Officials: Disabled students hurt by cuts

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BALTIMORE (Map, News) - A decision by federal Medicaid administrators to stop reimbursing states for the cost of transporting disabled students to and from school is part of a “mean-spirited” trend to dump additional costs onto the states, Maryland officials charged.

The change would hit Baltimore City and Prince George’s County the hardest: Baltimore billed Medicaid for $593,503 in fiscal 2007 for special-needs transportation, and Prince George’s County billed for $106,560, said Bill Reinhard, a state Department of Education spokesman.

While many schools in the state decline to seek Medicaid assistance because of the paperwork involved, the statewide total reimbursement for student transport in fiscal 2007 was about $1 million, officials said.

Now, the state and the jurisdictions that do bill Medicaid are “going to have to pick up the tab for it,” said Maryland Disabilities Department Secretary Catherine A. Raggio.

“I don’t think children will be without transportation,” she said.

Raggio said notification of the change was “mean-spirited,” because it was e-mailed to state officials late on the Friday before the Labor Day holiday. That followed another cut in Medicaid assistance announced two weeks earlier.

“It’s sort of this series of new rules coming out in the last five or six months that together are really hitting the states hard,” said John Folkemer, the state’s Medicaid director.

Capital News Service contributed to this report.

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