Tulsa Public Schools Makes Cuts to Special Education (OK)

June 14, 2011

The cuts include 65 of the 140 special education employee positions that were being paid for with stimulus funds and $1.3 million for student counseling services provided by mental health agencies.

“We used stimulus money to fill in holes left by state budget cuts. Then we had more state budget cuts. This is the result,” Ballard said. “These are very necessary services for kids, but the Oklahoma Legis lature is determined to have smaller government. This is what smaller government looks like.”

Kay Sandschaper, director of special education at TPS, said she was careful to spread out the $2.3 million in employee position cuts to stay in compliance with the district’s own policies, as well as federal legal requirements for student-teacher ratios.

And cutting $1.3 million in mental health services for students who don’t qualify for Medicaid reimbursements prevented the loss of even more teachers and paraprofessionals.

“None of these cuts was easy,” Sandschaper said. “I value the services these agencies have provided to our district because some kids need a little help and some need a lot of help to stay in school and graduate, and we want them to be successful. But if you kept all of the community services and had to cut that many more people from the classroom, it would be completely devastating.”

The counseling program being reduced is the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. In 2010-11, PBIS services were provided to 2,792 students at 50 school sites – approximately 6.6 percent of TPS’ student population.

While many of the students in the program qualify for Medicaid reimbursements, others do not. In those cases, the seven outside agencies that had contracts with TPS simply billed the district directly.

Those are the funds being eliminated from the budget, but TPS and community mental health officials said they are going to meet this summer to try to minimize the impact of the cut.

“The cuts have been made. There is nothing we can do about that,” said Mike Brose, executive director of the Mental Health Association in Tulsa. “What we can do is take a look at what resources are left in the schools and what resources are available in the community and try to redesign things so we can continue to serve as many kids as p ossible.”

Sandschaper hopes most, if not all, of the position cuts can be accomplished through the routine resignations and retirements that TPS sees every summer. If not, she said the district will not renew contracts.

Superintendent Ballard, meanwhile, said he would challenge any criticism of the school district’s use of the huge infusion of cash from the federal stimulus bill, which will expire in September.

“All the stimulus did was delay the impact of the state budget cuts. This is about Legislature’s unwillingness to fund schools. If they would have avoided a budget cut this year, which I think they could have, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” he said.

He reiterated that TPS does not want to eliminate special education positions and mental health intervention services.

“What if we had the $5 million that the state put into vouchers? If we had that money back, we probably could save PBIS.

“If education had the $60 million that the Legislature gave to the state income tax, this would not even be an issue,” Ballard said. “Everybody who objects to this cut needs to contact their state legislator. Don’t blame the schools.”