State Adds Aid for Special Education

The state of California, settling a 20-year fight, has agreed to a major increase in funds to help school districts with the costs of special education.

Under the plan, unveiled Thursday, the state will pay $520 million to reimburse school districts and counties for past costs relating to special education. In addition, the state will kick in $100 million annually from now on.

Even that amount of money will not end all of the strains that special education has put on school district budgets. Nonetheless, school officials hailed it as a substantial help. “The $100 million a year” in new money “is really terrific,” said Davis Campbell, executive director of the California School Boards Assn.

Although state officials say the exact amount going to each district has not yet been set, every district stands to gain from the settlement.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, which has 16% of the state’s special education students, projected that it ultimately will receive $62 million in reimbursement for past costs plus $16 million in new annual state funds.

The special education dispute began in 1980, when Riverside County’s Office of Education sued the state, alleging that its districts were being forced to pay for services for special education students that exceeded federal requirements. Courts agreed with school districts that the state was obligated to cover the costs of services it required.

Despite the favorable court rulings, school districts feared that they faced years more litigation over how much the state would pay, and lauded Gov. Gray Davis for his willingness to negotiate instead.

Davis and his aides “never once shut the door,” said Campbell. The state “could have stretched it out another four to five years,” he said.

For his part, Davis said in a statement, the settlement “affords school districts the opportunity to focus on what is really important--educating California’s children.”

“All sides agree that this settlement puts the problem behind us once and for all and adequately funds our important special education programs,” he said.

Despite that, the settlement, comes nowhere near covering the full costs that school districts and county offices say they have incurred over the last two decades.

The federal government provides $500 million for special education programs in California. But to meet all the federal mandates, the national contribution by all rights should be an additional $1 billion, said Paul M. Goldfinger, vice president at School Services of California Inc., a school-finance consulting firm in Sacramento. The federal government long ago pledged to cover 40% of the costs of special education nationwide but has never come close.

State support is about $2.4 billion a year, and local jurisdictions provide more than $1.1 billion, much of which goes toward meeting federal requirements.

The past shortfall in money has meant that funds for special education “came out of regular education programs,” said Elliott Duchon, assistant superintendent of governmental relations in the Riverside County Office of Education. “This hurt all kids.”

Newport-Mesa Unified School District this year was expecting to pay for special education services with $7 million that was supposed to go to regular classroom instruction. Those costs have been mounting year by year, district officials said.

Parents in the Newport-Mesa district said they were happy to hear of the settlement.

“We’re just ecstatic,” said Nancy Bruchell, whose child is in a special education class in Newport-Mesa.

The Long Beach Unified School District, which also sued the state, said it expects to get at least $3 million of the $270 million that the state is expected to distribute next spring. Spokesman Chris Eftychiou said the district expects to see an additional $300,000 a year for the next 10 years.

The dispute has had a tortuous history, including a string of failed negotiations.

After the state changed its special education laws in 1980, the Riverside schools superintendent filed suit. The suit contended that the state was improperly refusing to pay for mandated programs, including requirements that districts and counties offer extra school days for special education students; reduce the caseloads of language, speech and hearing therapists; and set up community advisory committees.

In 1992, an appeals court ruled that the state must pay for those programs and ordered that the case be reviewed by the Commission on State Mandates. That obscure but powerful board is charged with determining when the state has failed to pay for services it required of local jurisdictions.

Last June, after an earlier round of talks collapsed, the commission voted to begin reimbursing schools for their estimated costs. State Controller Kathleen Connell, a panel member who had pushed the parties to settle, urged districts to submit claims.

Concerns that Davis’ administration would sue to block the payments prompted officials from both sides to return to the bargaining table. The effort got a big assist from state Treasurer Phil Angelides, the swing vote on the commission who “knocked on the governor’s door many times,” said Owen Waters, a negotiator for the school boards group.

Many districts expressed immense relief that the settlement would save them from the probably impossible task of locating and poring over 20 years worth of records to prove how much the additional costs had been.

Eftychiou, the Long Beach spokesman, cautioned that the settlement still must clear some hurdles. By January, school officials must gather signatures of approval from 85% of all districts and county offices. And legislators will have to appropriate the necessary funds in January.

But all parties agreed that, given the governor’s strong support, they expect the deal to go through.