The Council and the District (Part 2)
By Frank Gruber
Last week I wrote that special education funding had become the "great
minefield of education finance," and that the Santa Monica City
Council would be well advised to stay out of it. That upset some readers,
who seemed to think that I oppose giving children with learning disabilities
the education, "free and appropriate, and in the least restrictive
environment possible," that they deserve and that the law requires.
Maybe I should choose my metaphors better. I am not opposed to special
education. Who could be? The laws that require it are good laws.
But that doesn't mean that special education hasn't had huge impacts
on school budgets, including locally, and that funding special education
isn't a political thicket, or a tar baby, or whatever metaphor you want
to use.
The School Board has agonized over the issue for years, and the City
Council would be irresponsible in the extreme to criticize the Board
over one tiny aspect of a complex problem -- the confidentiality clauses
the District includes in settlement agreements with the small minority
of parents who don't accept the education plans the District proposes
for their children.
The federal government that passed the law requiring "free and
appropriate" education for all children never adequately funded
it. It's the classic "unfunded mandate." California attempts
to fund the mandate, but in the same manner it funds all education --
inadequately, and on a per capita basis that does not take into account
the varying needs or generosity of different districts.
As a result, finite resources must be allocated among seemingly infinite
needs -- those of children with special needs and those of children
with just ordinary needs.
And who does the allocating? The District. Who runs the District? The
School Board. Who elects the School Board? The people. What could be
more political than that?
This is not just a local issue. A few years ago the then education
columnist for the New York Times, Richard Rothstein (a former
Santa Monica parent, if that means anything) wrote a column trying to
answer a question often posed by conservatives who oppose increasing
public school funding: has the increased spending on education since
1970 led to improved schools?
What Mr. Rothstein found, after correcting for inflation, was that
since 1970 the real increase in per-student education spending had been
about 50 or 60 percent. That sounds impressive, but about two-thirds
of that increase was money spent for special education, to educate students
who either did not attend school in 1970 or who had lesser disabilities
that were not addressed in the bad old days.
Expenditures on the general school population had only increased in
real terms about 15 to 20 percent over 30 years. As one might expect,
Mr. Rothstein found that only correspondingly incremental improvements
in student achievement had occurred during that time.
According to our District's "Average Daily Attendance" (ADA)
data and other data for 2005-06 (the last year actual figures are available),
of the District's enrollment of about 11,500, around 1,500 students
received special education services -- about 13 percent. The statewide
average is around 10 percent.
The needs of these children with disabilities range from minor speech
impediments to autism or severe psychiatric problems, but most participate
in the regular curricula at their schools, and receive their special
education services as an augmentation. In 2005-06 the District counted
only 359 students who received more than 50 percent of their education
in special day classes, and only 46 had such serious disabilities that
they needed to receive their educations in special schools outside of
the District's facilities.
Even though most special education students are taught among their
peers, special education is expensive and consumes a large amount of
the District's budget. In 2005-06, of the School District's total expenditures
of about $107 million, about $19.5 million was spent on special education
-- about 18 percent.
Spending 18 percent of your budget on the 13 percent of your school
population with special needs would not seem that high a premium, except
for the fact that the $19.5 million does not include the costs of the
"mainstream" education received by the 1,100 special ed students
who are not in special day classes or attending out-of-district programs.
About half of the District's special education budget is offset by
special education funds received from the state or federal governments.
That leaves a large deficit, and in 2005-06 the contribution to special
ed funding from the District's general fund was about $8.5 million.
What this means is that because the state and federal governments have
failed to fund their special education mandate, more than 8 percent
of the District's general fund -- about the same amount the District
raises from the parcel tax -- pays for special education.
This is not to say that the kids don't deserve it, and they have a
legal right to an "appropriate" education. But when the overall
success or failure of the District is determined, for some parents (and
others, including taxpayers), by how well the District closes the "achievement
gap" for disadvantaged students, or, for other parents (who tend
to vote in large numbers), by whether the curriculum is good enough
to get their kids into Ivy League colleges, you can understand that
the District cannot -- politically -- let special education expenditures
run out of control.
Which is what was happening a few years ago. In the 2002-03 year, special
expenditures in the District equaled $16.2 million and $5.75 million
of that came from the general fund. In 2003-04, those numbers shot up:
total expenditures increased 12 percent to $18.2 million and the contribution
from the general fund increased a whopping 30 percent to $7.5 million.
The District's per student expenditure on special ed was almost three
times the state average.
Imagine you were then Superintendent John Deasy, who had staked his
reputation on closing the achievement gap. Imagine you were scrambling
to find more money to teach algebra to poor kids from the Pico Neighborhood,
and you lose $1.75 million of general fund revenue to special ed.
What if in addition, notwithstanding your program's high costs relative
to those of other districts, parents were complaining about the program's
quality, and you were spending more than $300,000 in legal fees resolving
disputes with them?
What if, as was the case, your program was in such a mess that the
State Department of Education had cited you for failure to comply with
state guidelines?
What do you do?
In Mr. Deasy's case, he asked the School Board, in Nov. 2004, for emergency
authority to hire a specialist to take charge of the program. (see
story) The District hired Tim Walker from the Glendale School
District.
Since joining the district in early 2005, Mr. Walker has reduced the
rate of increase in special ed expenditures to less than five percent
in fiscal years 2005 and 2006, and he reduced the expenditure on lawyers
about 90 percent, to $31,000 in 2005-06.
Mr. Walker has also become, not coincidentally, the lightning rod for
the indignation of some parents who don't agree with the District's
assessments of their children's needs. They consider him cold-hearted
and dictatorial. Although, as reported by Ann Williams yesterday in
The Lookout, fewer than 10 percent of parents challenge the
District's proposed "Individual Education Plans" (IEPs) for
their children, those that do have been vocal. (see
story)
Most recently, of course, they have made an end run around a School
Board they consider unresponsive to demand that the City Council use
its leverage against the Board.
Although the immediate focus of these parents' anger is Mr. Walker's
policy of including confidentiality clauses in the agreements the District
negotiates with parents who don't accept the District's proposed IEPs,
the bitterness precedes Mr. Walker's employment by the District.
Back in 2004, after receiving a negative internal report on the District's
special education program, the School Board asked the Special Education
District Advisory Committee (SEDAC) to draft a Strategic Plan for Special
Education. Quite a number of parents conscientiously participated in
this process; the Chair was Craig Hamilton, who has served the District
admirably in many capacities in addition to the SEDAC, including the
Financial Oversight Committee and the Prop. X Oversight Committee.
The SEDAC developed a plan, which is still available on the District's
website [http://www.smmusd.org/info/pdf/SpecEdStratPln.pdf], that the
SEDAC parents believed would improve the District's delivery of special
education services and increase the learning of even severely disabled
children.
However, the plan did not say much about costs. The drafters acknowledged
that in the short run, the plan would require more expenditure, for
investment in a "new paradigm" focusing on prevention and
early intervention, but predicted that in the long term the plan would
reduce costs.
The School Board "accepted" the plan, but the District never
adopted its core recommendations. It has implemented parts of it, although
not necessarily in a manner that pleases those who wrote the plan.
This columnist is not willing or qualified to say whether Mr. Walker's
approach to special ed or the plan's suggestions are better. I can appreciate
the District's reasons for confidentially clauses, and I can even imagine
reasons why they might be good for the special ed families, but I also
wonder if an open policy might be better -- whereby everyone, parents
and the public, have access to the individual education plan for every
special ed student (after obscuring their identities, of course).
One thing I won't do is second-guess parents of children with disabilities
for trying to get what's best for their kids, although I also won't
second-guess other parents for doing the same.
But I will second-guess the City Council if it thinks it can jump into
this ongoing policy debate, take sides, and do anything useful.
Other than what I said last week -- give the District the money. The
City has it, and the schools need it.
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