Welcome to MSAD 4/RSU 80 Special Education

SAD 4/RSU 80 Special Education

SAD #4 offers extensive services to students with disabilities ranging from direct special education instruction to modifications and accommodations in the regular 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:  intellectual disabilities, emotional disabilities, learning disabilities, visual or hearing impairments, speech or language impairments, health problems problems, physicals 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 a special education teacher or the student may receive help in a resource room, speech room or other specially designed education setting.  The important point is that special education is designed with the individual student's needs in mind and that it provides and 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.  Your 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 because of a muscular problem but that muscular problem does not effect the child's education, that child would not be entitled to physical therapy through special education.

Disabilities

In the Maine Special Education 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 he student's educational performance and requires the provision of special education services in order that the student may benefit from an elementary or secondary educational problem

According to the state's definition, a student with a disability will have one or more of the following disabilities:

Please click this link to review disabilities

Disposition Schedule

SAD #4 destroys the educational records of it's special education students at the end of the school year in which the student turns 27 years old.  Parents of adult students wishing to obtain these records should contact SAD #4 Special Education Department at 876-1302.