Bill to Change Special Ed Funding Out Of Committee (DE)
January 13, 2011
A bill that would mandate more flexible funding streams for special education cleared a Delaware House committee today, reviving a plan that died in the last session of the General Assembly.
House Bill 1, sponsored by Rep. Teresa Schooley, D-Newark, codifies “needs-based” funding for special education in all 19 of the state’s public school districts as well as charter schools.
Currently, special education dollars are distributed in the same way as all other state education funds — according to the number of students enrolled in a district or school.
Schooley said the current rules don’t allow schools to spend their state money on comprehensive services for individual special-education students.
“A child could not have two special needs, they could only have one,” Schooley said in a hearing on the bill Jan. 12 before the House Education Committee.
In recent years, Delaware schools have been granted needs-based spending authority on a piecemeal basis through epilogue language in the state’s annual budget.
The comprehensive law is estimated to cost $1.9 million to implement in the next fiscal year, mostly because the plan would necessitate the hiring of 28 new teachers.
But staff from the Department of Education said there will be no need for additional funds in the coming budget. Instead, money from existing budget lines that serve special needs students will be shifted to needs-based funding.
Concerns over the cost of implementing a needs-based structure ultimately sank a similar bill Schooley authored last year.
In that legislation, the plan was to shift money from non-special education funding to pay for needs-based programs — an idea many lawmakers did not endorse.
Schooley said the new funding arrangement has won wide support.
“Everyone has come together and agreed this bill now should move forward,” she said.
Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald, superintendent of the Caesar Rodney School District and president of the Delaware Chief School Officers Association, said local school administrators and staff are in favor of the bill.
“We fully support the needs-based bill. We find it provides a lot of flexibility,” he said.
Other groups connected to special education, like Autism Delaware and the Governor’s Advisory Council for Exceptional Citizens, also lodged support for the legislation.
The education committee voted unanimously in favor of the bill.
Schooley said she wants the bill to move quickly through the Legislature, even though it still faces vetting before the House Appropriations Committee, a vote on the House floor, then the Senate committee process and a floor vote in that chamber.
Time is of the essence, she said, since federal law requires states to enshrine needs-based funding in law or risk losing federal aid.
“We’re really under a tight time clock with this,” Schooley said. “By Feb. 1, if we don’t have this we could lose about $33 million.”