Grand Jury Backs Schools’ Case for Special Ed Funds

Echoing the pleas of public school superintendents across the state, the Orange County Grand Jury reported Wednesday that the federal government’s funding shortfall for required special education programs is hindering the mission of the county’s 27 school districts.

In a 10-page report, the civil grand jury recommended that each of the county’s districts develop a plan to inform the public of the federal government’s history of under-funding special education and to urge citizen involvement.

Since 1975, when the first of two federal laws was passed that lays out special education requirements for schools, the federal government has pledged to pay 40% of the costs.

“This is a promise that has been broken every year for the past 25 years, even though our local school districts have consistently and faithfully been meeting their responsibilities to provide for our most needy students,” the grand jury report states.

Until very recently, the federal government has paid only 8% of the costs of educating children with special needs. In November 1999, Congress increased funding for special education by $702 million, raising the federal government’s share for this year to about 13% of special education costs.

The funding shortfall is now nearly $71 million a year in Orange County, according to the report.

Among the grand jury’s findings:

* The current annual cost to educate a student in regular programs in Orange County is $5,000. The average cost for a special education student is about $11,800.

* On average, about 21% of the necessary costs of special education in Orange County are not funded by either the state or the federal government.

* About 20% of all instructional funds in the county are spent on special education, while only 10% of all students require special education.

The report also points to a 1999 Supreme Court decision in the case Cedar Rapids vs. Garret F. as likely to propel special education costs even higher. The court ruled that it was the responsibility of the school district to pay for full-time medical assistance at school for a student who was left paralyzed by an accident. The decision’s result has been to shift responsibility for such services “from private insurance companies and state health-care agencies onto already overburdened public school districts,” the report states.

The grand jury used six districts in Orange County to illustrate the extent of the funding shortfall. Among them was Irvine Unified, which has a $4-million budget deficit and failed for the second time Tuesday to win voter approval for a parcel tax that would have prevented teacher layoffs and the elimination of several school programs.

“If the federal government had fulfilled its promise that it made 25 years ago, Irvine would have had $5 million more to spend on educating its students this year, and they would not have even needed a parcel tax,” said Ronald Wenkart, general counsel for the Orange County Department of Education. “I think it reflects extremely negatively on the federal government that it makes promises to the disabled community it doesn’t keep.”

Of the six districts singled out in the report, Garden Grove Unified had the most severe budget shortfall. According to the report, the 45,881-student district had to pay more than $11 million in the latest school year for special education programs.

The unfunded mandates for special education have been a primary concern of superintendents in the county for more than six years, Wenkart said.

He said the grand jury’s report will be helpful in galvanizing support for increased federal and state funding. “They’re asking us to intensify our efforts, to make more trips to Washington, to get more parents to write letters, and we’re going to do that,” Wenkart said.

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Taking Up the Slack

The federal government pays only 8 cents of every $1 spent on special education funding, according to a recent report, even though it agreed to fund 40 cents when public schools were opened to disabled students in the mid-1970s.

What selected Orange County school districts paid from their general funds for special education in 1998-99 to make up the shortfall:

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District Funding gap Capistrano Unified $9.5 million Cypress Elementary 121,755 Garden Grove Unified 11.1 million Huntington Beach Union High 1.4 million Irvine Unified 5.2 million Saddleback Valley Unified 5.3 million ALL ORANGE COUNTY DISTRICTS $71.0 million

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Source: County of Orange