We are pleased to see the following statement on the SPS website:
Special Areas of Attention
"Special Education: The state’s Special Education budget increase is a down payment on a much-needed long term solution. Next year, Seattle Public Schools will receive an additional 2 million dollars for special education. Annually, the district spends 70 million dollars of local levy funds to provide the services our students need. While we appreciate the increase for Special Education, we continue to have grave concerns about the State’s slow pace in fully funding Special Education as is required by law."
source : https://www.seattleschools.org/district/calendars/news/what_s_new/budget_update_for_2019-20
However, I have great concerns that SPS would not use all the funding for special education or would not use the additional funding properly. More on that in a future post!
SPS provides little to no explanation on what they would do with more funding, they just continue to blame the poor academic outcomes of SPED students on lack of funding. It's not a funding issue that's for sure.
Here's the break down and remember these number do not include the general education funding that is allocated on top off the special educational funding. This is only the available SPED funding data.
2018-2019 budget
SPECIAL EDUCATION INSTRUCTION FUNDING
Special Education, Supplemental, State $128,052,447
Special Education, Infants and Toddlers, State $3,078,071
Special Education, Supplemental, Federal $11,914,040
TOTAL SPECIAL EDUCATION INSTRUCTION TOTAL $143,044,558
There are also some interesting other outside of district SPED related expenditures:
| Seattle public schools outside services contracts for 2019-2020 | |||||||||||
| Yellow Wood Academy | $509,000 | ||||||||||
| Maxim Healthcare Services | $950,000 | ||||||||||
| Brightmont Academy | $340,000 | ||||||||||
| Brock’s Academy | $585,300 | ||||||||||
| Experimental Education Unit | $301,923 | ||||||||||
| Wonderland Developmental Center | $905,769 | ||||||||||
| Northwest Center | $2,264,422 | ||||||||||
| Boyer Children’s Clinic | $3,220,512 | ||||||||||
| UW Experimental education unit | $1,483,463 | ||||||||||
| New England Center for Children | $412,706 | expense for one student | |||||||||
| Therapeutic Treatment Day Services | $1,890,000 | ||||||||||
| Overlake Hospital Specialty School | $283,000 | ||||||||||
| Fairfax Hospital/NWSOIL | $646,000 | ||||||||||
| Seneca Family of Agencies | $961,000 | ||||||||||
| Seattle Children’s Hospital | $465,500 | ||||||||||
| Spring Academy | $657,072 | ||||||||||
| Total | $15,875,667 | that's $16 MILLION a year | |||||||||
SPECIAL ED CATEGORIES AT A GLANCE
The chart below is still a work in progress and based off several FOIA request for last year, so the percentages are left off. The chart still should give you a basic idea of what the SPED population looks like. SPED is around 14% +/- of the total Seattle Public Schools population.
I made this comment on the Seattle Time today.
ReplyDeleteMy property taxes are now 50% of what my mortgage payment. Nearly 50% of the taxes are for education. SALT isn't a huge write off. That argument is a red herring.
Having 3 children in SPS caused me to become interested in various aspects of public schools. Too much to write about here. Just let me say this, I learned first hand what the saying "ignorance is bliss" means.
Tracking SPS for 14 years you see patterns emerge, you see a cycle of problems repeating, you see a new cycle of crisis followed by a new superintendent, promises made and then promises broken. The oversight of public schools is designed to prevent meaningful change, if you don't believe me just tune in and watch a school board meeting, I've watched everyone for the last 6 years (YIKES).
I'm not saying running a district is easy because it's not, but you need to know how to analyze the problem, develop a problem statement and follow that with a corrective action plan. You need set expectations with stakeholders and most important be willing to make tough decisions without apologies to follow through.
When there is a crisis in SPS the administration first instinct is to go into CYA mode, this is noway to run a organization that is so interconnected to families and taxpayers. It's very difficult to use the ROI argument when analyzing public schools but there are many management strategies that would be applicable and would help us to know what is possible and what is not possible.
When you really know what is possible only then can you stop making unrealistic promises to parents and students and start speaking the truth.
If you want to more you can read my blog post and others post here : https://saveseattleschool.blogspot.com/
I found this quote from Harris in the Seattle Times ;
ReplyDeleteDanny Westneat.
I asked Harris: How is this possible when we’re spending twenty grand per student?
“I can tell you our costs have gone up tremendously, as have our salaries,” she said. She cited, specifically, that special education services required by various state and federal mandates are costing nearly $200 million, about 20 percent of the total budget. Yet it isn’t fully funded by the state or the feds and most important, isn’t close to meeting the actual need, she said.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/20000-per-student-seattle-schools-spending-surges-but-this-parent-cant-feel-it/#comments
You have to notice that she is not mentioning equity or justice when referring to special education. She isn't mentioning that many of these children are the most marginalized students. She's implying that if there wasn't federal laws or state laws requiring the district to provide special education services that the district would not be in the financial mess it's in.