State DOE Spends $175,000 for Study on Special Education Funding (NJ)

November 15, 2010

The state Department of Education is spending $174,225 for an independent study of New Jersey’s method of funding special education for students with disabilities, officials confirmed Friday.

The study, mandated by the Legislature in the state School Funding Reform Act should have been completed by June 30, the non-profit Newark-based Education Law Center noted after making the DOE’s action on the study public.

"We are completing the study as required," Alan Guenther, a DOE spokesman said when asked about the Law Center announcement.

In response to a state Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request filed by the center, the DOE provided documents showing that, on Sept. 10, a purchase order in the amount of $174,225 was issued to the Denver consulting firm Augenblick Palaich and Associates (APA) to conduct the study.

Earlier OPRA requests by the center yielded no evidence that the study had been undertaken as required by law. As a result, in October, the Statewide Parent Advocacy Netwo rk, represented by center lawyers, filed legal action in state Appellate Court challenging the DOE’s failure to comply with the School Funding Reform Act.

In enacting the law in 2008, the Legislature directed the education commissioner to complete, by June 30, an independent study of the controversial"census" method of special education funding used in the law’s school funding formula.

Under the census method, school districts are funded for special education services based on the statewide average classification rate of students with disabilities, and not on the actual number of special education students in each district, nor the actual cost of providing different levels of service for different types of disability classifications.

In mandating an independent study, legislators responded to concerns raised by parents of special education children and other advocates that the census method could unfairly hurt districts with higher numbers of students with disabilities.

Through its work with parents and students, the Statewide Parents Advocacy Network has identified insufficient special education funding as a major contributing factor when students with disabilities are not properly served under federal and state law.

"The commissioner’s failure (there have been three since the law was passed) to complete the study by June 30th clearly violates the SFRA law,"Diana Autin, co-director of the Statewide Parent Advocacy Network, said Friday."Parents and the public need to know if the new funding formula meets the needs of students with disabilities across the state. We are cautiously optimistic now that the study has been commissioned, but remain concerned about the department’s lack of transparency in communicating this information to the public, and about the lack of a firm deadline for completion of the stud y."

The Parent Advocacy Network is represented in its appeal by Education Law Center Senior Attorney Elizabeth Athos. The Appellate Court has scheduled a conference on the case for Dec. 13.