Letters 97
EPP April 1997 Letter on Special Education

April 3, 1997

The Hon. George E. Pataki
Governor of New York State
Executive Chamber, State Capitol
Albany, NY 12224

Dear Governor Pataki:

We are writing you this letter to comment on your special education funding proposal. As a coalition of 26 civic groups in New York City, we monitor the impact on students of budget and administrative decisions. Our objectives are to secure educational equity for all children, improve the quality of public school instruction, and drive available funds to the classroom.

A special education funding system is urgently needed that does not drive inappropriate instruction, services, and placement decisions for children with special needs. The current system encourages a focus on the mechanics of eligibility determinations rather than on effectiveness. To us, genuine reform would result in utilizing resources available at current levels to:

EPP does not believe that reforming special education funding will be easy. This is why we are perplexed that you have put serious roadblocks in the path of its acceptance by the legislature, school districts, and parents. More importantly, we see these five roadblocks as ultimately damaging what could be achieved for children through funding reform:

1) The creation of two ratios for special education funding. The allocation of funds for special education programs based on a statewide average for naturally occurring ratios of children in special education placements makes sense. For this reason, EPP supports the Regents’ proposal, based on a statewide analysis of all school districts, to establish a universal rate of incidence of 12% of student enrollment. Why create a higher rate of 11.73% and a lower one of 10.3% for school districts with lower rates of referrals? This is rewarding districts with high rates of placement and hurting school districts with lower rates, in effect, punishing success. We can see no positive rationale for undermining the concept of establishing a statewide, uniform funding system and statewide standards.

2) An annual recalculation of ratios. The logic of this proposal also escapes us in light of your stated intention of curbing the growth of special education placements. Why would school districts want to reduce their referral rates if their reward resulted in less excess cost aid? Again, this seems like punishing success. The Regents’ proposal, on the other hand, by keeping the ratio at 12% would create the funding neutrality that would encourage intervention to prevent special education placements.

3) Limited aid to districts serving a high-poverty student body. The Regents’ proposal provides more funding in excess costs for districts with student enrollment with at least a 20% poverty rate. Studies by the U.S. General Accounting Office and the U.S. Department of Education found that low student achievement is associated with high concentrations of poverty. The July 28, 1992 GAO report found that in schools with at least 126 poor children, half were low achieving. To provide additional funding to districts only when over 65% of their students are poor is to ignore school districts with lower levels of poverty that require additional state assistance to prevent unnecessary special education placements. It also provides such small amounts of additional funding to very high poverty districts so that the additional resources cannot possibly make much of a difference.

4) Reduction of special education funds to create more funding for prevention services. We believe that last year’s increase in Educationally Related Support Services Aid to allow students to receive services without being placed in special education programs was a step in the direction of creating a neutral funding system. ERSSA increases also help to build the institutional capacity of school districts to effectively help students directly as a transition to a new system where placement will not drive services. EPP was prepared to thank you for recommending a $30.3 million increase in ERSSA funds for FY ‘98 until we found out that this amount was transferred from public excess cost allocations. Since we do not be believe the transition to a reformed special education system will be easy, we do not understand why an inducement has been transformed into a penalty.

5) The elimination of additional funds for new private school placements of high cost students. EPP did not support the Regents’ proposal, since abandoned, to raise the threshold for high cost aid from three times the average cost of educating a student to four times. Our objection is that, over time, higher costs would be incurred in order to meet the threshold. We have speculated that maybe there should be a funding ratio for high cost students that is also based on naturally occurring incidences of students with severe disabilities. But we have come to the conclusion that we do not have the data upon which to make any recommendation for the appropriate funding system for these children with highly specialized needs. But we believe that you and your budget staff also lack the data upon which to make informed decisions. We recommend that the State Education Department do an analysis of all school districts to ascertain the naturally occurring incidence of students that are highly disabled and high cost, a survey of both public and private school and BOCES costs associated with serving these children, and the capacity of school districts and BOCES to absorb students now in private placement. We believe more data has to be gathered because such factors as regional costs differences as well as the relationship of poverty to severe disability must be examine in order to create a neutral funding system. We urge caution in this area because a significant cost shift to local school districts will absorb funds that should be directed at prevention of special education services as well as improving the quality of these services.

There are many institutional forces at work that are resisting special education reform, as you well know. But there is also a genuine and well-founded fear among parents of special education students that policies geared towards cost containment will ultimately lead to a diminution of care and services for their children. The establishment of a constant and statewide funding system with a poverty index would be a giant step forward. Changes in the private excess cost formula should be delayed until the major framework is established for special education funding. EPP members realize that some of your proposals may, indeed, be simply negotiating points. But with whom are you negotiating -- a horde of constituencies that desperately want special education funding reform at any price? The organized constituencies are against reform, so these "negotiating points" are helping to give them the ammunition to kill your proposals. From the perspective of organizations that want to improve our public schools, stop the escalation of special education placements, and make special education programs functional for children rather than dysfunctional, this is very frustrating. Since last fall we have watched solid special education funding reform proposals that have a slim chance of being adopted being transformed into less and less appealing proposals.

Before closing, we want to urge you to direct your staff or the Education Department to look into the implementation of the special education reforms that was adopted last year. EPP has received anecdotal reports that parents in New York City who are only seeking speech services for their children are still being told that their children must still have the entire battery of tests for evaluation of their psychological, social, and education needs in order to receive these services. Even though ERSSA funds were increased last year to provide children with access to services without having to be formally placed in special education, parents have been told that the New York City Board of Education is still negotiating with the unions on how to provide these services under ERSSA and until these negotiations are completed they cannot get these services without this lengthy evaluation and placement procedures. Since almost a year has gone by, we are concerned that at least in this school district the full benefits of the ERSSA funding have not brought about significant improvements. Preschool reforms adopted last year to provide more itinerant services to children seem also to have not succeeded as fully as we had hoped. Our assumption was that finally groups of children in Headstart and day care centers would get access to services such as speech therapy and that the itinerant service providers would go to these locations to work with small groups of children. Instead, we have gotten anecdotal reports that children are being individually, and one by one, transported at public expense to itinerant service providers. This strikes us as once again another example of vendor-driven excess at the expense of services to children. Are these isolated instances or are they widespread?

EPP members believe that improvements in the quality of the special education system are possible and necessary. We hope to work with you in efforts to secure high quality instruction and services for special needs children.

Sincerely,
Jan Atwell, Chairperson
Noreen Connell, Executive Director

CC
Assembly Majority Speaker Sheldon Silver
Assembly Education Committee Chair Stephen Sanders
Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno
Senate Education Committee Chair Charles Cook
NYS Education Commissioner Richard Mills
NYC Board of Education Chancellor Rudolph Crew