State Agrees to Special Education Fund Talks

For the first time in two decades of fighting for about $1.9 billion in reimbursement for special education services, school districts got an agreement Wednesday that the state will negotiate with them.

Gov. Gray Davis asked his Department of Finance to sit down with the districts, which say they were never fully paid for services the state ordered them to provide for 610,000 physically and emotionally disabled students.

The Commission on State Mandates, which is charged with determining how and when the money should be disbursed, voted last month to hold off on such action, giving Davis until this week to make progress on a settlement.

On a 4-1 vote Wednesday, the commission agreed to delay any action for six more months while negotiations take place, unless either side requests intervention before then. It also left open the possibility of renewing that delay for another six months.

“I believe and I hope that this is a positive step,” said state Treasurer Phil Angelides, a commission member. “But I have no illusions . . . about how big the gap is between the two parties.”

School district representatives praised Davis for his willingness to discuss settlement options after years of stonewalling by his Republican predecessors.

The obscure but powerful mandates commission inherited the issue in 1992, after a state appellate court found the state liable for the districts’ costs.

The Department of Finance’s representative on the commission said the parties had already met once. Representatives for the school districts said they had not yet met with anyone and, while they expected to meet soon, no date had been set. But they said they believe that the Davis administration is sincere.

“This is not something where we wait 19 years and then we’ll wait another year to meet,” said Owen Waters, a lobbyist for the California School Boards Assn. who said he will head the districts’ negotiating team. “We’re going to be moving right along.”