Davis Asked to Help End Special Education Funding Dispute

A contentious case involving school districts’ claims against the state for up to $1.9 billion in special education services greets Gov. Gray Davis on his return from an overseas trade mission this week.

Hoping to avoid future court battles, an obscure but powerful state commission charged with deciding when and how much of the money spent during the past 19 years would be reimbursed voted Thursday to ask the Davis administration to intervene.

State Treasurer Phil Angelides, who sits on the Commission on State Mandates, suggested bringing the administration into the talks.

“If this commission acts or deadlocks, what we will see is more . . . years of legal warfare,” Angelides said, ending in a result “that may or may not be rational.”

Finding ways to pay for special education services has become a crisis in many school districts as numbers of qualified students have increased. Since 1990, when Riverside County schools first sued, the population of special education students has almost doubled, to more than 610,000 statewide.

As the state’s largest school district, Los Angeles Unified would stand to gain the largest share of any settlement--about 20%, or up to $380 million.

School district representatives have long indicated that they are ready to negotiate, but the state has consistently maintained that the schools’ claims are vastly inflated.

The punt to the governor surprised some participants because the commission has often appeared close to resolving the issue. It first inherited the complex problem in 1992, after an appeals court found the state liable for paying for programs it had ordered districts to provide for physically and emotionally disabled students.

A year ago, the commission determined that the state owed districts for eight required changes in special education programs, ranging from limiting teacher caseloads to educating special-needs students through age 22.

What Davis will do is a mystery, particularly since his Finance Department has advised him that the state has already paid back most, if not all, of the special education costs. He faces a short timetable if he intends to get involved, because the commission indicated Thursday that a final vote will be taken Dec. 1 if no progress has been made by then.

With the governor overseas last week and his finance director on vacation, no decisions about how to proceed have been made, said Davis spokeswoman Hilary McLean.

Under California law, the state must pay local government and school districts for any additional tasks it requires of them.

For some, the drawn-out process of determining who is responsible for the increased costs has come to symbolize “the failure of the state mandates process,” said Commissioner Joann Steinmeier, an Arcadia school board member who earlier sent a letter to Davis urging him to step in.

Precedent for a negotiated settlement can be found in the 1995 conclusion of a lawsuit filed by the California Teachers Assn. that resulted in a $5.2-billion payment over six years, most of which was used to cut class size in the primary grades.

Angelides said he is hopeful that significant progress on the special education claims can be made before the commission’s Dec. 1 meeting. He cited no specific evidence that the state’s position has changed.

In May, the Finance Department’s top attorney wrote to the California School Boards Assn. that “settlement discussions are premature” because the “billions of state dollars have already been allocated to school districts” for special education.

A representative of state Controller Kathleen Connell was the only “no” vote Thursday, upholding Connell’s position that further delays are not warranted. During her five years on the commission, Connell has frequently championed the districts’ position.

“My concern is the facts are not going to change in the next 30 days,” Connell said in an interview later.

In a separate development last week, health education teacher Pat Paul of Modesto declined an appointment to the commission by the governor--after reading seven volumes of information on the special education case.

Paul said she determined that conflict of interest laws would bar her from voting on it and other education matters, which make up 80% of the commission’s caseload.

She said she asked the governor’s people, “Did you know I have special ed kids in my classes? Do you think that might be a conflict?”

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Special Education Mandates

The Commission on State Mandates determined last year that the state should repay school districts for providing eight state-required services since 1991. Districts estimate the total cost of reimbursement at $1.9 billion for the following:

* Providing education for disabled students until they turn 22.

* Establishing community advisory panels, which coordinate local plans for delivering special education.

* Involving parents and teachers in the planning process.

* Limiting case load to 28 students for language, speech and hearing resource specialists.

* Extending the school year for special education students by 20 days.

* Placing a new or newly identified special education child in an appropriate setting until an individual plan can be developed.

* Providing an instructional aide for every resource specialist and ending the practice of giving resource specialists dual appointments as regular classroom teachers.

* Obtaining written parental consent for assessments of students and changes in special education students’ educational plan and providing mediation when parents refuse consent.

Source: Commission on State Mandates