You could say that the program, now called GNETS, was born out of envy.

In 1970, a young graduate student named Mary Wood was working on her doctoral degree in education at the University of Georgia in Athens while running a clinic for students with emotional and behavioral disorders. The program served 60 children a week and was staffed in part by unpaid UGA students. One day, Wood heard about a program in Atlanta that served 12 students with autism that received $250,000 in seed money from the governor’s office.

“I heard about that and I said, ‘I’m sorry. We’re serving 60 children a week down here, and no budget. None,’” Wood said. “If I had $250,000, I could really show you a program.”

Wood called the governor’s office. The staff for then-Gov. Lester Maddox, known for his combative style and segregationist policies, asked her to write a proposal, which she did. A church in Athens lent the building space and Wood secured $250,000 from the state to launch what became Rutland Academy.

It’s hard to overstate how novel and innovative Wood’s program was at the time. The idea of combining mental health services and K-12 education was practically unheard of in the early 1970s. Wood, who was trained in special education and clinical psychology, made sure the program she established at Rutland included a psychiatrist, a medical consultant and a psychiatric social worker. She said she believes psychiatric support is critical in addressing severe behavioral disorders.

“That’s why you end up with children that can’t read and can’t write because they can’t concentrate, because they’re dealing with emotions and behaviors and … they’re troubled children,” Wood said.

Now, more than 50 years later, a lot has changed. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was enacted in 1975, requiring public schools to offer disabled students a “free and appropriate education.”

In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act took effect, protecting the civil rights of disabled people.

Wood left Rutland to teach full time at UGA in the late 1970s. The program she launched has changed a lot since then. In 2007, the name was changed from the Georgia Psychoeducational Network to the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support. While some GNETS programs have students attend for two to four hours as Wood intended, there are also full-day programs, which she doesn’t like.

“You can’t maintain … an intense therapeutic environment for long periods of time,” she said. “So, two to four hours was the most (students) need of skilled interventions. During that time you can build great and intense work, but if you drag it out all day long … they’re going to wear out and all of a sudden you’re not going to be therapeutic anymore.”

Over time, GNETS became the target of lawsuits and a scathing state audit. In 2016, following an AJC investigation an a federal Department of Justice lawsuit, the former first lady penned an op-ed in the AJC calling on state leaders to stop segregating students with disabilities.

Wood now oversees the Developmental Therapy Institute, a program she founded that provides training videos for teachers on behavior management. She isn’t a fan of the way GNETS is currently run. In addition to full-day attendance, she notes GNETS lacks regular evaluations, something that was also flagged in a 2010 state audit of the program.

Wood noted the program she ran at Rutland held a staff debriefing every day to find out what went well and what didn’t in each classroom.

Another problem with the current program, she said, is staffing.

“They need to have a skilled clinical team in each (GNETS) region,” she said. To her, that means a six-person team comprised of medical, education and psychiatric experts. To meet that goal, Georgia would need to focus on training teachers in therapeutic methods, she said.

“The most critical thing is … (staff are) clinically trained,” she said. “That’s the issue.”