Reform Special Education Funding
Currently viewing the tag: "special education funding reform"
The House of Representatives yesterday unanimously approved House Bill 2, Printers No. 537!
The House version of the bill has now been sent over to the Senate for consideration. (Please note that there is also an identical Senate companion bill—Senate Bill 470, Printers No. 411.) We expect the Senate to take swift action on House Bill 2.
Congratulations to everyone involved for the tremendous work over the past four years with legislative visits, meetings, strategy sessions, letters, emails, and phone calls. We’ve gone through a lot of versions of this legislation together but—because of the hard work and relentless action from dedicated advocates—this bill may finally move and we will have a commission in place to figure out a fairer funding and accountability system for special education in Pennsylvania. This is truly a noteworthy accomplishment.
The Education Law Center’s critical special education reform bill — SB 1115 — will not move forward in the state legislature. The 2011-12 session of the General Assembly is over. Special education legislation will need to start all over again next year when the new two-year legislative session begins.
The special education funding and accountability reforms contained in SB 1115 should have been adopted and signed into law. Those reforms were approved three different times by the full Senate and twice by the full House of Representatives, as well as receiving nearly unanimous committee votes on dozens of occasions. Unfortunately, other things were also put into SB 1115 at the last minute, such as charter school provisions.
At this time, state officials are more interested in education issues other than special education. Children with disabilities made it close to the top of the list of legislative priorities, but charter school reform and special appropriations for a community college were more important to the people in power.
The individuals and organizations that worked so hard on this legislation deserve enormous thanks and recognition. They helped to craft the reforms contained in these bills; testified at hearings; and visited legislators to tell them about the need for special education reforms.
Stay tuned for future updates and plans for the next legislative session.
These students are back in school and now it’s time for state legislators to get back to work and pass special education funding and accountability reforms that benefit all Pennsylvanians.
Our special education reform legislation, Senate Bill 1115, has become an unfortunate example of how the most vulnerable students always lose when politics interferes with education policy. SB 1115 was not adopted with the annual budget by the June 30 deadline. The General Assembly will consider the special education reforms later in 2012, after the summer recess. The Corbett Administration may have different ideas for special education reforms and may not accept the core principles reflected in SB 1115.
Although this is a major disappointment, parent advocates and disability groups are encouraged to stay engaged to overcome the obstacles to improving special education policy and practices. To learn more about why this happened and what we can do, click here.
The Pennsylvania Senate passed an important special education reform bill on June 4 by near unanimous vote.
The hard work of more than 40 disability advocacy organizations on special education funding and accountability reform has paid off. It’s a great victory, and it brings Pennsylvania one step closer to making historic progress for children with disabilities.
The House is expected to vote on the bill in the next week.
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.
