Special Education and School Budgets
October 17, 2009
While school districts’ budgets are difficult to understand, they usually have interrelated parts that add to the confusion. One area is special education.
San Diego: John de Beck is a board of education member for the San Diego Unified School District.
John de Beck is a board of education member for the San Diego Unified School District.
San Diego: sdnn-opinion33Under federal law, specifically under Individuals with Disability Education Act of 2004 (IDEA), school districts are required to provide supplemental services to students with defined disabilities. The cost of the supplemental services required can result in a school district expending more than the amount the federal government provides.
When the public faces cuts of general educa tion programs, the added cost of Special Education starts to become part of the conversation.
The question can be stated, “Why doesn’t special education take a proportionate cut, just like the general programs?” The difficulty comes from the fact that Congress did not intend for special education funding to be the sole source of support for special education students. Their assumptions, sometimes not recognized by the public, were that all students (including handicapped or special needs kids) should get a proportionate share of all the general education dollars spent in a local school district.
So, for example, if a school district received $6,000 from local and state tax sources for each student, then the additional cost provided from federal funds was extra money that would match the supplemental costs for identified special education students. So, to continue the example above, if the required services for a special education student as specified by his/her IEP (Individual Education Plan) were $6,000 more (for a total cost of $12,000), the federal IDEA dollars would help support that additional per pupil cost. So if the district got an average of $2,000 for each special education student, in this case they would have to make up the extra $4,000 out of general funds.
It was never stated in the law that the actual excess costs (or even a percentage of them) would be provided to local districts by the federal categorical funds, nor was any allowance made for the high cost of serving some handicapping conditions. So no real cost accounting devices were incorporated in the law. Some of the horror stories about special education include situations where a small school district had to fork over $250,000 to support only one special education student in an out of district special school. In a district of 200 students this rare exception could be devastating. Whi le this may be special education folk lore, I can’t say it is impossible.
What happened over time was that the law required more services than local districts could pay for out of the IDEA dollars received. In times with moderate increases in the basic income, absorbing the cost of special education services was relatively easy to handle, even though it took away some dollars from the general education funds. Wrongly, the amount taken from general education became defined as “encroachment,’ and even though the name stuck, the amounts were workable. That really isn’t the case today!
As we face an oncoming school funding train wreck in California schools, it is clear that some discussion will focus on how savings in special education might be used to help solve the financial crisis. The reduction in sales and income taxes which, when added to property taxes frozen by Proposition 13, is clearly causing the state to revisit their funding of schools more often than one time per year. I expect that in the 2009-1010 school year — the budget may get still another cut, and I am even more sure that there will be a massive cut announced for education in the following school year as well.
It will not be productive to try to use special education to solve this problem. The federal regulations specify services for special needs students as being necessary and require that they be provided in the “least restrictive environment.” Least restrictive has been interpreted as placement in regular classes with the needed support for success. Commonly called “mainstreaming,” this practice is generally more expensive than putting special needs kids in a single class with a teacher that has the needed special training. So, scattering special needs into regular schools (mainstreaming) requires providing IEP services to more classrooms and it has a potential of raising costs consider ably. Say the students’ IEP requires sign language support during classroom instruction. If there were 10 students requiring this service, one signing person could interpret to all 10 if they were in one classroom. If the deaf kids were in 10 different classes, then a district would have to employ 10 interpreters. It would cost more.
Since the law allows for due process (hearings where parents can fight for IEP services, when denied) and, since the policy of “least restrictive placement’ is enforceable in the hearing process, it seems that trying to save costs by changing the delivery of special education services will not be productive for school districts.
In my opinion, the only ethical and moral way that the supplemental (extra) cost of special education services can help with a school district budget is if Congress decides to increase the supplemental funding that they provide through IDEA. I hope that happens, because there is a drain on general education funding.
If you agree, maybe you will want to contact your representatives in Congress.
John de Beck is a board of education member for the San Diego Unified School District.