Welcome to SAD #4 Special Education -

SAD #4 offers extensive services to students with disabilities ranging from direct special education instruction to modifications and accommodations in the regular education classroom. .

What is special education?

Special Education is designed to make sure that students with educationally-related disabilities have an appropriate education. It includes specially trained teachers and special teaching materials and techniques. It includes programs for students with any of the following conditions that interfere with education: mental retardation, emotional disabilities, learning disabilities, visual or hearing impairments, speech or language impairments, health problems, physical disabilities, autism or traumatic brain injury. Special education is intended to give students with educational disabilities a better chance of success in school. Special education may be provided in a regular classroom where the teacher gets help from an special education teacher or the student may receive help in a resource room, speech room or other specially designed educational settings. The important point is that special education is designed with the individual student's needs in mind and that it provides an education that will benefit the student. All educationally disabled students are entitled to educational and supportive services that will meet their needs at no cost to the parents.

What are supportive services?

Supportive services are those that are necessary if a student is to benefit from special education services. These may include special transportation, physical and occupational therapy and speech services. Not all services from which a student may benefit are included under law as a supportive service. You child will be entitled only to the supportive services found to be necessary for your child to benefit from special education services. For example, if the child is in need of physical therapy becuase of a muscular problem but that muscular problem does not effect the child's education, the child would not be entitled to physical therapy through special education.

DISABILITIES

In the Maine Special Regulations, the Department of Education defines "students with disabilities." The state has a duty to provide a free appropriate public education to those students. According to this definition, a student with a disability is an individual who:

- has reached the age of 5 years on or before October 15;

- has neither graduated from a secondary school program with a regular high school diploma nor reached 20 years of age at the start of the school year;

- has a disability which adversely affects the student's educational perfomrance and requires the provision of special education services in order that the student may benefit from an elementary or secondary educational program.

According to the state's definition, a student with a disability will have one or more of the following disabilities. Please click on the link below to review disabilities.

http://www.sad4.com/~tkurt/disability.pdf