Heavens to betsy! I’m about to write about some other important education topic than the sorry attempt by the Duluth School Board to go beyond simply denying us a vote by undoing last year’s school board election. I’m thrilled.
Seven or eight months ago Board member Judy Seliga-Punyko strongly encouraged me to read an article on Special Education in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I did just now. Its an eye opener.
Its about Minnesota’s generous, some would say excessively generous, Special Education funding provisions. For example according to the article the state pays an annual average $8,486 for each “general” education student but $22,144 for each special education student. The story says we have 40,629 “disabled” students. If that means they are part of that special education average Minnesota spends $899 million dollars to educate them……(that just can’t be correct)
This being Lincolndemocrat I feel like engaging in a little unnecessary “Harry’s Diary” stuff to explain why I read the article all these month’s later. Last week a student from UMD’s public radio station, KUMD, sent me an email asking if I’d do a five minute interview about Minnesota’s and more specifically Duluth’s special education situation in light of some recent changes in Federal demands and expectations. It turns out that Minnesota meets the federal requirements. (Were one of 15 blue states that do on this Washington Post graphic)
I emailed back suggesting that there were other folks far better qualified to speak on this subject but me but KUMD was only looking to fill five minutes and I figured I could do that. Well, I was busy with grandchildren this weekend so I didn’t do my homework until this morning when half an hour before the interview I tried to find out what the new Federal regulations were. I couldn’t recall having read about them in our local paper. Sadly, my router was down so I only got about ten minutes to look for the story before the interview began.
A google search led me to Judy’s old recommended article which I got about two thirds of the way through before I got my call. You can’t do too much damage in 5 minutes and I answered three questions. I explained that the Feds gave Minnesota a pass in large part because our state bends over backward to fund special education. I explained that Duluth’s schools were among the most handicapped accessible because we just completed the most expensive school building plan in Minnesota history. Finally I said that special ed was a fearsome issue because it pitted special ed families against general ed families since money spent on special needs children were kept away from the general student population. That was all safe enough to say.
Once I hung up I went back and finished reading the Star Tribune story then I looked for mention on the Internet of the Federal changes to Special Ed that I was supposed to be talking about. It turns out they are more executive order than congressional mandate. The Washington Post had a good general background story on the issue.
So to get back to my original narrative there is no question but that special ed costs are draining funds away from the classroom. St. Cloud a similar sized districts may lose one million of its general fund dollars to state and federal special education mandates. That’s what one of our finance people suggested Duluth lost. But when Judy says that this explains Duluth’s unique problem with overcrowded classes she is surely wrong. It doesn’t help but it pales besides the six million dollars we stole from our operations funding each of the last four years to pay off Red Plan Debt.
We no longer have to do this because the Democratic legislature and local voters recently added that six million back to our budget.
ISD has a second special ed problem. Parents can pit it against the Edison public schools to get the best deal for their special ed students. This means that if Duluth doesn’t think a child should be offered the double spending special ed requires the parents can go to Edison and get the special ed services. This then is simply passed on to the ISD 709 schools to pay for to the tune of 90%. We pay for the student either way whether we provide the services or Edison does.
Whether this is the most fiscally prudent thing to do comes under severe examination in the Minneapolis Tribune’s story.
This is just the sort of thing I’d love to be dealing with right now but you will have to excuse me. I have to defend Art Johnston’s voters from the bone-headed and expensive attempt by our District to remove their representative from the School Board.
