Rising special ed costs strain school district budgets

5/25/99 – As special education takes up an increasing portion of school districts' budgets, school leaders are seeing more tension between the need to meet their obligations to disabled students while also maintaining general education programs.

"Educational cannibalism" is the term one superintendent threw at Scott Fleming, a U.S. Education Department assistant secretary, when Fleming met with Wisconsin school board presidents and superintendents earlier this year. "You're pitting student band against an occupational therapist, and the child needs both," said Madison school board President Carol Carstensen.

Federal commitment

The same week, Maine Gov. Angus King drew murmurs of support from other governors when he interrupted after-dinner comments on education by President Clinton to, in King's words, be the "skunk at the dinner party."

Raising his hand, King said, "If you want to do something for schools in Maine, then fund special education and we can hire our own teachers and build our own schools."

"I've been thinking of sending Gov. King a box of candy," observed American Association of School Administrators lobbyist Bruce Hunter.

When Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1975 (IDEA), it set a mandate requiring the federal government to cover 40 percent of the costs of educating students with disabilities.

The federal government has never met that promise, and today pays just under 12 percent.

Complying with the mandate would mean Congress would have to raise its annual IDEA appropriation to nearly $20 billion. The current appropriation is $4.3 billion.

Congressional Republicans say President Clinton's proposal for a $116 million funding increase for IDEA next year amounts to a cut, considering inflation and the tough new requirements under IDEA enacted by Congress in 1997.

The Republican leadership has been talking favorably about ensuring that the government lives up to its original funding promise, and members on both sides of the aisle promise to seek more funding for IDEA.

But Rep. Lynne Rivers (D-Mich.), while an active supporter of full funding for IDEA, says school boards should be "highly skeptical" of what they hear from Washington. Rivers, a former member of the Anne Arbor, Mich., school board, describes congressional interest as "handy political rhetoric."

The politics of special education funding were highlighted during a recent high-profile Senate debate on the Republican's popular "Ed Flex" initiative to give school districts more flexibility in how they spend federal education money. The debate came to an abrupt, if temporary, halt over an attempt to push funds to special education.

Democrats proposed adding $150 million to the Ed Flex bill for dropout prevention programs, then Republicans moved to redirect the $150 million to aid students with disabilities.

But in quick order, Democrats flipped to support the added special education funds, then re-introduced their dropout initiative, and the Senate leadership shelved the entire debate. (The bill eventually passed once the unrelated amendments were removed.)

Yet, while governors are pushing to make the unfunded IDEA mandate a federal responsibility, a growing trend among states is to shave their own share of the costs.

Meanwhile, school districts must pay for more of the ever-expanding special education needs.

Growing tensions

"Both the federal government and the states have reneged on what they said they would do for us," says Mary Thurmeier, a school board member in Stevens Point, Wis., who serves on the state's Special Education Task Force.

"Our climate is getting more and more negative, with tension increasing between advocates" for disabled and non-disabled students, says Whitewater, Wis., school board member Pamela Van Doren. "I worry because I see anger more than empathy, and the kids with disabilities will end up losing."

"Our rowboat is starting to fill up with water," observes Monona Grove, Wis., Superintendent Phil Sobocinski, whose district is still using a 1982 social studies textbook and cannot afford to cut class sizes or provide needed staff development.

District cuts staff

Each state has its own formula for funding public schools, but the situation in Wisconsin is indicative of many states with prohibitions against raising taxes.

Wisconsin has promised to reimburse 70 percent of school districts' special education costs, but the last time the state met its commitment was in 1988. This year, the actual rate is 35 percent.

Further complicating the picture, the state established revenue caps and froze allocations for special education in 1993 to pay for property-tax relief.

The result is "funds for special education have been pitted against the needs of all other children," says Madison's Carstensen. "And since meeting special ed has a legal basis, other services increasingly are pinched."

Madison, facing a $2.3 million special education funding shortfall next year, has cut back from four to three assistant superintendents, trimmed the custodial staff, lengthened textbook use from seven to 10 years, forgone computer upgrades, and started requiring students to pay a $16 materials charge. If the state met its statutory commitment, the district would receive $10 million more.

Carstensen says her district has "nibbled at this and that," and since last year, "the whole issue of special education is coming much more to the fore."

Yet, special education also is being hurt by Madison's budget crunch. Students with disabilities often face a long wait for services, and teachers say they are not being trained properly to meld special and regular education.

Other Wisconsin school officials tell similar stories.

The Monroe school district had to drop plans to lower the size of elementary school classes, which now have 25 to 26 students.

Instead, the district had to dip into a fund balance when 14 students with disabilities enrolled unexpectedly. Each new student needed either a one-on-one teacher or teacher aide. "We can't even get into the ball game of expanding our gifted-and-talented program," says Special Education Director Dan Bower.

One small district--with a $5 million budget and a declining enrollment of 850 students--is paying $70,000 for a court-ordered out-of-state placement of a disabled child. "I try to be proactive and frugal," says the superintendent.

Last year, she cut maintenance spending and halted the purchase of a new vehicle. Now, the district is looking at cutting teaching materials and aide positions, and "eventually, will reduce certified staff."

Stevens Point, serving an older community in the heart of the state, has a declining enrollment overall but new enrollees include 110 students with disabilities.

Many of these students are from other communities and have been placed in group or foster homes in Stevens Point, says Special Education Director Jerry Bohren.

The enrollment drop has meant state funding cuts of $770,000 this year and $1.3 million next year.

With less funding and more special ed needs, Bohren says, the district has had to drop plans for new reading classes, trimmed at-risk intervention programs, and eliminated elementary school guidance counselors and two curriculum administrative jobs.

State promise unmet

The state Legislative Audit Bureau estimates that if the state had reimbursed the promised 63 percent of special education costs (instead of 31 percent) in 1997, districts would have had nearly $60 million more to spend on regular education.

But Gov. Tommy Thompson is recommending that the state merely delete the 63 percent requirement and leave its funding level--frozen for six years at $275.5 million--unchanged.

Wisconsin legislators are hearing a united voice among school districts--teacher unions are hand-in-hand with school boards on this issue--that special education is where more state assistance is sorely needed. But whether the state will act is an open question.

In other states where legislators are considering the issue of adequate and fair funding for all students--including Colorado, Maine, and Pennsylvania--state leaders generally aren't supportive.

Colorado law pledges 80 percent of funding for students with disabilities, but the state now provides only 20 percent. A bill to increase the state commitment to 70 percent is facing "a tough, very, very tough" time, says its sponsor. An opponent says the measure goes "too far outside the boundaries, politically and fiscally."

Until 1991, Pennsylvania reimbursed districts for all special ed costs over regular education. Now the state covers just over 40 per cent.

An intense lobbying effort this spring to guarantee a minimum reimbursement of 50 percent resulted in only a tiny step forward, says Pennsylvania School Boards Association Assistant Executive Director Thomas Gentzel. "It was very upsetting to have worked this hard and come up with so little."

In Michigan, however, state leaders are more receptive to the issue. A Senate committee is holding statewide hearings and surveying school boards on the "negative impact of rising special ed costs." The committee chair has a grandson who is autistic, and the effort has the governor's support.

Last year, Michigan covered 28 percent of the $2 billion in special education costs facing the state's 553 public school districts. (The U.S. government's share was $125 million.) The tight funding is hurting both special education and districts' regular education programs, school officials report.

Rochester Community Schools, for example, is hiring fewer regular teachers and cutting its middle school intramural sports, while other districts say special education teachers would be more effective if the district could afford to cut class sizes.