AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) - A legislative committee is opposing a plan to eliminate 11 educational positions at the state’s youth correctional facility’s school and is actually suggesting more staff be hired.
Several teachers told legislators the plan would harm young people at a facility facing questions about its ability to serve residents with high rates of mental health and substance abuse issues.
The Department of Corrections’ plan in Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s $6.8 billion budget would save $1 million a year by eliminating 10 teachers and an assistant principal at the school at Long Creek Youth Development Center.
According to the budget, the cost-cutting proposal was justified because of a declining census.
The Legislature’s joint standing committee on criminal justice and public safety has voted to not only retain those positions, but also fund three mental health specialists at the Arthur R. Gould School. That recommendation now goes to the committee working through LePage’s two-year budget proposal.
In the past week, the facility’s administrator, Jeffrey D. Merrill II, has resigned amid a now-closed investigation that the department has declined to discuss.
The facility is weathering a recent escape attempt during a camping trip and concerns over residents’ acute mental health needs. The state has commissioned an independent review of the facility’s suicide policies after a boy held at Long Creek killed himself last fall.
A review by the state Attorney General’s office concluded there was no evidence of bullying or maltreatment at the facility.
Teachers at the school are opposed to the cuts and have named other ongoing challenges at the facility.
Robin Herrick, director of special education, said the cuts would take away opportunities from students, including the school’s “disproportionately high number of students in the special education program compared to the rest of the state.
Teacher Catherine Parker said the facility’s staffing “is currently much lower than even a day treatment program, and yet we are doing incredible amounts of work with these students.” She said the cuts would mean the loss of “entire departments, including math and social studies” and mean “we cannot continue to operate as an approved school” in Maine.
“These students also are often not receiving the full measure of the services that their home schools should be providing to them, such as speech and occupational therapy,” Parker said last month in a letter to legislators signed by six fellow teachers.
Department of Corrections Commissioner Joseph Fitzpatrick and A.R. Gould School Principal Jim Boisvert did not respond to requests for comment. Seventy-nine youths between the ages of 13 and 19 were in the correctional facility as of last July. The school reported having 39 students in grades nine through 12 as of last October, according to state Department of Education statistics.
Ned Chester, a member of the state Juvenile Justice Advisory Group and a Portland attorney, cited a recent Maine Department of Corrections report that found 29.5 percent of kids coming to Long Creek come straight out of residential treatment programs, while 84.6 percent arrive at Long Creek with three or more mental health diagnoses.
“We’re asking Long Creek to manage kids that the mental health system has not been able to manage,” he said.
Chester said the cost-cutting idea was “short-sighted.” Long Creek has received roughly $15 million in annual state funding in recent years.
“You can have the best program in the world but if you don’t prepare them to go back to their communities, they’re not going to be succeed,” Chester said.
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