Maine Morning Star

Timothy Tweedie, superintendent and principal of the Veazie Community School, said he’d seen an uptick in students entering kindergarten with unmet special education needs in recent years and wanted to get a jump on addressing that. So last year, the school became part of the first cohort of districts to take over responsibility for providing special education services to preschoolers with disabilities, as the state began its process to implement that change broadly over the next four years. “Some of our earliest learners were not receiving the services that they really needed before they were school age, and so we’re playing catch up with several students,” said Tweedie, whose district is among 17 now working with the Maine Department of Education to implement those changes. Students’ progress in these district-run programs has exceeded expectations, said Debrajean Scheibel, the special education director at Veazie Community School.