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Funding formula cheats district
By KENT FISCHER © St. Petersburg Times, published January 28, 2001 Overcrowding is no problem in Linda Johnston's classroom at Northwest Elementary. She and two other teachers watch over six students. Special equipment fills the room. The kids get their own physical education teacher. Extravagant? Hardly. Johnston's students are among the most fragile children enrolled in Pasco County schools. Their disabilities range from cerebral palsy to Down's syndrome. They can't talk, walk or do much for themselves. Their special equipment includes orthopedic chairs costing several hundred dollars each. One child needs a $300 rubber doughnut in order to use the toilet. The average annual cost to educate each child: roughly $18,000. There are 618 such children in Pasco schools. But according to the state, 59 simply don't exist. A quirky state budgeting formula provides no money for their educations. Nothing. Zip. Not even the standard $3,279 the state gives for typical students. "These kids are here, but we get nothing for them," said Oma Pantridge, Pasco's director of special education. "They don't exist in the eyes of the state." It's not just severely disabled kids. District administrators and state officials confirmed that Pasco gets no money at all to educate 117 immigrant students who don't speak English (out of a total of roughly 900 such students). Another 185 vocational students (out of about 2,200) also fail to generate any aid from the state. In all, the district gets not a dime from the state to educate 361 needy students -- enough kids to fill half an elementary school. Loss in state aid: about $2-million. Even if the state treated these special needs kids as typical students, the county would get about $1.2-million. Hillsborough County faces a $7-million crunch; Broward County, $9-million. "We need to fix that," said State Education Commissioner Charlie Crist. "Talk about compassion, we need to recognize these kids, and we need to help." Several years ago state lawmakers, faced with ballooning special education costs, began limiting the number of students that school districts could place into those classes. While a typical student generates $3,279 in state aid, special education programs and those for immigrant children and vocational students generate substantially more. Immigrant children and vocational students each bring an extra $700; Special education students can each bring in up to $18,333. But when districts exceed their state-imposed program enrollment limits, the state often stops paying. And they don't even get the basic $3,279 the state would pay without question if the child was not in a special program. "They are still a child in a public school, and they should get at least a basic allocation," said House Majority Leader Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey. Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan tried to fix the problem three years ago, when he was education commissioner. He wanted to at least give districts the basic $3,279 allocation for special education students, but the measure never took off. A big reason was money. Brogan had estimated that it would take anywhere from $30-million to $64-million to fix the problem statewide. State legislative staff members defended the enrollment caps. Between 1993 and 1998, the number of students in Pasco's special education programs nearly doubled, from 6,400 to 11,841. In Pasco County, nearly one child in five is deemed to have a learning disability. Statewide, that figure is about 15 percent. The caps are a way to "control district actions," said John Newman, director of the House Education Appropriations Committee. "It became clear that some districts were more aggressive in placing kids into higher funding" levels -- thus yielding the districts more money. The funding formula also prevents districts with swelling special education enrollments from swallowing up all the money. "It's solely for the purpose of dividing revenue fairly," Newman said. Educators say they can't be blamed for the rising cost of special education. They can't control the numbers of severely disabled students or immigrants that arrive on their doorsteps, and they can't deny them services once they're here. Federal laws and court orders require schools to educate the children even if there's no state aid to cover the costs. That forces schools to syphon money away from other programs to cover the special education shortfall. Last year, the Pasco school district had to dip into its reserves and tap some grant money to cover an estimated $4-million shortfall. "We have to educate all children, and it means that we end up pulling resources away from other kids," said Pantridge, Pasco's special education director. "We would face a legal challenge if we didn't provide the services." Crist himself confirmed that the current enrollment limits mean that there are students that do not generate state aid for their schools. "We need," he said, "to work hard to fix that." -- Kent Fischer covers education in Pasco County. He can be reached at (800) 333-7505, ext. 6241, or at 869-6241. His e-mail address is kfischer@sptimes.com.
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