State Adds Aid for Special Education

The state has reached a settlement in a 20-year-old lawsuit filed by 10 California school districts and education offices, including Newport-Mesa Unified in Orange County, that will boost funding for special education across the state.

Under the plan, unveiled Thursday, the state will pay $520 million to reimburse school districts and counties for past costs relating to special education. The state also 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.

“I think it’s the right thing to do,” said Mike Fine, assistant superintendent for business services in Newport-Mesa, which filed a friend of the court brief in one of two special education suits that were joined for the settlement. “They should have done it a long time ago.”

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

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. Long Beach Unified filed a similar case, and several school districts, including Newport Mesa, signed on to it. Courts agreed with school districts that the state was obligated to cover the costs of services it required.

Despite the favorable court rul

ings, 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.

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.

“These kids have a right to be educated,” said Jim Ferryman, a board member in Newport-Mesa who last year traveled to Washington to lobby federal officials for more money. “The government gives us a pittance, and wants us to pay for the whole thing. . . . Now, if the federal government would only do the same thing the state has done.”

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

Sandi Anes, whose daughter has Down syndrome and attends a regular class at Victoria Elementary School in Costa Mesa with the help of a full-time aide, said the new funding is a milestone.

But she doesn’t believe officials, or the general public, understand that special education funding is good for society as a whole. If people understood that, battles over funding would not take 20 years to settle.

“How do you put a dollar value on a person’s opportunity?” she said. “My daughter has Down’s, but thanks to her education, she’s going to get a job, and contribute to her community, and that’s going to cost taxpayers a lot less in the long run.”

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.

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.

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.

The settlement still must clear some hurdles. By January, school officials must gather signatures of approval from 85% of all districts and county offices. But all parties agreed they expect the deal to go through.