Disabled Ruling Should Force Funding Debate

It is a most profound tragedy when a healthy child becomes seriously and permanently disabled. Such misfortune befell Garret Frey of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, when at age 4, his spinal column was severed in a motorcycle accident. Garret was left paralyzed from the neck down; however, his mental capacities miraculously were unaffected. Garret today is enrolled in a regular public school but requires continuous medical care.

In what is certain to become known as a landmark decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled on March 3 that Garret’s school district must pay for a nurse to care for his tracheotomy tube and catheter and perform other necessary medical services during the school day. This ruling provides legal precedent to the idea that school districts should be responsible for the medical needs of disabled students in addition to providing for their educational needs.

Although no one questions the severity of Garret’s disability and his overwhelming medical needs, the Supreme Court has shifted the funding responsibility for these expensive medical services from private insurance companies and state health care agencies onto already overburdened public school districts. It is notable that two Supreme Court justices dissented from the majority decision, stating that the law for disabled children “was passed to increase the educational opportunities available to disabled children, not to provide medical care for them.” It is conceivable that in Capistrano Unified School District alone, 10 additional school nurses will be needed to meet the new Supreme Court standard. Moreover, we anticipate a requirement for specialized medical technicians with training in unique medical procedures. Additional trained specialists also will be required to ride on school buses when medically fragile students are transported, and additional one-on-one specialized aides will need to be assigned to students whose medical needs so dictate. A cost estimate of these projected staff increases is in the $2-million range.

The original federal law providing educational rights and guarantees to disabled students occurred in the 1970s at a time when reform was necessary. Public law 94-142 opened the doors of public schools to thousands of disabled students who had been kept at home, usually in isolated conditions. Thanks to this federal legislation, disabled schoolchildren were provided specialized programs and services developed in accordance with their physical and medical capacities to learn.

Most important, included in public law 94-142 was a promise by the U.S. government to pay 40% of the costs for the additional services guaranteed by this law. This has been and remains a broken promise. Congress has funded only 8% of the costs. As a result, even before the extraordinary costs that will now have to be incurred, public schools were faced with a glaring deficit. The only way to make up this deficit was to take funding from the one area of public education not provided entitlements or special guarantees: regular education. This meant larger classes, fewer textbooks, and ill-equipped science labs in many schools.

In Capistrano Unified School District, use of regular education funds to make up the special education funding deficit more than tripled in just three short years, from $3.2 million in 1994 to $10.9 million in 1997. At a time when the public is demanding greater accountability from schools, this diverted regular education funding could have supplied tutoring for academically struggling students, accelerated programs for the advanced, specialized courses for college-bound students, and vocational training for students who do not wish to attend college, as well as instruction in the mastery of technology.

To add insult to injury, last October, President Clinton proposed using the federal government budget surplus to fund 100,000 additional schoolteachers for the nation’s schools. What he should have done, in the interests of disabled children and all public schoolchildren, is to use that surplus to pay the federal government’s 40 percent of special education costs. Clinton and the Congress should live up to past promises before making new ones.

Although the 100,000 new teachers may play well politically, it is not a responsible approach in the long term, particularly now that the Supreme Court has imposed a burden on school districts that could lead to their bankruptcy.

Many will be uncomfortable with this discussion, alleging that it pits regular education against special education. This is not, and should not, be the case. Special education students are entitled to the services they need. Unfortunately, the truth is that until the federal government lives up to its responsibility, increased costs for special education must come from regular education funds.

In the interests of all public school students, state and federal legislators should be urged to address this dilemma. The Supreme Court decision may have been a blessing in disguise. It will force a debate on the broken promises of the federal government to the disabled children of America, at the expense of regular education students. The matter can no longer simply be swept under the rug.