BCT Editorial – 4/17/05

This page was last updated on April 17, 2005.

Unreal; Editorial; Beaver County Times; April 17, 2005.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“The Sto-Rox School District could serve as a poster child for what is wrong with the state’s special education funding formula.

“Next year, special education costs in the district are expected to increase by $800,000, according to a recent report. However, state subsidies are only going to increase by $18,000.

“Who makes up the difference?

“Local property owners do, through tax increases, or other students do, through spending cuts in non-special education programs.”

[RWC] What’s wrong with this? Is there some reason residents shouldn’t pay to have their kids educated? It’s bad enough that local taxpayers without children have to pay. Why on Earth should taxpayers outside the district pay?

“The reason for this gap is that the state’s funding formula for special education has no basis in reality. Basically, the state estimates how many children districts should have in special education and reimburses them accordingly. If a district has a higher number of children than the estimate or the cost of educating them exceeds the state’s contributions, the district must make up the difference.

“To complicate matters even further, school districts that educate large numbers of low-income children tend to have more special needs children than their wealthier counterparts.

“About one-fourth of the children in Sto-Rox qualify as special needs children; the state average is 13.4 percent.”

[RWC] I have no expertise in this area, but doesn’t 13.4% sound high for a statewide average? It would be nice to know what it takes for a child to be categorized “special needs.”

“Sto-Rox is not alone. School districts across the commonwealth, especially those like Sto-Rox, are being crunched by special education costs. The refusal of lawmakers to right this wrong speaks volumes about their priorities.”

[RWC] What are state legislators supposed to do? Someone has to pay the costs; why not the parents?

Here are some nuggets from the PA Department of Education web site the editorial conveniently failed to note. The Sto-Rox district currently provides only 36% of its revenue. The remainder comes from federal and commonwealth taxpayers. As a result, Sto-Rox manages to spend approximately $10,676/student per year. For comparison, local taxpayers provide 61% of Center Area SD tax revenue and Center spends only $7,388/student per year. This data is from the 2001-2002 school year, the most recent data on the PDE web site.

The Times apparently believes Center isn’t sending enough tax dollars to the Sto-Rox district.