A year after it was found to be out of compliance with state rules in a number of areas, the Mars School District’s special education programs appear to have made great progress.

At this point last year, some parents were calling the situation a “crisis” — but now, according to a report last week in the Butler Eagle, some of those same parents now say they have seen positive changes and are glad that their children are in it.

Previously, the state’s Bureau of Special Education had found the district’s special education programs to be out of compliance with several rules, including “least restrictive environment,” which is based on a student’s ability to be educated with nondisabled peers to the greatest extent possible; parent and personnel training; and a lack of documentation used for students who are in transition from high school to college or the workforce.

School Superintendent Wesley Shipley recently told the Mars School Board that the district was found by the Bureau of Special Education to be in 100 percent compliance in two areas — one involving a random and targeted sample of student files to determine accuracy and another that focused on evaluations and whether timelines were being met for individualized education program meetings.

The district should be praised for its improvements in these various areas, especially in lieu of a report last year by researchers at Pennsylvania’s Education Law Center that state schools are increasingly relying more on local tax dollars to fund special education programs in the wake of stagnant state funding. The report found that communities across the state have become more dependent on state legislators to obtain money for the programs as operating costs have risen at a faster rate than existing levels of state funding.

In November, county school officials told the Butler Eagle that they had been making due under those circumstances and, as a result, special education programs had not suffered. We commended local school districts in a November editorial for keeping up the quality of their programs amid a lack of funding, and we applaud Mars’ school district for doing the same, especially considering that its program has made improvements in an already challenging environment.

But the parents of students in Mars’ special education programs also deserve some of the credit here after having packed school board meetings last year to demand improvements. Sometimes it takes a few “fired-up parents” — as one local mother put it — to get things moving in the right direction.

So, congratulations to the teachers, administrators, support staff and parents who have contributed to the positive changes being made in Mars’ special education programs. We hope that this progress will continue in 2019.