Special education in Connecticut is facing a crisis, and today at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, stakeholders and legislators held a press conference to share recommendations for addressing some of the most pressing issues in special education. CEA Treasurer Stephanie Wanzer and Secretary Tara Flaherty sat on the Task Force to Study Special Education Services and Funding, which has met regularly for the last 18 months and released its final report today.
“This is a do or die moment in public education,” said CEA President Kate Dias. “Our students need to be supported—financially, yes, but ultimately this is a people problem. We need to make sure our students have access to more educators who can support them. To do that we have to go back to basics and recognize that if we aren’t giving educators a wage that allows them to live in the communities where they work, that allows them to become homeowners, they’re going to leave the profession.”
She continued, “Third party vendors of special education have had to increase salaries to provide sufficient staffing. If we want to increase staffing in our public schools, we’re going to need to address the funding situation that would allow us to raise salaries. We also can’t lose sight of the fact that caseloads matter, paperwork matters, and what it’s like to be an educator matters.”
“Often when we’re talking about special education here at the Capitol, the solution that is asked of us is to put more money into funding special education, which absolutely is needed,” said special education teacher and State Rep. Miriam Khan (pictured above at podium). “However, a big part of the work that both the legislature and the Task Force have done is really look at policy initiatives that are going to help and make sure that money is really going where we want it to go and effecting changes that we want to see for all students.”
Khan is co-chair of the legislature’s Select Committee on Special Education that will take up the recommendations of the Task Force.
The Task Force was co-chaired by Fran Rabinowitz, the executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents; Andrew Feinstein, the legislative chair of Special Education Equity for Kids of Connecticut; and Michelle Laubin, a partner at Berchem Moses, P.C., and attorney for the Connecticut Council of Administrators of Special Education.”
Feinstein said that, even though he works representing parents, Laubin represents school districts, and they are routinely on the opposite side of issues, “In the context of this Task Force, we had almost nothing that we disagreed on throughout this process. There’s very little division on these issues.”
Some of the major recommendations of the Task Force are as follows.
- The Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula should be modified to include a 50% weight based on the number of eligible special education students in a district. The ECS formula provides the majority of state education funding a district receives and, though it is weighted based on student need, students receiving special education services are currently not included in the formula.
- Currently the state funds special education through the Excess Cost Grant, which only reimburses districts’ costs to educate a single child when they exceed 4.5 times the average per pupil expenditure for the district for the previous fiscal year. In many districts, this threshold exceeds 80 thousand dollars per student. The Task Force proposes reducing the threshold from 4.5 times the per pupil expenditure to 3 times the per pupil expenditure for students receiving services within their home school district and proposes amending the Excess Cost Grant statutory language to delete the term “within available appropriations.” In recent years, the actual reimbursement to school districts has been around 75 percent of the excess costs above the threshold, and this year the projected reimbursement for most districts is under 60 percent.
- Create a $20 million pilot grant program to provide incentive grants to districts for the operational costs of new therapeutic programs and a 15% increase in state reimbursement for school construction to build needed facilities for such programs. The pilot program would also encourage smaller districts to band together to create specialized programs to meet the needs of students now outplaced.
- Raise salaries for teachers and paraeducators. The Task Force proposes a new Enhancement Act to parallel similar legislation enacted in 1986 as well as raising the pay for paraeducators. The Task Force also encourages the state to explore ways to ensure all paraeducators have access to healthcare benefits.
“We have the opportunity to be cutting edge,” Dias said. “Our Educator Enhancement Act in the 1980s turned around our teacher shortage within three years. We are the only state to ever have accomplished that goal. We can do that work again, but we need to make sure that the change is sustainable and that the policy shifts provide for opportunities to innovate, to be creative, and to be professionally sustaining for our educators. We are excited to do the work when we are given the opportunity to thrive, create, and Inspire.”
“The 1986 Enhancement Act—it actually relieved the staff shortage immensely, and I think we ought to look at that again,” Rabinowitz said. “We need to look at working conditions as well, especially in our most challenged districts where case loads are tremendously high and special ed teachers don’t feel the success that they need to feel because the case loads are so high.”
“Connecticut is not a poor state,” Dias continued. “We found 340 million dollars the other day. If we can find 340 million dollars and we can sit on six billion dollars in a rainy day fund, we can find a way to serve the children, families, and communities of the state of Connecticut.”
Khan said that Wednesday, January 29, at 11 a.m. the Select Committee on Special Education is holding a meeting focused on the Task Force findings that will allow legislators to dive deep into the report and ask questions. The meeting will be available to watch live and after it is over.
Read the final report of the Task Force to Study Special Education Services and Funding.