Reform Special Education Funding
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The Senate Education Committee on March 6 unanimously passed SB 1115, reform legislation for special education funding and accountability. A full Senate vote is expected to follow.
The Education Law Center and 39 other organizations supported this bill and have endorsed it and worked for its adoption for several years.
See the votes.
2010 ACTION: In 2010, House Bill 704 was passed by the House with bi-partisan support (173 to 25) and came close to getting a vote in the Senate. We just ran out of time.
2011 ACTION: The bills for reforming the state system of funding and accountability for special education were re-introduced in June 2011. A hearing was held in the Senate Education Committee in November 2011, with witnesses from the Arc of PA, the Education Law Center, and the Sto-Rox and Lancaster school districts.
Senator Patrick Browne (R-Allentown) and Representative Bernie O’Neill (R-Bucks County) are now the lead sponsors. Senator Dinniman (D-West Chester) and Representative Sturla (D-Lancaster) are also supporting the legislation.
Check out the bills and the list of cosponsors for Senate Bill 1115 and House Bill 704. Thanks to your phone calls, there are now 29 cosponsors on the Senate bill and 56 on the House bill. Click here for a detailed summary of the bills.
Note that SB 1115 will be the vehicle for adopting the special education reforms in 2012. We expect the House to vote on SB 1115, not HB 704. The two bills are identical, but only the Senate bill will get voted on.
MOST RECENT AMENDMENT TO SB 1115: Senators Piccola, Dinniman, and Browne have recently agreed to final changes to the bill. This clears the way for a vote in the Senate Education Committee. In general, the changes improve the bill by protecting the proposed formula for more effectively distributing special education funding from the state. In addition, two new provisions were added to provide more help for students with severe disabilities and to shift funding from state-level administration to go more directly to services for students with disabilities.
The Education Law Center, along with the Arc of Pennsylvania, the Superintendent of the School District of Lancaster, and a school board member from the Sto-Rox School District, testified before the Pennsylvania Senate Education Committee on Nov. 1, 2011.
Committee members heard testimony on the state’s broken special education funding and accountability systems and legislation designed to fix those broken systems.
The Law Center’s testimony focused on the improvements established by SB 1115, including accurate calculations of special education students and connecting resources closely to accountability and outcomes.
Video and audio of the testimony is available on the Committee chairman’s website.
The special education reform bills have been introduced and are now on their way.
Please take a minute right away to click on the bill numbers below and see whether your Representative and Senator have signed on as cosponsors.
If you do not see their names, give a quick call to their Harrisburg office and ask them to immediately cosponsor this legislation.
If your representative and senator are already listed as cosponsors, call them to say a big “Thank you!”
The new bill numbers are House Bill 704 (yes, the same number as last year) and Senate Bill 1115.
We’ve added three new groups to the already broad, statewide coalition of organizations supporting special education funding and accountability reform.
This week Action United, Juntos and Youth United for Change joined the cause.
Thanks to all of the groups for their efforts on this important legislation.
1. What is the purpose and history of special education funding and accountability reform?
The legislation — which will have a new bill number in the coming weeks — addresses the current problems with the state systems for funding and accountability of special education for students with disabilities. The Commonwealth benefits when all students are educated and prepared for meaningful employment, higher education, and self-sufficiency.
The legislation does the following:
o Provide an effective formula to distribute state funding for special education, without creating compulsory annual targets or limiting the discretion of the General Assembly;
o Increase the accuracy of the special education formula by using three weights;
o Establish a transparent process to set the final formula weights through a legislative commission and subsequent regulation;
o Maintain spending at 2008-09 levels for 2010-11 if insufficient funds are appropriated;
o Streamline and strengthen school district accountability without imposing excess bureaucracy, applied when sufficient funds are appropriated in future years; and
o Maintain the Contingency Fund and make it more accountable and transparent.
Download a .pdf of the Summary.
Summary of Senate Bill 1115 and House Bill 704
as Introduced in 2011 by Senator Browne and Representative O’Neill
CONTACT: Education Law Center
Baruch Kintisch, 215-238-6970 x 320
Sandy Zelno, 412-255-6414
PURPOSE – The legislation addresses the current problems with the state systems for funding and accountability of special education for students with disabilities. The Commonwealth benefits when all students are educated and prepared for meaningful employment, higher education, and self-sufficiency. Reforms are required at this time because most school districts do not have the basic resources needed to provide a quality education with supports and services for children with disabilities. The state funding and accountability systems for special education are broken and need repair.
SUMMARY – The legislation is being introduced in the same form as adopted by the House in 2010, making the following improvements:
o Provide an effective formula to distribute state funding for special education, without creating compulsory annual targets or limiting the discretion of the General Assembly;
o Increase the accuracy of the special education formula by using three weights;
o Establish a transparent process to set the final formula weights through a legislative commission and subsequent regulation;
o Maintain spending at 2008-09 levels for 2011-12 if insufficient funds are appropriated;
o Streamline and strengthen school district accountability without imposing excess bureaucracy, applied when sufficient funds are appropriated in future years; and
o Maintain the Contingency Fund and make it more accountable and transparent.
It’s been a while since we had news to report about special education reforms in the PA General Assembly. Well, now we have some really good news.
And we all need to get busy!
The major reform legislation helping students with disabilities that we all worked so hard on last year is being re-introduced in the PA Senate and House.
In 2010, House Bill 704 was passed by the House with bi-partisan support and came close to getting a vote in the Senate. We just ran out of time.
The bill fixes the distribution and accountability of state funding for special education, aimed at improving opportunities to learn for children with disabilities.
The same bill will now be re-introduced in both the Senate and the House, in the same form as it passed the House in 2010. Click here for a detailed summary. Continue reading »
We’ll have updates on this legislation in the coming weeks.
Thanks to all of the supporters who have worked hard on this effort to improve Pennsylvania’s special education funding system.
The state budget was finalized on time, much faster than anyone expected. Click here to read ELC’s budget analysis.
State funding for special education was not cut for 2010-11. Every school district will get the same state funding it received in 2008-09 and 2009-10. Your advocacy on House Bill 704 deserves credit for protecting this line item in the budget, which avoided the cuts absorbed by most other programs. Of course, you are well aware that the high inflation rate for many special education services and programs threatens the needs of children even with “flat” funding.
The quick resolution of the budget means that there was not enough time for the sponsors of House Bill 704 to negotiate with the Senate about approving the special education reforms. We will work over the summer so that the Senate can promptly hold hearings and vote on HB 704 in September.
Thank you for hanging in there for a couple of extra months. With your help, we should see our legislation signed into law while the flowers are still blooming in September and before the leaves start falling from the trees.
Check back here for updates during July and August. Click on the links in the right margin to read the summary of the changes made in HB 704 as the House voted to approve the bill in June.
Let us know what else we can do to support your work.
