First, some context. According to the District Profile for the Amherst elementary school district, 18.7% of students in the district are classified as Special Education. This means 81.3% are Regular Education students. According numbers produced by Rob Detweiler, the able number-cruncher for ARPS, Regular Ed made up 38.4% of the district's FY00 budget yet only 27.8% of our current (FY09) budget. Meanwhile, Special Ed made up 20.3% of the FY00 budget and 21.5% of the FY09 budget. Clearly, the priorities of the district have shifted over these past nine years.
What happens under the currently-debated (FY10) budget? Let's take a look. For those who might want to check my numbers (and please, feel free), I am working with the "Amherst Public Schools Preliminary FY10 Budget Draft, January 13, 2009" and "FY10 Components Update, March 2, 2009."
Before any additions or cuts, the total budget is $21,933, 594. Regular Ed accounts for $6,126,528, Special Ed accounts for $4,810,719, and I have called the rest "other." This is comprised of health benefits (which, one could argue, should be put into the two above categories but I do not have those breakdowns), other insurance/benefits, utilities, transportation, and a host of other things needed to run a school system. Proportionally, before additions and cuts, Regular Ed accounts for 27.9% of the budget and Special Ed accounts for 21.9% of the budget.
I then took all the additions and cuts (from all three tiers) and classified them as to whether they would come from the Regular Ed, the Special Ed, or the Other budget. When I was in doubt (as in "supplies/materials/travel"), I put it in Other. This is what happens, proportionally, to those three budget areas under the currently-proposed additions and cuts:
--Regular Ed budget shrinks from $6,126,528 to $5,779,928 (Additions and Tier 1) to $5,445,128 (Tier 2) to $5,047,475 (Tier 3).
--Special Ed budget decreases from $4,810,719 to $4,720,740 (receiving only additions and cuts under Tier 1)
--Regular Ed goes from 27.9% of the budget down to 27.3% to 26.4% to only 25.2% of the budget. For 81.3% of our children!
--Special Ed goes from 21.9% to 22.3% to 22.9% to 23.5% of the budget.
In my opinion, this represents a shift in priorities for our school system that cannot be sustained if we want to maintain our expectations of a high-quality district focused on excellence for all students. I realize there are state mandates for Special Ed funding and invite any members of our administrative team and/or School Committee to break down for us what proportion of our Special Ed funds are currently required by state/federal law. If it is 100%, there is nothing we can do about it and we need to continue to provide the best education possible to the 81.3% of our children who rely on an increasingly shrinking pot of funds. If it is less than 100%, I urge our administrators and School Commitee members to look closely at the relative level of funding for Regular and Special Ed and to look particularly hard at the impact of the currently-proposed cuts on Regular Education.
7 comments:
Welcome to the blogosphere, Alison!
Yeah, ditto. (life will never be the same)
Hi Alison
Congrats on the new blog! It's great to add some more rational voices to the discussion!
Your note on Spec Ed is timely - it's always a big topic at budget time because of the size of the pie it represents.
However, I think your analysis is missing a key piece of data: revenue. As I understand it a *large* chunk of Special Ed costs are paid for with targeted revenue from the Fed and State governments that cannot be spent for anything else.
I think it is important to analyze the budget in 'net' terms (costs less revenue that can only be used for that program). Our priorities really are only demonstrated by those costs that we have control over. If a Spec Ed teacher is paid 50% by Fed dollars, then only 50% of the cost of that teacher is part of our budget pie - our discretionary dollars.
I would love to know that Special Ed looks like as a piece of our pie (priorities) in terms of real discretionary dollars.
Regards,
Baer Tierkel
What a great perspective to bring to the blog conversation.
Regarding special ed funding, while it is important to analyze this I would caution against pitting one against the other. I believe we are a school system dedicated to educating all of our children, responsibly of course.
Hurray for Numbers!
I'm not sure that the Amherst Schools' financial priorities are in line with the mission and goals. I am looking forward to some solid leadership and accountability as we hire a new superintendent.
As Amherst states:
The mission of our schools is to provide all students with a high quality education that enables them to be contributing members of a multiethnic, multicultural, pluralistic society. We seek to create an environment that achieves equity for all students and ensures that each student is a successful learner, is fully respected, and learns to respect others.
While I agree that all of our children deserve to be in a challenging, enriching educational environment, I'm not sure that this is always accomplished with equal dollars spent.
I know my family of 4 can easily spend $50 going out to eat for one meal, while with some very careful planning and prioritizing we can eat balanced nutritional meals for half of the week on the same dollars spent. I don't think I trust the school districts enough to know that they are spending our tax dollars as carefully as possible. I had to laugh at some of the "changes" to the updated budget scenario - cutting Contracted Services by $15,500 (what are they planning to plow less snow?) Although in the end, I think SPED spending is another example of government mandates without adequate funding.
Thanks for this! What are the 3 tiers? How much do we "have to" cut and where does cutting Marks Meadow come in? Look forward to understanding answers to special ed posed above by Allison and comments... most school districts that I know of are breaking laws and I thought Amherst was one of the few that followed the law for Special Ed requirements, but I have "heard" that they do not fulfill the legal requirements by some people. Interpretation, I'm sure, is a huge part of it.
What has made Amherst great so far, is the excellent opportunities for advanced inquiry in all subjects and grades, great special ed for many kids, reaching out to all kids regardless of labels, and a great music and language program as well as other electives at the high school. '
I personally feel that saving the music instrument program at the Elementary level is essential for us to preserve a sense of Amherst. If we get rid of this, MCAS / SAT scores for the whole district very well may go down,(studies show a much higher SAT scores for districts that provide FREE instrument lessons for elem kids) the drop out rate will likely go up, housing costs of the town will be affected and there will be even less money for the schools from taxes. Children's brains develop better with early music, and this benefits all regular ed and special ed kids. The approach we take in Amherst is WHAT makes some kids feel like they can succeed in school - often their internal feeling of success is FIRST felt while under the encouragement of one of the instrument teachers and a part in a show. Having worked in other districts where kids don't believe in themselves, drop out, and struggle with math and literacy, I feel that Amherst's success academically is so much more strongly tied to the instrumental music program at young ages than most people realize.
Where does the money for schools come from? What percentage is from town (taxes - property taxes?) and what is from the state / federal?
Some say busses cant be cut much - we are providing more than the legal requirement I believe - busses come to spots much closer to the school than mandated by law. As much as I wouldn't want my 5-6 year old to have to walk to school, I think that should be looked at. Others have suggested vice principals share two schools. How much could we save if teachers / staff went just one year without regular raises and would any volunteer for this?
again, thanks. this will be a year of tough choices.
Mary and Larry: thank you! I hope to do as good a job as both of you!
Baer: Thank you for the suggestion of looking at "net costs" for Special Ed. That was what I was trying to get at by mentioning the Special Ed mandates. The elementary budget did not contain the revenue streams the way the regional budget did. But even that did not break out the federal and state reimbursements for Special Ed. It would be nice if our budget folks at ARPS could break this down for us so the discussion of the relative costs of Regular and Special Ed are more directly comparable.
Clare: I, too, believe that our school system should be dedicated to educating all of our children. I realize, however, that the funds available to do this are shrinking and am hoping that our School Committee and ARPS administrators take a hard look at the relative allocation of this latest round of cuts. An examination of the numbers indicates that these cuts, proportionally, hit the Regular Ed budget harder.
Cathy: I think that many share your fundamental distrust of how our money is being managed. This is one of the reasons for this blog--to bring more transparency to the numbers and encourage questions and discussion. Ideally, with our upcoming change, both with a new superintendent and two new School Committee members, we may get some of that solid leadership and accountability you hope for.
Leigh: remind me to reimburse you for your all that great material for future posts! I will try to answer some of your questions here and others I will research and post about in the future. The three tiers of cuts represent the "best case," the "worst case," and an in between scenario. The general feeling at the SC meeting on Tuesday night was that the schools would not have to get down to the Tier 3 cuts but might have to reduce to the Tier 2 level. All the relevant budget materials can be found on-line at: http://www.arps.org/node/471
The closure of Marks Meadow is not factored into the current version of the budget. It would be nice to see what cuts would or would not be made if that school were closed next year. Perhaps that will be presented at the next Elementary School Committee meeting.
I will post further about Special Ed in another post; specifically, some assessment numbers of our Special Ed programs. Like you, I have heard many complaints from parents whose children use these services which makes me wonder "where does all this money go then?"
Clearly, many other members of our community feel the way you do about instrumental music. Initially, the budget projection called for an elimination of instrumental music in Tier 1 but now there is a proposal for a gradual reduction over the three Tiers.
Rob Detweiler did present information about reducing busing to the required 1.5 miles from school. According to his calculations, once you factors in the number of children who would then choose to walk, the cost of hiring at least one crossing guard, and the cost of administering some sort of pass card system for students eligible for the bus, the net savings was about $1,000. Essentially nothing.
I will post in the future about the revenue streams for the school...it is an excellent question!
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