Committee Members Mr. Scott M. Schmerelson, Chair Dr. George J. McKenna, III Dr. Ref Rodriguez Mr. Steve Zimmer Dr. Richard Vladovic BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF LOS ANGELES GOVERNING BOARD OF THE LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT SPECIAL EDUCATION AD HOC COMMITTEE 333 South Beaudry Avenue, Board Room 2:00 p.m., Tuesday, October 11, 2016 District Staff Ms. Beth Kauffman, Interim Associate Superintendent Division of Special Education Ms. Megan Reilly, Chief Financial Officer Mr. Pedro Salcido, Interim, Co-Director of Government Relations Ms. Nargis Merchant, Deputy Budget Director Ms. Deneen Evans Cox, Associate General Counsel I The meeting convened at 2:05 p.m. NOTES OPENING REMARKS Mr. Schmerelson welcomed the participants, District staff and the audience. He acknowledged the Board Members who will serve on the Committee. Mr. Schmerelson read a letter from Dr. George McKenna who was unable to attend this meeting. He then introduced the District staff. Mr. Schmerelson read the District vision statement with regards to special education students and the challenges in serving students with special needs. DISCUSSION: COMMITTEE PURPOSE AND GOALS Mr. Schmerelson opened the discussion of the purpose and goals of the Committee. He listed some of the questions he has had about Special Education and the services offered by the District. Concluding with the question of how the Board and the District could be better advocates for students with disabilities. Dr. Vladovic stated his belief that all children should have an equal opportunity to learn. He said the District will need to a better job to meet the needs of special needs students, though, while there is declining enrollment throughout the District, parents will send their special needs students to LAUSD because of the better job done by District schools. He said the District is a receiving district but only receives 11% of the costs of providing services from the Federal government instead of the promised 40%. He finished his comments by saying he believes the District provides excellent Special education services and has high quality leadership. 1
Mr. Zimmer said the special education issue has shaped his 8 years on the Board of Education. He has spent time in IEP and SST meetings with families and has advocated for students and pushed the District before he joined the Board but never imagined so much of his work on the Board would be regarding funding. He said the inadequate special education funding is a major civil rights issue affecting all students. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF SPECIAL EDUCATION FUNDING, REQUIREMENTS AND MANDATES Mr. Schmerelson invited Mr. Pedro Salcido, Government Relations Office, to introduce Mr. Ryan Anderson, Fiscal and Policy Analyst, CA Legislative Analyst s Office (LAO) to give an overview of Special Education funding. Mr. Salcido told the Committee that Mr. Anderson focuses on areas of special education, charter schools and the Local Control Funding Formula. Mr. Anderson said he was going to provide the Committee with a high level overview of special education funding to give context for the remarks of the presenters who follow. He referred to his materials that indicate the basic funding model used by the State. He said that special education students are first considered to be general education students and receive these funds that are then supplemented by special education funds in compliance with Federal law. Students with disabilities are required to be provided with any additional services necessary to access the general curriculum. There is a three party funding model where the Federal government provides funds, the State provides funds and the local area provides whatever additional funds necessary to meet the needs of students with disabilities. This system was very complex and the State ended up with 28 separate funding programs and had some unfortunate incentives. School districts were diagnosing students not on what was best for their educational needs but by which program was best funded. To address the problems of the complexities and incentives in the 1970 s a master plan for special education which established a new funding system based on the services provided. This method leads to inequities because some districts had less experienced staff who were paid less. There was also a problem of cost containment. Districts were improperly classifying students as special needs in order to receive more funding. In 1998, the State set up the current funding system which provides funding based on overall student population. The assumption was that the distribution of disability types, but not costs would be about the same for every area. Districts and SELPAs (Special Education Local Plan Areas) would receive different rates but all based on their ADA measured student population. He said the hope was that, on average, equivalent amounts of funding would be provided to meet student needs to each local area. Perhaps problematically, the rates paid were based on the rates paid to each local area from the previous funding system. The current funding system is referred to as AB 602. Districts with high rates in the previous system continue to receive high rates. Under the current system, Mr. Anderson says there are discrepancies in per student rates, where LAUSD receives $580 per student, compared to a high of $925 per student for one district and a low of $480 for one district. He said that in no district is the funding adequate to meet needs. He then referred to a page of the cost drivers for services that start with the Federal requirement that appropriate services be provided without regard to cost. In response to questions about charter schools accessing Special education funding, Mr. Anderson said that charter schools could join the SELPA of their authorizing school district or a separate Statewide SELPA that only contains charter schools. Mr. Anderson also spoke to the Federal funding of the IDEA mandate, the 2
impact on school districts, equity issues of funding and adequacy of funds. He said there has been no effort since the 1970 s to ask the question of what should be the level of the funding throughout the State. In the 1990 s, the only question was how to provide appropriate incentives to use the money already budgeted and how to transition from the old model to a new model. Mr. Zimmer said that a reopening of the model should lead to a revisit to the equity issues. Mr. Anderson said that his office recommends a transition that will not address adequacy issues but will deal with the equity problem. He described a program that will not provide additional funds for special education to the LAUSD but to most other districts in the State. He said the problem is that there is no incentive to provide services for less than the amount provided, so there is no good way to determine what is adequate. Ms. Reilly added that one problem is that the rates provided today are based on what a district spent in 1977 without regard for current variances. Mr. Crain raised the issue that creating a system based on Average Daily Attendance of a district results in inequity for districts with higher proportions of Special education students. A district such as LAUSD, where the chart shows is in the 90 th percentile of funding based on ADA could fall to the 50 th percentile, if the model is based on the actual number of students in a district that are receiving funding. Mr. Zimmer said the current system based on the compounding situation of general population ADA and higher proportion of special education students is highly immoral. Mr. Zimmer asked, What is the LAO s commitment to recommend that this formula has to be reopened? Mr. Anderson said the ideal would be to match up State funding with actual needs and actual expenses. Ms. Reilly asked about models used by other states. Mr. Anderson said he believed California s SELPA model is unique but that the per student funding of special education is not unique. He said many policy makers have come to the conclusion that out of all of the bad options for determining funding that using the number of students is the least bad. Ms. Reilly said special education students need to be included in the Local Control Funding Formula as children requiring additional assistance. Mr. Anderson said he appreciated the points made by Ms. Reilly and had nothing to add to the discussion. He said he just wanted to focus the Committee on the trade offs he sees at the State level. Opening the formula in any way that changed distribution while increasing rates overall to increase adequacy, that funding would have to come from funds that are distributed in another way. If special education funding is increased those funds would have to come from the Local Control Funding Formula meaning less funds would be available for general education. Mr. Anderson said it was a policy decision to fund using the total student population even though it may be better to fund based on the number of special education students. He said there is a lack of confidence in letting districts report their number of special education students because they have so much control over labeling students as special education. Mr. Schmerelson thanked Mr. Anderson for his presentation. LAUSD SPECIAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS, SERVICES, TRENDS AND FUNDING Mr. Schmerelson introduced Ms. Beth Kauffman, Associate Superintendent, Special Education, and Ms. Nargis Merchant, Deputy Budget Director. Ms. Kauffman explained the District s SELPA and the special education offerings and school types. She mentioned the numbers of each type of school and said the District serves one of the largest populations of students with disabilities in the nation. She said the percentage of special education students is growing and is currently 13.8% of the students in the District. Approximately 12,000 students have an initial assessment for special education services annually and 86% of those are found to be eligible to receive services. She added that 32% of the special education students in the District fall into the Moderate to Severe categories and most students are identified for services in preschool. Two-thirds of those identified at age 3 are boys. 3
As part of the presentation, Ms. Kauffman reviewed the breakdown of students by ethnicity and gender. She said when a group is overrepresented by category, it tends to be on a behavioral basis. This is true in the areas of autism, emotional disturbance and other health impaired behavioral categories. Ms. Kauffman reviewed the numbers of students placed in nonpublic schools and residential schools. She discussed the implications and the requirements of the modified consent decree. She also talked about the students that exit from special education programs. Ms. Kauffman continued her presentation reviewing the Special Education Program and services. She said students are mainstreamed into general education programs as much as possible. In response to a question from Mr. Schmerelson, Ms. Kauffman said students are placed in nonpublic schools when it is the best match for a student and sometimes this is cost effective. Ms. Kauffman introduced Ms. Nargis Merchant, Deputy Budget Director to talk about the fiscal challenges of providing special education programs and review the funding mechanisms and services. Ms. Merchant reminded the Board that special education is an underfunded Federal mandate. She said the District does not receive any additional funding for serving the moderate to severe students in smaller classes. The District is required to meet the Federal maintenance of effort requirement even though special education is underfunded. The amount spent can only be reduced if the number of special education students drops, otherwise, the funds spent by the District must be the same as the previous year. If the Federal government were to provide the promised 40% of costs, the District would receive an additional $178 million. State funding is not tied to the number of special needs students served, the type and severity of the students, or the students placements. The funding is tied to the District s overall ADA of K-12 students and has no relationship to the number of students with disabilities. With declining ADA, even if the number of special education students increases, revenues decrease even though costs increase. Additionally, she noted, that the revenue is based on K-12 students even though the District provides special education services to pre-k students. Ms. Merchant discussed the out of geographic area SELPAs utilized by fiscally independent charter schools. Charter schools leaving the District SELPA has negative consequences for students, families and the District. Mr. Zimmer asked questions about the funding for charters. Ms. Merchant said that independent charters would receive funds based on their K-12 students even if they had no or few special education students. Special education funding has to be spent on students with an IEP. Ms. Reilly commented that unlike the District, charter schools would be able to spend less of their general funds on the special education needs. Ms. Kauffman concluded her presentation by discussing planned future programs to meet District and student needs. Ms. Kauffman responded to questions and comments of the Committee on early intervention and staffing. Mr. Pedro Salcido summarized the conversation by discussing accountability, student intervention needs and future advocacy needs. Ms. Kauffman said the ability to have early interventions is paramount. CLOSING REMARKS Mr. Schmerelson announced that future meetings would start earlier at 1:30 pm. and mentioned topics such as IEP, special schools, and regular schools with special education classes for future meetings. He thanked Board Member Office Staff Member Jackie Vasquez for her assistance at this meeting. 4
PUBLIC COMMENT The following speaker addressed the Committee on the subject indicated: Ms. Miho Murai, Education Attorney Ms. Madeline Harmon, Parent Ms. Cindy Bloom, SAFE Coalition Shadow Hills Ms. Valerie Vanaman, Attorney Mr. Allan Kakassy, Retired Teacher Ms. Kate Dove, California Charter School Association Special Education Due Process Hearings Support for Special Education Student High Speed Rail Impact on Schools Special Education Issues and Charter Schools Equity and Closing the Achievement Gap Charter School Special Education Practices ADJOURNMENT Mr. Schmerelson asked the audience to provide him with any suggestions for additional topics that could be addressed by the Committee. Mr. Schmerelson adjourned the meeting at 4:40 p.m. Materials related to an item on this Agenda distributed to the Board of Education are available at: http://www.laschoolboard.org/10-11-16sped 5