The litany grows longer

The Trib has run a series of stories on the costs of special education for the Duluth School District. This is an old story. The Federal Government mandates full funding of special education before I was on the Board and then reneged on promises to provide close to full federal funding for the mandates. Minnesota School Boards were complaining about this loudly a decade ago.

I just did a quick check on this subject and found this old post which mentions the following story about a time when it looked like the Federal Government might step up to the plate:

“One of the most intriguing things I heard before I departed the School Board was at a meeting Senator Paul Wellstone called us too [sic] in the Board Room. I asked him about Special Ed money and he told us he was sure it would be fully funded in the comming [sic] year because of some assurances he seemed to have gotten from the new President George W Bush. Well, whatever Wellstone knew it all went down in flames when he was killed in the crash of a small plane as he campaigned for reelection and in in 9-11 when the Bush Administration focused on terrorism rather than education after leaving the nation its NCLB legacy. (all whips and no carrots)”

Yesterday’s Special Ed Story went where I’m sure the current Administration wanted it to go blaming others for its own self inflicted financial wounds.

The fact is that ten years ago this was also in the news. The Feds made our district pay for the lion’s share of special ed costs. They did channel money into special ed at the expense of other classes. Despite this we still had one of the best student/teacher ratios in the State because we had made that a priority for better than a decade.

As my wife said upon reading the story its just the latest excuse for our District’s crowded classrooms. First it was the failure to sell old school buildings, then it was the failure of the referendums, then it was the state’s borrowing of Education money, and now its special education mandates. Never have our problems stemmed from the Red Plan’s guarantee to banks to use general fund levies to back its bonds or excessively generous teacher contracts to keep teachers quiet.

On the subject of our teacher’s union leaders, who kept mum on all the Red Plan projects, I sense the heavy hand of self interest. They also had a large say in the management and decisions of the DFTRA, the teacher’s pension, which kept boosting pension benefits even as their assets withered. The Pension payments are based on the final five earning years. The more teachers are paid at the end of their career the more they are guaranteed in pension payments. As the contract boosted the final salaries of these older teachers their pension benefits rose. They would get higher pensions and leave the younger teachers with 40 kids to a class. Now that’s what I call fraternity!

Add the devastating student out-migration caused by the Red Plan and you are left with a shrinking rump of younger teachers who must dig deeper into their pockets to pay for the boosted benefits of retirees.

About the author