Soaring costs for educating children with severe special needs are expected to cost the Board of Education about $650,000 more than it anticipated this year.
This marks the third straight year that the school budget, which totals $94 million, is likely to run short of money to educate and bus rising numbers of students with special needs, according to a report by William Smyth, the assistant superintendent for business.
Despite the bleak fiscal outlook for special education, school leaders are hoping they’ll manage to finish the year without running short of money overall. But Smyth said officials will have “a very difficult time” pulling it off.
Because of a number of teacher retirements and turnover, Smyth said, there ought to be a surplus in the salary accounts.
“We’re going to try to get as close to being in the black as possible,” said Superintendent Philip Streifer. “It’s our responsibility to manage this budget.”
But it didn’t help to wind up with 25 students more than anticipated who need costly special services.
The state Department of Children and Families is placing many of the extra children in Bristol, said Tom O’Brien, a Board of Education member.
He said the choice by DCF to put more students in town that cost taxpayers big money is unfair. He said lawmakers ought to find a way to make it so that host municipalities don’t get socked for extra costs to educate students placed there from somewhere else.
O’Brien said the problem needs greater exposure so that Bristol “is not taken advantage of” any longer.
Streifer said that it is a growing issue among officials throughout the state.
“It’s completely beyond our control,” he said, but something must be done “to get control” of the soaring expenses involved.
Smyth said the special education tab “varies wildly throughout the year” and it’s possible the numbers will turn out better than expected.
Even so, he recommended that educators “include a significant increase” in the amount allocated for tuition for students who need to be bused to special schools outside the district.
*******
Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com
9 comments:
It is quite obvious that our state legislative delegation needs to cooperativly merge resources to put out a plea to the state of the unfair significant impact that these state actions are taking on the community.
You can count on Nicastro (NOT).
The impact special ed students have on school budgets really puts an unfair strain on towns. When one special ed student moves into a school district the impact can be hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra costs. Having the state pick up this burden will spread the fiscal pain among all of us. In this way the special ed students will get the services they need and deserve and towns won't feel they have hit the reverse lottery when a family with a special ed child moves into town.
The painful truth behind special education is the complete imbalance of money spent on special needs students compared to the rest of the student body. And when one considers the paltry sums of money spent on the gifted students, the gap is frightening.
In a neighboring community 2 special needs students have 3 people at their disposal while a typical classroom may have 20-25 students per one teacher. How is that fair and equal education? And the special needs money often goes to students that will need institutional care the rest of their lives. Is this prudent use of limited education dollars?
We as a society need to determine if having personal baby sitters for special needs students is a proper use of our local education dollars. A sobering and painful reality.
I believe that the special needs students test scores are not incorporated into the " no child left behind" targets. Maybe the case is that some are being placed in special needs to improve the over all test scores????
Special needs students scores are placed in NCLB AYP results.
Maybe the state (our legislators) should look into ways to keep the special needs kids and families from moving to urban centers, and bunching them up.
We desegregated other groups, why not these?
$ 650,000 $$$$$ Doesn't that just about cover the total costs for one school administrator ?
Sounds like NONE of the previous people posting have a special needs child or seem to really care about them much at all. A very, very sad statement about the people writing.
Singling out children, our citizens that do not have a voice in our communities is just plain mean and selfish. Some of you should be ashamed of yourselves.
Post a Comment