The Greenfield School Department has taken it on the chin with an unforeseen $850,000 midyear special education expense. It has the town scrambling to close the gap.
School Business Manager Howard Barber says the extra needs of some special education students only became known after this year’s budget was set last spring.
“Between last year and today, there was a transition of additional students that had to be placed out-of-district, or in-district students that have one-to-one (aides), for whatever the circumstances, transition into a different situation where they can’t be managed inside the school,” Barber told The Recorder.
As the system now works, the home district is responsible for providing public education for all students. Unfortunately, such placements in specialized programs outside the town can be extremely expensive, in the tens of thousands of dollars in most cases. Educating students in outside programs typically cost much more than providing services in-district. For example, Barber said that depending upon what is required, the cost of sending a student elsewhere can climb to $200,000. Meanwhile, the average cost to educate a student in Greenfield is about $14,000.
The district is also responsible for providing these out-of-district students transportation to and from school.
Understanding all of this — and there’s no disputing Greenfield’s legal and moral responsibilities to provide all students with an education — it would have been better for school officials to sound the alarm about this deficit earlier. A deficit didn’t just happen at once overnight.
This immediate concern, however, is just the latest manifestation of continuing difficulty that Greenfield and other districts have with somewhat unpredictable and exorbitant special education costs.
The issue is nothing new. School districts clearly can’t anticipate that children moving to the district may require the kind of services and education they can’t provide in-house. And even if there were a move to pad the special education account, those keeping a watch on town spending and taxes would discourage such a move.
And though state officials are aware of the strain that special education, particularly out-of-district placement, puts on districts and their budgets, they haven’t done much to help.
Statewide, special education costs in Massachusetts rose by 56 percent compared to 36 percent for all public education between 2006 and 2012.
While in recent years, the state has worked with schools to develop more in-district services, there hasn’t been much attempt to reform the state education formula to better help schools with special education.
To his credit, Mayor William Martin wants the school administration to produce a report on the impact of out-of-district student costs on the department. His idea is to send this to those in the state executive branch and Legislature as the background for a request to “radically change the funding formulas that are currently in use.”
While we like this idea, it’s going to take more than just Greenfield to push the change. But clearly it’s time.