 |
Posted by Sylvia on Tuesday, March 02, 2004 (22:03:40)
The Advocate 01/03/2004
By Chad Klimack and Carey Checca
Private businesses often complain about the high cost of new government regulations on their bottom line.
Schools are no different.
Local educators blame the hidden costs of unfunded state and federal mandates as a key force in expense growth and forcing Ohio districts to constantly seek more money from voters.
With two districts -- Southwest Licking and Licking Heights -- appearing on the ballot Tuesday, educators say taxpayers don't hear enough about the costs involved with the No Child Left Behind Act, special education or proficiency tests.
Special needs expensive
Licking Heights Treasurer Sheryl Hatfield estimated her district spent $1 million to teach special education students last year, while it received only a little more than $199,000 in return.
"They're not reimbursing us for the cost of special education," Hatfield said.
Testing potential special education students requires districts to hire people who can identify and work with children with disabilities. Some students need their own full-time aides.
Southwest Licking has 28 teachers who work with its special education students, and the district also contracts with occupational and physical therapists.
The state does provide some money for special education, depending on the severity of a student's disability. In addition to its regular per-pupil funds, Southwest Licking receives $69 for a student needing speech therapy and $11,193 for a student who is deaf and blind, said Charla MacKenzie, who is in charge of Southwest Licking's special education program.
Unfortunately, MacKenzie said the state's funding does not cover the expenses. A case in point would be a deaf and blind student. Such a student likely would need a personal attendant throughout the day.
"That would wipe out the $11,000 right there," MacKenzie said.
Newark City Schools spent $4 million during the 2002-2003 school year on students with disabilities, as well as those who are gifted.
A majority of the budget went toward the district's 50 intervention specialists for children in preschool through high school and one Braille teacher for the district. For gifted students, the district had one program coordinator and about four teachers.
Although Congress is talking about fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Act, that would only cover about 40 percent of the cost to educate a child with a handicap, Newark Superintendent Keith Richards said.
Right now, Congress only has funded one-third of the act, Richards said.
"While we totally support those children being in our schools, the dollars to meet their unique demands are not there," Richards said.
Monica Perry, director of special education for the Licking County Educational Service Center, said "Special education tends to get bashed whenever there are financial struggles. They're legally required -- federally and from the state -- to offer the services, but it's not 100-percent funded."
A higher percentage of students are receiving special education than before, Perry said.
Some of the increase is due to better and earlier identification of problems, she said. Also, local data shows one child out of every 250 births has some degree of autism. No one knows the reason for the increase in autistic children, she said.
"As medical technology increases, children who are medically fragile, they wouldn't have survived. And now they are," Perry said.
Very often, premature babies grow up to have developmental delays or other problems associated with an early birth, she said.
The incidence of serious mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other mood disorders is increasing at an alarming rate, Perry said.
If that increase were not enough, districts must pay for the special education of students who do not live in the district.
The state requires Newark to pay other districts in Ohio for special education services when Newark students are placed in foster care elsewhere. This cost for the last several years has fluctuated annually from a low of $100,000 up to $182,000, Newark Treasurer Brian Wilson said.
New mandates
Many schools are cringing in fear of the No Child Left Behind Act, which Donna Boylan of The Buckeye Association of School Administrators said could cost Ohio schools approximately $1.4 billion to implement in the coming years.
Newark Superintendent Keith Richards called the act "the greatest unfunded mandate that has been put upon public education."
Dana Herreman, Newark's curriculum director, is most concerned about the act's requirement for adequate yearly progress, which is based on proficiency test scores, as well as a district's graduation and attendance rates.
If a district fails to make progress, expensive repercussions come in, such as individual tutoring and decreasing class sizes, she said. "The cost of not making Adequate Yearly Progress or doing what you have to do to make Adequate Yearly Progress, that's where the real costs come in," Herreman said.
For example, districts are forced to hire teachers and provide extra programs if they want to improve their test scores and not suffer a black eye in terms of public relations, Yocum said.
"That's an extra cost for any school," he said. "In order to meet the proficiency mandates, you must provide intervention (or tutoring)."
Southwest Licking budgeted $33,000 in teacher aides to help with intervention this year, Treasurer Richard Jones said. Without the tests, the district likely would not have had to spend the money, Jones said.
To improve its proficiency test scores, Licking Heights hired more teachers, bought more textbooks and sent its current teachers to professional development in recent years. Licking Heights Superintendent Janice Streit said it would be impossible to affix a cost to the items.
"We have to be constantly updating our materials and things to be providing the kids what they will be tested on," Streit said.
Community schools
Other decisions at the state level have stripped hundreds of thousands of dollars from schools. Community schools, in particular, are siphoning money from districts.
When a student from Licking Heights goes to a community school, for example, the district loses the student's state funding. Licking Heights expects to lose $173,439 in this year alone.
Likewise, Jones said Southwest Licking lost more than $100,000 last year when former students migrated to community schools.
Unlike Licking Heights, Southwest Licking and Newark formed their own online community schools so they can get some of that money back. Southwest Licking currently has close to 25 students in its online school, and Newark's Digital Academy has about 70 students enrolled.
Newark City Schools' cyber school is considered a separate entity from the district. Last year, tuition payments for students living within the district and attending cyber schools cost the district about $220,000, Wilson said. This year, the cost jumped to nearly $847,000. Of that, about $556,000 is tuition for the Newark Digital Academy.
Newark also must pay for educational services for students who legally reside in the district and are incarcerated with the Department of Youth Services -- about $60,000 for this fiscal year for students in jail, Wilson said.
School officials do not bemoan some of the programs, such as special education, because they contend they are needed. However, they wish they could get more money from the state and federal government to fund them.
|
|
Latest: 
New Today: 0
New Yesterday: 0
Overall: 7437
Members: 0
Visitors: 8
Total: 8
1: