Special ed funding slips
Schools in Butler County are increasingly relying on local tax dollars to fund special education programs as state funding has stagnated for several years, a recent report found.
The county isn't alone: Special education funding across Pennsylvania mirrors the situation in Butler County schools. The report's researchers at Pennsylvania's Education Law Center — along with those involved in educating children with disabilities in Butler County — see a growing local dependency on state legislators to blame for the lack of funding.
As Reynelle Brown Staley, the policy attorney who led the report, explained it, “the amount of money coming from the state just isn't increasing a lot.”
“Costs are rising at a rate that is far higher than the level of state funding,” Staley said. “State funding isn't even rising fast enough to meet inflation.”
Staley and other researchers found that special education costs in Pennsylvania increase by about $200 million per year. Between 2008 and 2016, state funding increased by a total of just $72 million. Special education costs grew by $1.5 billion in that time, researchers found.
Budget setting sessions at school boards can become tense affairs, Staley said, and often parents and taxpaying spectators walk away feeling frustrated. She argued that there's a simple reason school districts are always debating which cuts to make in a given year, rather than which programs to expand.
“Some just don't have the local wealth to be able to generate thousands or millions of dollars to meet funding needs,” Staley said. “Instead, they're figuring out ways to cut costs. It may be that they're raising class sizes or cutting programs. They're doing things that are not allowing them to maintain the same quality of programming.”
Read the full report in Sunday's Butler Eagle or log in and read the full story
