Some parents of special-needs students are concerned that furloughing teachers on 17 Fridays this school year will interrupt federally mandated education services to the detriment of their children's physical and mental health.

Advocacy organizations and parents say the state's plan to furlough teachers will make it more difficult to meet Individual Education Plans, federally mandated contractual agreements between parents of special-needs children and the state.

The contracts, known as IEPs, are drawn up on an individual basis for some 17,000 special-education students, and typically specify the number of hours a student should receive therapeutic services, such as speech therapy, skills training, occupational therapy or counseling.

Special-needs students fall under the protection of the federal Felix consent decree, which was issued in 1994 after the state's treatment of those children was deemed inadequate.

"This whole 'Furlough Friday' thing, in my mind — I'm not an attorney — is definitely going against the law," said Naomi Grossman, vice president of the Autism Society of Hawaii. "Any change has to be based on a child's needs. Even if a new calendar arises, it doesn't change the need of the child."

NO CUTS PLANNED

State Department of Education officials say that schools currently are reviewing the individual plans for each special-needs child. They say educators will accommodate the services a child should receive within the shortened weeks when Fridays are furloughs.

"First of all, we plan to honor all the IEPs," said Daniel Hamada, assistant superintendent of curriculum, instruction and student support. "A few years back with the teachers' strike, it's the same strategy in trying to figure out how to still provide for the kids."

Once furloughs begin later this month, taking into account holidays, training and other breaks there are only three weeks with five instructional days before the end of the school year.

Hamada said if school-level educators cannot figure out how to reschedule a child's therapy sessions or counseling, they will alert the complex area and state offices that help is needed to meet a child's IEP.

For example, an IEP might say that a child needs 60 minutes of speech therapy each week, so Hamada said schools would address that requirement by spreading those minutes across four days, rather than five.

"If a child is supposed to have 60 minutes of something and we took it away, that's not fair, and that's not what we intend to do," he said.

Advocates, however, say that for students with severe disabilities, many of whom may require one-on-one supervision at all times, a furlough day could be detrimental and set the student's progress back. It's not a need simply remedied by rescheduling, they say.

Grossman said that some children have IEPs that require the state to administer year-round care, in some cases with no more than a two-day break between services.

"You can't just say, 'Why don't you go to the YMCA this week? Why don't you go to Grandma's house?' It has to be continuity of educational programs," Grossman said.

Roberta Bahm, a mother with two special-needs sons, said she's scheduled for an IEP planning meeting with DOE officials at the end of October. At that time, she plans to get written guarantees that her sons' care will not be interrupted.

"Every single day I'm going to something with one of the kids," Bahm said. "Most of the days are filled with special therapy, counseling."

Bahm's older son is a junior in high school and has Asberger's autism and her younger son, a fifth-grader, has dyslexia and ADHD.

"I can't believe Hawai'i is doing this. I'm flabbergasted. This is their right for special-needs kids. I'm looking at the education that the federal law requires the state to give my children," she said.

SOCIAL TIME AN ISSUE

Michael Canute, whose 10-year-old son receives both speech therapy and occupational therapy, said he's worried that schools will not have the resources to squeeze all special-needs children into the shorter week.

"They have that many less days to fit in everyone's schedule. One just has to do the math; he's not the only special-needs child at the school," said Canute, a biology instructor at Hawai'i Pacific University. "I don't know how they're going to do that."

Canute said he's also concerned his son will miss out on "inclusion" time with peers. His son's school days are typically spent in resource classrooms with other special-needs children, rather in than a regular classroom environment. Usually on Fridays, he spends time in an inclusion class, which is a mixture of regular education and special-education students.

Julia Beame said her son, a 5-year-old in preschool special education at a public elementary school, would lose out on social interaction time with his peers — a goal in his IEP — on furlough days. Her son was held back from kindergarten to give him more preparation.

While her son receives speech therapy on Fridays, and one-to-one skills training after school, she said she's more concerned about the loss of classroom time.

"We can't hold him back another year; he needs to be ready. It's almost an entire month lost," said Beame, a member of Talk About Curing Autism Hawaii. "There is no way to make up for a day in school, being exposed to his peers, interacting with his peer groups, skills specific to his IEP goals."

Ivalee Sinclair, chairwoman of the Special Education Advisory Council, said schools are going to struggle to provide five days of special education services in four days.

"The major anxiety is services will be cut because there's not that many days of instruction," she said. "The schools are going to be struggling with how can they provide five days of instruction as written into a child's IEP in four days."

Sinclair said one of the problems schools will have is that IEPs are not all written the same. Some are written around minutes per week, while others specify number of school days.

"They don't want to do anything that would possibly impact negatively on the receipt of federal money," Sinclair said.

Some $530 million is spent on special education, an area of spending that has grown dramatically over the past 15 years.

Under the Felix consent decree, spending on special education and other special-needs programs has increased by more than $400 million since 1994, when the state settled a lawsuit by agreeing to the decree.

Today, special-education spending makes up 22 percent of the DOE's budget.