Weekly Update 2/5/10
Good Afternoon:
We had one community forum this week. Most of the discussion is what is discussed below. Cute kids comments were shared. One of our favorites was, “You’re fired, I quit”. Kids are fantastic.
The legislative bills are coming to surface.
I spoke with Rep. Pat Maloney twice yesterday. I asked him about this bill. He called me back after speaking with some of the committee members. He will let me know when testimony sign-up will be and what is happening. I’m thankful to have him to help us.
Our special education will be in crisis if HB 2587 becomes law. Right now it is in the House Educational Budget Committee. Our current special educational funding formula called Categorical Aid allows us to add staff when needed for severe students and number of students. We get paid by number of teachers and paras hired. This bill would cap the amount of money we could receive to 92% excess cost based on a flawed Post Audit report in 2007. According to Dale Dennis’ conformation response (see below) to my e-mail, we would loose about $3,000,000 next year if this passes. That is a little less than 1/3 of our budget. The large districts like Blue Valley, Shawnee Mission, Olatha, Topeka, Wichita, 6A schools, etc will benefit greatly from this bill; however, the small (low enrollment) districts with lower salaries will loose millions of dollars. As the larger districts get more money, raise salaries, the smaller districts will loose even more money. At this time, no hold harmless money is within this bill. Usually, Dale Dennis, chief financial officer for education, doesn’t get concerned about bills this early in the year, but this one – He told me, “Write letters”.
***My e-mail to Dale
Dale,
Could you please send me the amount of money we would loose from the State if this bill were to pass? I calculated from this year and estimated about $3,000,000. Is there any provision for hold harmless? We could not function on this kind of a cut. In addition to this bill, as you know, we will loose about $1,000,000 with Medicaid cuts and ARRA money in the next two years. Thanks,
Lynn
***Dale’s response: I think you are in the ballpark. We will work on this project when time permits.
What can you do?
Write your legislators with specific information and specific requests.
The letters need to be hand written and signed. No stamps are necessary. Gather the letters and send them to the coop office.
Penny Wood is treasure for Pat Maloney’s campaign, and Jan Case knows Dennis McKinney personally. They will hand deliver our letters to them to be delivered to all legislators that we write.
My letter will state:
Keep categorical aid (special education funding) as it is – no 92% cap. If HB 2587 were to be passed, the fall out for small districts is so great that IDEA (Federal law) will be violated. Work on fixing the broken catastrophic aid that is costing so much money and not being spent as originally intended. Two senate bills and one house bill are presently being considered. The directors of special education through our organization, KASEA, recommend SB 359 and HB 2580. It will revert the spending of catastrophic aid to close to the original intent.
SB 358, SB 359, and HB 2580 deal with catastrophic aid. The last two are the same and what the directors of special education presented. Of course, SB 358 has the best chance of being passed.
