#PublicSchools’ #SpecialEducation costs top state estimates MBPC Report finds $2b gap Foundation Budget

All kinds of questions are raised by Stephanie Ebbert's story in the Globe on the Mass Budget and Policy's report on the growing costs of special education and teacher's health insurance to school budgets.  Oh dear.   Let's hope that this report prompts some postitive response from the State to help local communities support every public education program from those for traditional special needs students to intellectually gifted students. And provide quality and affordable health care for our teachers at the same time.

Here's the full report from the Mass Budget and Policy Center.  

The state’s funding formula for public schools underestimates the rising cost of special education and teachers’ health care by more than $2 billion a year, forcing some schools to cut costs on regular education and creating inequities in a system designed to make funding fairer across communities, according to a new report.

The report, released today by the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, found major gaps between the “foundation budget’’ — the state’s estimate of what each district needs to run its schools — and what the 328 districts actually spend.

The foundation budget is recalculated each year to reflect changing demographics, enrollment levels, cost increases, and regional wage levels. But the report highlights the limitations of a funding formula that is based on 18-year-old assumptions, and that has no built-in triggers for reassessment.

“If you take the whole health insurance issue, no one projected back in 1993, that the increases would be double-digit increases. No one predicted back in 1993 that special ed would grow at the rate that it has grown,’’ said Tom Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents.

Although the total number of special education students has not changed much over time, their needs are more complicated, requiring costly services, the report said.

Autism diagnoses among Massachusetts students have increased exponentially in recent years — soaring from 603 in 1998 to 10,834 in 2009, according to the report.

Because health care and special ed costs are locked in by teacher contracts and state law, districts have instead been forced to cut discretionary spending on regular education, technology, textbook supplies, and materials, Scott said.