Special ed funding nearly flat as costs rise in Pa.
State, federal funding for students with disabilities nearly flat as costs rise
The orange and purple bars, stretching across the page, make the situation perfectly clear.
They are part of a chart shared by Dr. Steve Gerhard, Gov. Mifflin School District superintendent, one that depicts how much the district has spent on special education annually. The data dates to the 2010-11 school year.
The orange part of each bar, representing the amount the state and federal government chipped in, remains fairly constant year to year. It grows only slightly from just over $2.5 million in 2010-11 to just under $3.1 in 2019-20.
The purple portion, however, grows bar by bar. It starts at $3.8 million and ends at just over $8.9 million.
What it all means is that while special education costs increased steadily in the district, the amount the state and federal government pitched in to pay for it shrank from 40% to 26%. And because of that, more and more stress is being placed on the shoulders of district taxpayers.
“What you will notice is that currently there has been the addition of 3.4 mills in local tax dollars just for this one specific line item over a 10 year period due to the woeful state funding,” Gerhard said.
Gov. Mifflin is not an anomaly. In fact, it’s the norm.
A report released by the Education Law Center and PA Schools Work accuses Pennsylvania of “shortchanging children with disabilities” for a decade, leaving local districts and taxpayers footing the ever-growing bill for special education costs.
The report
The new report echoes Gov. Mifflin’s experience with special education funding, saying districts across Pennsylvania are paying more and more each year.
“For the past decade, expenditures for educating students with disabilities in Pennsylvania have been climbing steadily, mirroring a national trend,” it reads.
In the 2018-19 school year alone, the report states, Pennsylvania school districts increased spending on special education by
$254 million, a 5% increase from the previous year.
That same year, the increase in state funding for special education was increased by only $15 million.
“Local districts were thereby forced, on average, to come up with 92 cents for every dollar in new special education expenses, a challenging task for the hundreds of school systems that are already struggling financially,” the report reads. “Thus, for yet another year, Pennsylvania retreated from its responsibility to educate students with disabilities — despite the fact that the state remains legally responsible under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act for ensuring that students with disabilities receive a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment.”
The new report represents the third annual report on special education funding created by the Education Law Center and PA Schools Work. While the previous reports showed a “disturbing pattern of unfairness,” the latest report said that the situation is steadily worsening and a “decade-long trend of state neglect.”
According to data in the report, between the 2008-09 and the 2018-19 school years, special education expenditures statewide rose by $2 billion. But over that span state funding for special education only increased by
$110 million.
That has resulted in the local school districts’ share of special education growing from 62% to 73%, while the state portion shrank from 32% to 22%.
The state did increase special education funding by $50 million for the 2019-20 school year, the report states, but that is expected to fall far short of the $200 million to $250 million per year increases in statewide special education costs.
And, the state did not include a special education increase in its 2010-11 budget.
Federal special education funding, which makes up only a small portion of overall funding, has seen both small increases and decreases year-to-year of the span. It has not helped bridge the gap between costs and state funding.
“More and more, local school districts are confronting difficult choices: Do they raise additional revenue to meet funding gaps? Spread limited resources across
a range of programs? Reduce needed services and supports for students with disabilities?” the report reads. “Families continue to experience local tax increases and service cuts.
“A lack of state investment in basic education funding compounds these challenges, eroding the resources available to all students, including those with disabilities.”
The report said that to rectify the situation the state needs to start implementing annual special education funding increases of $100 million or more.
Currently, about 307,000 students across the state, or about 18% of all students, receive special education services.
Local reaction
Like Gerhard, Jeffrey Boyer, Antietam School District superintendent, said the new report is reflective of what’s been happening in his district.
“The rising cost of special education, along with the mandated outside student placements, are hurting us,” he said, referring to students who attend specialty schools and whose tuition is paid for by their home district. “This is definitely having a negative impact on Antietam’s budget.”
Andrew Hoffert, director of student support and services for the Wilson School District, said a lack of help from the state with special education costs has likewise impacted his district’s budget.
“The Wilson School District has seen the gap between our special education expenditures and federal and state funding continue to widen,” he said. “As shown in the spreadsheet attached to The Education Law Center report, Wilson School District’s local tax dollars now must cover 80% of these expenditures versus 64% ten years ago.”
Hoffert said that neither state nor federal funding has kept pace with growing special education costs, which have risen by 107% over the past decade as districts have been asked to do more.
“While the funding gap has widened over time, the services that school districts are required to provide continue to expand,” he said.
The situation is worsened, Hoffert said, by the way charter schools are funded. School districts are required to pay charter schools for district students who opt to attend a charter school, and have to pay much more for special education students.
“The funding formula for charter school students also has a significant impact on the district’s spe
cial education budget,” he said. “Specifically, the per student cost of educating a special education student in a charter program is more than double that of a non special education student, and that funding comes from the district’s budget.”
Gerhard said he sees three things that could be done to help ease growing financial burden of special education costs for local districts.
First, he said, the federal government needs to step up.
“The federal government needs to honor their original commitment with the passing of Individuals With Disabilities Act in the 1970s to fund the law that when passed expected to cover 40% of the extra costs associated with educating students with disabilities,” he said.
Secondly, Gerhard said, the state needs to increase the pace in which it is im
plementing a new “fair funding” formula. That formula was enacted in 2016 to address growing inequity among Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts.
But the new formula isn’t retroactive, instead only applying to “new” state money included in funding increases.
“Unfortunately, the current reality is this formula if only being applied to new monies and will take too long for any ‘right-sizing’ to occur,” Gerhard said. “I believe the initial projection was 30 years.”
Finally, Gerhard pointed out that what Pennsylvania mandates school districts provide when it comes to special education is actually more than what is included in the federal Individuals With Disabilities Act.
Gerhard does not suggest that the state lower its standards, but instead said Pennsylvania should honor its commitment to them by funding them.