Special education funding in Arizona would increase for the first time in over 20 years under a new bill.
Senate Bill 1060, introduced by Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, would boost special-education funding for Arizona students. The legislation passed in the Senate 28-2 and is currently awaiting action in the House.
The bill proposes an increase in the funding weight from $13 per student to $500 for the 75% of students in special education who fall into the lowest funding category. This includes those with a developmental and emotional disability, speech/language impairment, specific learning disability and equalizes weights for autism.
The bill would also fund students with multiple disabilities, autism or a severe intellectual disability the same whether they are educated in a self-contained setting or a resource setting.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman has been an avid supporter of the bill, which seeks to ease the current strain on public schools across the Valley who are trying to support their students. Four weeks ago she delivered the first-ever special education address to the Senate Education Committee.
“The need for increased special education funding is apparent in almost all of my school visits,” said Hoffman at the hearing. “If you are a principal or superintendent… getting students services they need may mean eliminating a full-day kindergarten program or forgoing on hiring a school counselor.”
A 2007 cost study by the Arizona Department of Education revealed a $100 million gap between what schools were receiving for special education, and what they were spending.
Nearly 145,000 students aged 3-21 in Arizona have been coping with an underfunded special education budget for nearly two decades, despite the rising number of students with educational needs in the Valley, according to a 2018 study done by the ADE.
A major change the bill proposes would allocate $5 million from the state general fund to the extraordinary needs fund as of the 2021 academic school year.
Though federal law requires special education services to be provided by schools, they are funded at less than 20% of the mandated requirements according to Mark Joraanstad, the Executive Director of Arizona School Administrators.
This forces districts to divert resources from non-special needs education to support services for special education.
This can range from cutting school programs to the inability to hire highly trained and certified staff from resource and inclusion teachers to psychologists, speech pathologists, audiologists, etc., to assist students with special needs.
“Hiring, training and retaining these individuals can cost the state up to $50 million,” said Joraanstad.
This fund allows districts to apply for grants if a special-education student has a large unexpected cost that was not budgeted for that year.
“Schools are legally required to provide special education services often forcing them to make hard choices on where to make cuts in other areas,” said Richie Taylor, the Arizona Department of Education Communication Director. “This new funding takes a big step in the right direction to address this problem.”
Not only do educators and the districts feel pressure from the underfunding, but families in the special needs community are also feeling the impact.
“The promise of parental choice in education is a profound lie,” Pamela Lang, of Phoenix, wrote in her testimony at the bill’s hearing in the Senate four weeks ago.
For three years Lang has been unable to find a school that will accept the cost of adding her son to their student body.
“The only way to give students with special-needs a true choice is to fund public education,” Lang said at the hearing.
Contact the reporters at rkbuss@asu.edu and kngilles@asu.edu
