam to prove to school administrators that he needed help. But without a formal evaluation, the accommodations did not appear.

“I fought to keep him with his community and his friends,” she said, speaking to members of the State Board of Education this month to advocate for the program. “Special education did not work for me because I could not get past step one, which is evaluation.”

Santos applied for local charter schools, but lost the lotteries necessary for admission. Then she found the Education Freedom Account program, and with it, an opportunity to send James to Second Nature Academy in Nashua.

It’s changed her son’s relationship to school, she says. “When I asked James, ‘What’s the difference between your old school and your new school?’ he said to me: ‘Mom I was sitting in a prison and I was bored… And when I went up to my new school that was the key that let me out of jail,’” Santos said.

“If it wasnt for the EFA, we would have been stuck without a school to go to,” she said.

The program is continuing to see similar interest. More than 4,200 New Hampshire students are participating in the Education Freedom Account program this school year – a 158 percent jump from the first year’s enrollment.

But most new participants are not following Santos’s exact path: 28 percent of the 1,577 new students this year transferred directly from public school. The others were either homeschooled or attending non-public schools before they transferred.

In total, the state will spend $22.1 million toward EFAs this school year, up from $8.1 million in the 2021-2022 school year and $14.7 million in the 2022-2023 school year, according to numbers released by the Department of Education Thursday. That money comes out of the state’s Education Trust Fund, which spends about $1 billion per year on public education. The enrollment grew by 20 percent since last year.

Launched in 2021, the Education Freedom Account program allows parents to take the state education funding dollars that would go to their child’s public school and use them for private and homeschooling expenses instead. To qualify, families must have an income below 350 percent of the federal poverty level – or $105,000 for a family of four.

Republicans, including Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut, have hailed the initiative as a means for lower-income families to receive assistance to enroll their children in programs they might not otherwise be able to afford, providing alternatives if the public school is not a good fit.

But Democrats have criticized the program as wasteful and unnecessary, and argued that the Education Trust Fund dollars should be exclusive to public schools. Democrats have attempted unsuccessfully to both repeal the program and , including that students be attending public school before they can receive the vouchers. Currently, the vouchers are also available to qualifying families that don’t attend public schools.

This year, the Republican-led Legislature increased the eligibility for the program the income cap from 300 percent of the federal poverty level – where the program started – to 350 percent. Some Republicans, including gubernatorial candidates Chuck Morse and Kelly Ayotte, removing the income caps entirely in the future.

An examination of the latest numbers reveals some differences between public school students and EFA recipients. There are 4,211 students who receive EFAs and just over 160,000 students in New Hampshire public schools this year.

Of the students receiving EFAs this year, about 44 percent are enrolled in free or reduced price lunch program, meaning their families make below 185 percent of the federal poverty level, or $55,500 for a family of four. That represents a higher proportion than in public schools, where 26 percent of students are in the free or reduced lunch program.

Of all EFA recipients, 6.3 percent are receiving additional state funding for special education services. In public schools, 20 percent of students receive special education funding.

The state is spending an average of $5,255 per EFA recipient this year, according to the Department of Education. That’s a higher amount than in previous years and comes after the Legislature raised the base amount of state funding that schools receive per pupil in the two-year budget passed in June. The state is spending $6,161 per student in public schools this year, according to the department.

Among the 4,211 students receiving EFAs, 1,577 are new to the program this school year and 2,634 are returning. Since the last school year, 109 students have graduated, 75 have re-enrolled in public schools, and 524 have made “other exits,” a category not defined by the department.

In a statement Thursday, Edelblut praised the increased numbers, saying “it is apparent that New Hampshire families are taking advantage of this tremendous opportunity that provides them with different options and significant flexibility for learning.”

“With three years of data under our belt, we know that students are coming and going from the program, which is exactly how it was designed – to allow various options for personal learning needs that may fluctuate from year-to-year based on whatever path is appropriate in the moment,” Edelblut said.

Megan Tuttle, president of the National Education Association of New Hampshire, the state’s largest teacher’s union, disagreed, accusing Edelblut of “(focusing) his energy on a small sliver of the population that was never in public schools.”

“Let’s be clear – vouchers take scarce funding away from public schools and give it to private and religious schools that are unaccountable to the public,” Tuttle said in a statement Friday. “Taxpayer funds should be spent to resource neighborhood public schools to ensure they are desirable places to be and to learn, where students’ natural curiosity is inspired.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com. Follow New Hampshire Bulletin on and .

The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) failed to investigate a significant number of formal complaints against schools not following federal laws to protect students with disabilities during the 2021-2022 school year, according to a from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor.

Auditors found state education officials investigated and resolved 61 complaints during the 2021-2022 school year but failed to properly address 42 others it received through its dispute resolution email. The department responded to nine of the emails but ignored 13 and couldn’t provide evidence of how they responded to 20 others.

Education officials refused to address the allegations in those 42 emails because the parents didn’t provide a signature along with their allegations, according to the audit.

Federal regulations require formal complaints to be made in writing and signed. But the state should have at least responded to the emails with an explanation of why it couldn’t review the allegations, the auditors noted.

Some of the allegations were potentially credible. The audit noted they “were similar to other allegations that were accepted by LDOE.”

“By not adequately responding to all allegations, the LDOE may cause parents to lose faith in the complaint process and fail to submit additional complaints in the future,” the audit said.

There are more than 89,000 students with disabilities receiving special education services out of 685,606 total K-12 students in Louisiana public schools. Of the 61 complaints investigated, the Department of Education substantiated only seven with findings against the school system. It dismissed 17 complaints outright, and it investigated but found no violations in 16 others. The remaining 21 complaints were withdrawn by the complainants.

Auditors recommended the department make its complaint process more accessible and transparent. This would include receiving complaints by phone, ensuring parents are routed to appropriate resources, providing dispute resolution forms in languages other than English, and contacting the complainant during the formal complaint investigation.

Of the 17 complaints state education officials dismissed without investigating, roughly half were dismissed for insufficient or incomplete information.

The department should increase its outreach to parents and give parents the opportunity to submit missing information before simply dismissing the complaint, the audit suggested.

The Louisiana Department of Education accepts formal and informal complaints. Informal complaints can include the same allegations as formal complaints but do not need to be in writing, signed or include the parent’s contact information or specific facts that prove a school violated the law.

When a parent submits an informal complaint, the state is supposed to forward it to the particular school system and monitor the process to help both sides reach a resolution. If no agreement is reached, the parent has additional options such as mediation or the formal complaint process.

If noncompliance is found following a formal complaint, the education department should try to find out if similarly situated students might be affected across a school system, according to the audit. To do this, the department should review other formal and informal complaints in an effort to identify any patterns of noncompliance, but “LDOE does not sufficiently track enough complaint information to be used to identify trends of noncompliance.”

In a written response to the audit, Meredith Jordan, executive director of LDOE’s Diverse Learners, said the department agreed with all of the audit’s findings and has begun to implement improvements. The agency has created the state’s first special education ombudsman position and created an additional complaint investigator position, she added.

“This will give parents greater access to someone to help them navigate their concerns and also more effectively review parent grievances,” Jordan wrote.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on and .

It’s been almost a year since Megan Weber’s son received the special education support he needs. For a 3-year-old, that’s a significant chunk of development time.

Weber’s son was diagnosed with autism just before his 3rd birthday. He is required by law to receive roughly four hours of support per week from a special education teacher, plus periodic support from a speech pathologist.

“He has to make a connection (with someone), and he has difficulty regulating his emotions,” Weber told the Maine Morning Star. “If he’s not connected to the person who’s coming in to see him once or twice a week, it’s harder for them to steer him if he’s having a breakdown.”

Weber, a supply chain manager who lives in North Waterboro, has been “back and forth for a little less than a year” with the state, but has largely come up empty in efforts to find service providers who can help her son.

‘And then…nothing happened’

Students in public school programs who require special education services are legally required to receive them under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a federal law. To receive that assistance, those children’s families work with a child psychologist to draft an Individualized Education Plan, or IEP, a formal document managed by the state’s Department of Education.

It’s up to Child Development Services (CDS), a branch of the state Department of Education, to find service providers who can meet the needs of the IEP, which can span special education, occupational therapy, speech therapy and other needs.

But since the pandemic, children have not been getting the developmental educational services that they are required to be given by the state of Maine, according to Beth Gachowski.

Gachowski owns and operates Arundel Children’s Garden, an early childhood program in Kennebunkport that has capacity for 24 kids—including Weber’s son.

Weber’s son and another 3-year-old child have been in her program since they were babies. As they developed, Gachowski and the children’s parents noticed that there were developmental differences, which turned out to be autism. She directed the families to Child Development Services to hash out the details of the IEP.

“And then…nothing happened,” Gachowski said.

Gachowski has a masters in Early Childhood Education, and has worked as an educator or daycare provider for 30 years. She moved to Maine in 2001, and opened Arundel Children’s Garden in 2019. She knows the drill—helping families out with their IEPs is part of the process, and there’s always some lag time with receiving services because of the process and paperwork involved. But since the pandemic, that process can now take years.

“A year in the life of a 3-year-old is a lot of developmental time,” Gachowski said. “It has a huge impact on these children and their ability.”

A staffer from the regional Child Development Services office in Arundel said they were not authorized to comment. The state director did not return an email or phone call Monday.

Gachowski doesn’t want to disparage Child Development Services. She believes they genuinely can’t find people to do the work. Gachowski spoke with her local legislator about the issue, but they did not respond by publication.

“I’m just trying to highlight that this is a very serious problem,” she said. “They say they don’t have providers, they don’t have speech pathologists, they don’t have occupational therapists—I’m sure that’s true. And I don’t really have the answers.”

But Gachowski is positioned to witness the strain the issue puts on families with children with special education needs. In Weber’s son’s case, the special education teacher that was assigned to him by CDS was unavailable to go see him.

“He was barely getting maybe a half hour a week,” Weber said. The speech pathologist they’d hired went on maternity leave, and then support providers went on break during the summer. For Weber, it was maddening to watch her kid not get the services he needed.

“He’s at that early intervention stage,” she said. With the right support, “he can thrive.”

After months of waiting, Weber decided “enough was enough.” She pestered Child Development Services, sending a “stern email” demanding they revisit the case. With the agency’s help, they arranged a program to repurpose a teacher from Gachowski’s daycare as an education tech, paying them as a special education teacher.

It was a useful fix, but not a sustainable one.

“We burnt out a teacher, and it’s already very hard to find early education teachers,” Gachowski said.

According to Weber, Child Development Services was very apologetic and sympathetic to her cause. While the situation is an urgent one for her and her family, she recognizes that the problem is bigger.

The process of diagnosing and getting Weber’s son his IEP was “smooth,” she said. The family worked with CDS and a child psychologist to craft the plan, and found the process to be exactly what he needed.

“If they’d actually had the resources to implement that plan, that would have been great,” Weber said.

It was after his IEP was fully written that they saw a struggle with resources.

“The resources weren’t lacking in regards to getting the diagnosis or writing the IEP itself, but the actual people that were implementing the services,” Weber said.

Circumventing the wait list

Better times are ahead for Weber’s son. He was just placed in a special education focused preschool this month. Though getting him there will require Weber and her husband, a welder, to rearrange their work schedules, she feels a lot better.

“It took a long time,” she said. “It was so hard to get into this special education preschool because of the waiting list.”

While many industries have faced staffing issues, Gachowski believes that the issue has been exacerbated by families who circumvent the state program, paying privately for service providers, making it harder for Child Development Services to find personnel.

“We are in Kennebunkport,” Gachowski says of the wealthy coastal Maine town. “Some of the kids who have gotten services have gotten them because the parents went out and found them and paid for them independently, which is not supposed to be what happens. People aren’t choosing to have a contract with Child Development Services in a way that providers used to.”

Working with Weber to try to find support for her son makes Gachowski wonder what other parents might be struggling with the same issue, in less resourced parts of the state.

“Those two moms are working moms who have spent an exorbitant amount of time trying to get their kids what they need,” Gachowski said. “Not every kid has that mom. What’s happening to those kids who don’t have that mom?”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maine Morning Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lauren McCauley for questions: info@mainemorningstar.com. Follow Maine Morning Star on and .