Funding Alert

New Jersey school districts send too many students to out-of-district placements, incurring excessive costs and violating the law’s preference for children to be educated with their non-disabled peers in a general education setting. So testified both a national expert and a state advocate for children with special needs before the Joint Committee on Public School Funding Reform at its hearing on October 3, 2006.

Dr. Thomas Parrish, of the Center for Special Education Finance, reported to the committee that special education spending in New Jersey is approximately 40% higher than the national average. New Jersey also has the highest percentage of any state in the nation of children attending separate facilities, either public special ed schools or private schools at district expense: 8.6 % of New Jersey’s special ed children are sent out of district compared to a national average of only 3.1%.

Diana MTK Autin, Executive Co-Director of the Statewide Parent Advocacy Network (SPAN) stressed research showing that children with special needs are better served in inclusive general education settings with appropriate supports than by being sent off to separate segregated schools. In fact, as Ms. Autin noted, there is a strong presumption in the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for educating children with their non-disabled peers.

The result of sending too many children out-of-district is that New Jersey districts are spending more money than is necessary and depriving children with special needs of being educated in the least restrictive environment of their home school and community.

Sending children out-of-district also has a negative impact on the educational programs available to the rest of the children in a particular district. As Ms. Autin noted in her testimony, money to pay for out-of-district placements is not available to build capacity at the local level or for programming for other children in the community.

As tuition for out-of-district placements goes up, as it inevitably does, the cost goes up for school districts. Ms. Autin reported that in the eleven years from 1990 to 2001, the special education costs for out of district placements in the Gateway Regional School District went from $200,000 to $950,000. In Woodbury, costs went from $600,000 in 1997 to $1.3 million in 2001, even though the number of students held relatively steady.

This outflow of substantial amounts of dollars discourages development of special education capacity within a district by decreasing the funding that is available within the district to train teachers, hire qualified special education personnel and develop appropriate in-school facilities.

Both Dr. Parrish and Ms. Autin pointed out that out-of-district segregation of special needs students is actually increasing in New Jersey while this practice is decreasing in every other state in the nation. New Jersey leads other states in supporting continued construction of separate public facilities and approval of new private facilities. The multitude of options for out of district placements actually fuels the practice of sending children to them. Ms Autin notes that, "this conclusion is supported by the fact that the highest percentage of children sent out are in the counties where there is the greatest number of separate public school facilities."

At a public hearing of the Joint Committee on October 17, numerous other advocates, including Education Law Center Senior Attorney Ruth Lowenkron, reinforced the concerns of Dr. Parrish and Ms. Autin.

What to do? How can we reverse this trend that is both costing New Jersey taxpayers more than is necessary to educate special needs children and is simultaneously not the best choice for those children?

For further information on the recommendations of SPAN, read more at SPAN website: www.spannj.org.