Copyright 2000 eMediaMillWorks, Inc.
(f/k/a Federal
Document Clearing House, Inc.)
Federal Document Clearing House
Congressional Testimony
June 14, 2000, Wednesday
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY
LENGTH: 5160 words
HEADLINE:
TESTIMONY June 14, 2000 SUSAN SCLAFANI CHIEF OF STAFF HOUSTON INDEPENDENT SCHOOL
DISTRICT HOUSE BUDGET EDUCATION OVERHAUL HURDLES
BODY:
TESTIMONY BEFORE THE BUDGET COMMITTEE'S
EDUCATION TASK FORCE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES SUSAN SCLAFANI CHIEF
OF STAFF - EDUCATIONAL SERVICES HOUSTON INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT JUNE 14,
2000 Mr. Chairman and Members of the House Budget Committee: I am here today to
speak with you on behalf of Larry Marshall, President of the Board of Trustees
and Dr. Rod Paige, Superintendent of Schools of the Houston Independent School
District (HISD). We appreciate the opportunity to come before you today to
provide testimony about a subject that we have very strong convictions about,
the delivery of educational services to our children. The Houston Independent
School District is the largest district in Texas and the seventh largest in the
United States. It serves 211,000 students who are predominantly minority-53%
Hispanic, 35% African American and 12% White and Asian. Seventy- one percent
qualify for the Free and Reduced Price Meal Program, and 11 % are served in
special education programs. The Houston Independent School District received
approximately $72,635,000 from categorical and competitive federal programs in
1998- 99. Of this, $1.4 million came from competitive grants under Title VII
Bilingual. The largest component of categorical funding was Title 1 funding at
nearly $55 million, followed by Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act funds of over $8.5 million. I would like to talk with you today
about the financial burdens placed on school districts by federal programs. I
have divided the issues into two categories: the first category is the issue of
unfunded mandates created by federal departments and the second is the issue of
the method of funding federal grant programs. Unfunded Mandates
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and American with
Disabilities Act In 1975, the United States Congress passed the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that
requires school districts to provide education related health and medical
services to students with disabilities and to develop individual education plans
(IEP) for service delivery. Congress passed IDEA without providing adequate or
additional special education funding; this consequently left school districts
ill-equipped to meet the funding demands of IDEA requirements. When the program
was first announced, districts were told that the federal government would fund
40% of the costs. The district currently spends between $70-80 million per year
to fund the costs of special education programs. To date, the federal funding
has never provided more than 12% of the costs. While we believe that all
students should attend school in the least restrictive environment, the costs of
the program for small classes, additional staff, and specialized transportation
services are a significant burden for the district. To meet the regulatory
requirements of IDEA, school districts find that they have to employ or contract
for speech therapists, speech pathologists, nurses, audiologists,
diagnosticians, psychologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and
other clinicians as required for students enrolled with special needs. In many
cases, parents have taken school districts to court and sued under the
provisions of IDEA and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to provide
additional or more comprehensive clinical services to their disabled children.
While the MEDICAID program reimburses school districts for part of these costs,
it does not come close to the full costs of those additional medical services.
The American with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that school districts renovate
buildings to enable all persons, regardless of disabling conditions, to have
access to all parts of the building. Older facilities require significant
renovations, such as ramps to entrances, widened doorways, revised seating
arrangements in auditoriums, elevators, lifts for stages, added plumbing, and
other similar changes. As much as $1 00 million in local funds has been spent
over the last fifteen years to accomplish these improvements, yet no assistance
came with the federal mandates for action. Asbestos The district has spent over
$100 million for abatement of asbestos in district facilities. The requirements
for this program are extensive and costly, yet the current wisdom is that in
some cases the materials would have been better left where it was. There was no
assistance from the federal government in meeting this unfunded mandate. It
should also be noted that the AHERA (Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act)
program was never applied to any public buildings other than school districts.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Requirements The EPA has established
programs to reduce emissions from district vehicles. While the district agrees
that clean air is important, no funds are available for retrofitting current
vehicles or for higher costs to meet the new requirements. In urban districts
such as Houston where 70% of the funding comes from local taxpayers, it is
difficult to maintain a fleet of new vehicles that meet current standards. The
average age of our vehicles is over ten years. The new standards are far more
stringent than those in place when the oldest vehicles were purchased. In
Houston, there is a proposal for construction work to begin after 6:00 o'clock
and go through the night in order to reduce emissions from heavy equipment. The
voters of Houston have approved over $675 million in renovations and new
construction to be completed over the next three years. Implementation of such a
mandate would greatly increase the cost of district construction programs.
Agriculture Department Programs The Agriculture Department implemented an
after-school snack program this last year. The district was pleased to see that
a snack program could be added to the district's program, but the district
quickly discovered that the Agriculture Department reduced our Free and Reduced
Price Meals (FRPM) funding by rounding down the reimbursement rate to the next
lower whole penny (resulting in a loss of about .8 cents ) per student to help
fund the snacks program. The district is now offering both programs, but
receives no more dollars than it used to receive from the FRPM program. Grant
Programs Class-Size Reduction Teachers The Class-Size Reduction Program provided
an opportunity for school districts to add teachers to reduce class sizes. The
district was delighted to participate in this program, and it is one we endorse.
However, the regulations attached required that school districts hire first year
teachers for those positions. Since the district believed that this requirement
did not serve students well, our school district hired experienced teachers and
assumed the costs of the additional funding required between new teachers and
the experienced teachers. Funding For Bilingual Education This has become a
major issue in our district's budget. Over the last decade the increased
immigrant population in Houston has more than doubled the percentage of Hispanic
students in our district. This increase has added costs for the recruitment of
bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) program teachers, additional
materials required to offer instruction in both English and Spanish, and
stipends paid to ensure the retention of trained bilingual and ESL teachers. The
only federal funds available to address the results of the federal immigration
policy are provided on a competitive basis. Thus despite the needs of the
students in Houston, the funds may go to an innovative proposal from a school
district with fewer limited English proficient (LEP) students or districts with
higher local funding levels than ours. Title One and Title Six Title 1, Part A
has provided funding to schools that assisted schools to accomplish the
following academic growth, as measured by the state-mandated Texas Assessment of
Academic Skills (TAAS): - TAAS scores increased from 78.53% passing in reading
for 1996-97 to 81.00% in 1997-98; - TAAS scores increased from 75.30% passing in
mathematics for 1996-97 to 80.96% in 1997-98; and - TAAS scores increased from
82.96% passing in writing for 1996-97 to 86.51 % in 1997-98. - Overall TAAS
results for students in Title I schools increased over and above the scores for
students districtwide as follows: - In reading, Title I students averaged 84.51%
compared to districtwide students averaging 81.00%. - In mathematics, Title I
students averaged 80.94% compared to districtwide students averaging 78.00%. -
In writing, Title I student average 86.51% compared to districtwide students
averaging 82.08%. Changes made in the last reauthorization of Title I were
improvements in a number of ways. Current guidelines: - provide more
programmatic and financial flexibility for schools and districts; - require
improved academic accountability; - allow more local control; - impact more
students because of the schoolwide concept; - support the ex-flex waivers
process; and - support school reform. These changes have enabled the district to
use the funds as it sees fit and have resulted in the achievements cited above.
While the federal government has allowed local education agencies greater
latitude in developing individual district programs based on local needs
assessments over the last decade, congressional reauthorization of programs
involves a great deal of compromise and attention to the goals of special
interest groups. This results in mandates and requirements included to "protect"
students whose rights might otherwise be at risk in local districts. This
process of political program design requires all districts to spend time in
documenting compliance with rules that were unnecessary in the first place. For
example, the district currently spends a minimum of three Mondays per month
creating the documentation of use of federal funds as a supplement to district
funds, rather than supplanting. To demonstrate comparability-that the district
is not spending less in local funds in Title 1 schools than it spends in non-
Title 1 schools-the accounting department staff must compute every expenditure
for staff, materials, equipment, and contracted services. With staffing, this is
particularly difficult to do one monthly basis, since one must forecast stipends
that are paid annually or semi-annually as part of the equation. However, it
must be done monthly so that if a discrepancy is discovered it can be remedied
over the rest of the year. If that does not happen, the total dollars spent for
the year will not demonstrate the desired maintenance of effort and the district
will be out of compliance. Since actual salaries of individual teachers are
used, the whole equation is thrown off whenever a teacher leaves one school and
is replaced by a teacher with more or less experience. In a large urban
district, this happens frequently, forcing the accounting department to
recalculate their year-to-date figures and intervene to recreate the desired
balance. Clearly, this procedure has nothing to do with the district's
commitment to equity nor does it ensure increased levels of student achievement.
An alternative would be to allocate the dollars according to the numbers of
eligible students and hold the districts responsible for results. If a
particular district cannot demonstrate improved student achievement, the state
would be required to audit the programs serving the specific students and place
the district under a technical assistance requirement until results improve.
Otherwise the district would be able to apply the funds to programs and not to
staff completing forms to demonstrate compliance. If this option were in place,
fewer dollars would need to be allocated to state departments of education and
central offices, and more would go directly to student services. The Title VI
program stands in contrast to the Title I program. Title VI makes a significant
difference in the lives of over 212,000 students in Houston ISD and over 13,000
students in surrounding nonprofit private schools and neglected and delinquent
facilities. The program provides on-going professional development to 15,000
teachers. Title VI provides services to ten local district reform programs and
projects, as well as fifty-four nonprofit private schools and facilities within
the Houston Independent School District's boundaries. The major emphasis of the
Title VI program is to provide for services that support reform efforts through
innovative education program strategies consistent with the eight National
Education Goals and the GOALS 2000: Educate America Act under Public Law
103-382. District approved programs and projects were easily funded under these
parameters. Title 6 funds have provided a mechanism to influence and provide
opportunities for advancement in nationally identified areas such as technology,
readiness skills, parental involvement, curriculum, school improvement, higher
order thinking skills, combating illiteracy, and increased professional
development for teachers and parents. All Title 6 funded programs have been
designed specifically to improve overall student achievement. The majority of
the programs funded through Title 6 are unique to Houston and several include
on-going assessment, for example, an initial pre-test to determine needs,
measurable activities for growth, and on-going assessment of progress. These
programs are designed to improve teaching and learning as well as meet the
educational needs of students from all ethnic and learning backgrounds. As one
compares the Title 1 and Title 6 programs, it becomes clear that Title 6 is
effective in raising student achievement without all of the compliance
requirements of Title 1. One can deduce from that that the time spent complying
with Title 1 requirements could be better spent focusing on improving student
achievement. The federal government should identify those districts where
student achievement is not improving and use the manpower currently dedicated to
managing compliance to assist those districts in more effective planning and
implementation. Successful districts could dedicate the three days per month
spent on comparability and maintenance of effort documentation to providing more
effective services to schools.
LOAD-DATE: June 22,
2000, Thursday 
