Senators want special ed funding 10-year plan would aid Maine schools

loading...

WASHINGTON – Maine’s two U.S. senators today will introduce legislation calling for an annual increase in special education funding over the next 10 years.

“It is one of the few [federal] education initiatives that would help every community in Maine,” Sen. Susan Collins said, “because every school there is struggling with the costs.”

Sens. Collins and Olympia Snowe are joining Sen. Jim Jeffords, R-Vt., in introducing an amendment to the federal budget that would boost funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, by $2.5 billion every year for the next decade, eventually leading up to the goal of full federal funding of special education.

Similar legislation calling for an annual $2 billion increase and cosponsored by Rep. John Baldacci was introduced in the House at the beginning of this month.

The House Government Reform Committee, on which Rep. Tom Allen serves, held hearings on the effectiveness of IDEA last week and concluded that full funding of special education is an achievable goal and must be started this year.

IDEA, which was first enacted in 1975 and amended in 1997, requires schools to educate children with disabilities but also requires the federal government to fund 40 percent of the national average per-child cost.

But so far the federal government has only contributed 14.9 percent nationwide, and even less than 10 percent on average in Maine, according to David Stockford, director of special services at the Maine Department of Education.

“The whole delegation is working together on this issue,” said Snowe, who focused on special education in her re-election campaign.

Collins said special education is one of her priorities, “and I know it’s the priority of the school districts in the state of Maine.”

In Maine, 35,139 students require special education services, which cost the state $225,129,673 in the fiscal year 2000, according to the Maine Department of Education.

The federal government is supposed to pay $2,562 for each child in Maine, or a total of about $90 million, according to Maine Municipal Association documents.

However, the federal government only contributed $21,948,758, leaving it up to the state to come up with the missing $70 million through sales and property taxes.

In fact, full federal funding could reduce property taxes by 5 percent for Maine residents, according to the Maine Municipal Association.

Dr. Murray Shulman, director of pupil services at the Bangor School Department, said, “We have the obligation to provide special education services, whether the federal government pays its share or not.”

In the Bangor district, 540 students fall into the special education category, said Shulman, and the services cost $3.6 million a year, or an average $6,667 per child. “And that’s only what the government recognizes as special services,” he said. “Transportation, equipment, meetings and materials are considered normal costs and don’t get reimbursed as special education.”

The problems are not new to David Stockford, who is responsible for managing the federal, local and state financing of these services.

“The local and state school departments carry the primary burden of financing special education,” Stockford said, adding that “the federal appropriations never come close” to the amount required by IDEA.

IDEA is a fundamentally good law, said Shulman. “The problem is,” he said, “the federal government never put in its fair share, and local and state departments are stuck with the costs.”

The Bangor School Department received $375,000 – $695 per child – from the federal government last year, barely 10 percent of the total expenditures, Shulman said. “We don’t have the option to say we can’t afford to provide services, because we are required by law to provide them,” he said.

In addition, the federal regulations for the schools are strict and time-consuming, he said. “It takes us about 60 days to design a program for a child, and it’s a very demanding process,” Shulman said, adding that the schools carry a high responsibility for the child’s welfare.

According to a study by the Council for Exceptional Children, a national advocacy group, two-thirds of special education teachers spend less than two hours a week in one-on-one instruction with their students, partly due to the amount of paperwork they have to work through.

“The failure to meet our long-standing commitment to fully fund special education costs is unsettling and devastating,” Allen said.

Maine schools are having an increasingly hard time providing special education services and balancing their budgets, said Baldacci. “I am often told about schools that have cut art and music programs in an effort to keep the budget balanced,” he said.

Schools in the Bangor district have not yet faced that dilemma, according to Shulman. “So far it’s not a standoff between special education and extracurricular programs,” he said. But if his schools ever had budget problems, art and extracurricular activities would have to be cut first, he said.

For her part, Collins said she raised this issue when Bill Clinton was president and is continuing to do so with President George W. Bush.

She also introduced legislation promoting alternatives to special education. “If we did a better job identifying reading problems, we could reduce the number of students needing special education,” which in turn would reduce the costs, she said.

Allen has promised to lead the effort to convince the House Budget Committee to include the costs of full funding in the budget.

Now, with the large estimated federal surplus, Mainers hope for change. “This is our chance to fulfill our commitment to the states and to provide the necessary resources,” Baldacci said.

Allen goes even further, saying that “with the talk about tax cuts in the trillions, not fully funding the IDEA would be inexcusable.”

Bush’s budget blueprint, submitted to Congress last week, calls for an 11 percent increase in education funding but addresses special education only in the broadest sense.

“The budget includes increased funds for special education to help states and school districts meet their obligations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,” it says in the blueprint, but no specific numbers are given.

Officials at the U.S. Department of Education would not make any predictions on how much money special services will actually receive and referred any questions about the possible fate of IDEA to the White House.

“The special education numbers won’t be available until next month,” according to White House spokesperson Mercy Viana.

But money is needed now, said Collins. “It would relieve tremendous pressures on local schools” and give the schools the flexibility to use the money in a way that fits community needs, she said.