technology blogs: Lower Hudson superintendents tell Gov. Cuomo that special-ed bill ...

Monday, July 30, 2012

Lower Hudson superintendents tell Gov. Cuomo that special-ed bill ...

The deadline is fast approaching for Gov. Cuomo to sign or veto the controversial special-education placement bill.

As in Wednesday.

Opposition to the bill continues to build. Not only have 48 out of 54 school districts in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties signed a resolution calling on Cuomo to veto the bill.

Now the Lower Hudson Council of School Superintendents has sent a strongly worded and detailed letter to Cuomo asking for a veto. This is no surprise, since the Council has been an active advocate over last year or two for mandate relief from Albany.

The Council?s letter states up front: ?This legislation is counter to your efforts to provide mandate relief for New York State taxpayers and will create much greater costs for educating special needs children.?

The letter was written by South Orangetown Superintendent Ken Mitchell, chair of the Council?s mandate committee. Mitchell is a true expert on the many rules and regulations coming out of Albany that require school districts to spend money by raising additional property taxes. He and Harrison Superintendent Louis Wool, president of the Council, have produced intricate analyses of these expenses and written papers to help guide Cuomo?s staff and legislators on how to relieve mandate costs. It?s been a classic up-hill battle, though, because legislators are much better at passing new rules than undoing old ones.

The Council is particularly disturbed by the new legislation, which would require school districts to consider a special-education student?s home and family environments when choosing the best possible placement. The goal of the bill is to help parents get their children placed in private schools, particularly for religious reasons. Its advocates say that parents, particularly Hasidic and other Orthodox Jews, often suffer when they struggle to have their disabled children placed in appropriate private schools.

But the official summary of the bill noted that its costs had not been calculated.

In his letter to Cuomo, Mitchell writes this:

?The recent legislation that will allow parents of children with special education needs to have unfettered access to costly and unnecessary private school placements is not only counter to the recommendations that superintendents have made to lower costs to taxpayers but will increase costs to districts across New York at a time when we are seeking greater efficiencies.? The current system provides for a due process that includes checks and balances with quality controls in regard to the needs of the child and the available programs provided by a district.? The new law will provide open access without regard to the appropriateness of the program. Districts will simply be billed by the private providers.?

He also writes this:

?Thirty-three (33) districts have indicated that they will be paying $82,405,159 in out-of-district tuitions for 1408 students in 2012-13.? The superintendents have indicated that if this law were to go into effect, they would be unable to develop a predictive budget for students whose families desire a private school setting for non-instructional reasons. The school district identifies and tracks the learning needs of students even before they enter the K-12 system and is able to identify students who need a specialized education out-of-district.? This enables us to anticipate future costs. The new law would hamper a district?s ability to make such a prediction and have serious fiscal implications. (These numbers do not reflect new transportation costs.)

?In Rockland County there are approximately 6500 students classified with disabilities.? With an estimated $60,000 per student as average, if all 6500 students with disabilities were to seek private placements, the aggregate cost would be $390 million for the county school districts.? If only ten percent of these students exercised this option, the cost would be $39 million, along with another $2 million dollars for transportation.? Rockland County represents only nine school districts.

?In South Orangetown, after our Committee on Special Education carefully reviewed the cases of seventy four of our neediest students, we agreed to fund $4,982,012 in out-of-district tuitions. The average tuition will be $67,324 without transportation and related costs for 2012-13. The total number represents less than 2% of our student population.? A likely increase of another ten students would cost the district $673,240 plus $34,000 in transportation. The $700,000 is equivalent to 1% of our district?s tax levy.?

The full letter will soon be on the Council?s website.