Weekly Update
by Lynn Ahrens
March 05, 2010
Good Afternoon:
It's such beautiful weather.
News from staff:
Kay Ahrens mother died last weekend. She is out of state for the funeral.
Steve Dryden is fine.
Diane Parker is back to work after a long recovery period from a knee replacement.
Legislative news
Wednesday Marcia Cantrell and I went to testify before the House Education Committee on HB 2409 on catastrophic aid. When we got there, HB 2600 was also being heard right after our bill. We stayed and I testified for both.
Marcia read the poem I sent out last week. You could have heard a pin drop when she was reading the poem and during her testimony about the students just in Kiowa that are extremely needy. Her testimony countered Blue Valley’s description of the students for which they receive catastrophic aid. Of course, Blue Valley’s salaries are so much higher than ours and their class sizes are much lower. The testimony was all over the place and time constrains were short. Bruce Givens headed a task force committee of directors of special education to discuss this situation. His testimony stated that KASEA (special education administrator’s organization) was behind the change in catastrophic aid. We would prefer the base be more than the $36,000 proposed in this bill but this is better than nothing. The double dipping is taken out which solves many problems. Rep. Marty Crow from Leavenworth promised to read the poem on the House floor at the appropriate time.
HB 2600 is briefly described below.
HB 2600 would amend statutes regarding special education state aid. Each year, the
State Board of Education would determine the minimum and maximum amount of special
education state aid by subtracting travel, transportation and maintenance of an exceptional child at a place other than the child’s residence from the total amount appropriated for special education state aid. The remainder would be divided by the FTE enrollment of exceptional children receiving special education services and then would multiply the quotient by 0.70. The product would be the minimum amount that a district could receive in special education state aid. The maximum amount would be determined by multiplying the quotient by 1.50. The legislators would determine the minimum and maximum each year.
According to the Department of Education, enactment of HB 2600 would not change the
amount of special education state aid received by school districts. However, the bill would redistribute amounts received by individual school districts. The count would be on Sept. 20th.
This is a bill that could be disastrous.
• The legislators could decide the minimum and maximum each year. We know how that will work. The bigger districts will set the standards.
• This is based on special education FTE on Sept. 20th. Not all students are identified by then let alone knowing about the move-in students.
• This is also based on an average of students that “should be” identified according to the State of Kansas. It’s not a realistic percentage. If a small district has a family of 6 MR students move in, services are required but this family could put them over the percentage allowed.
• The range of possible reimbursement covers from .70 to 1.50. This is just like the federal government funding us at 40%. We get about 17% from them.
• If a district were below .70, they would receive extra money because they would know that more students should be identified than were in special education. Rep. Crow said that she was opposed to giving money for “possible students”.
• If a district were above 1.50, they would not get all the money that was needed to serve the students they have.
• The underlined statement is contradictory.
The chair of this department and Neil Guthrie, director of special education from Wichita, put this together. He couldn’t explain it to me. It looks like extra money may be needed to fund this. It can’t come from general education!
