school "obligations"

Cathy Kearns writes:
I agree with your post, though, to be precise, as a parent of Los
Altos elementary, we are not basic aid, but receive the amount of
money per student any "rural" school would get. (Much less than say,
Ravenswood, the local disadvantaged district, or San Jose Unified, our
large urban district, and about 1/3 of what Palo Alto receives per
student.)

I'm not sure what you mean by "receives per student", but Los Altos
School District had revenue of $7749 per student in 2001-02 (112% of the
average in the state, for elementary districts). Palo Alto Unified
School District had revenue of $10749 per student (149% of the average
in the state, for unified districts). That's more, but it's certainly
not three times as much!

For California, you can look up these numbers at
http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/ (click on District reports and then select
Financial statement).

Of course, Palo Alto has such high local property tax revenue because
it's *both* a very expensive place to live, and also has a lot of
commercial real estate. Los Altos has the expensive homes, but not so
much commercial real estate. Funding of school districts based on
whether they happen to have commercial properties located within them is
certainly one of the many shortcomings of the California system.

We are hoping to become a basic aid district as houses turn over and
property taxes go up. We did pass a local parcel tax, at $597 a
parcel to make up the difference, but right now, if the state passed a
law that all schools would be paid the per student, we would get much
more money.

You left something out of this sentence, so I don't know what you're
trying to say. The (what) per student? As noted above, the Los Altos
School District does receive more tax revenue per student than the
statewide average (but not hugely more).

David desJardins

Elisabeth Riba wrote in message ...
chiam margalit wrote:
The greatest reason for why sped costs so much is that every kid in
the schools has a diagnosis these days.

I think it's partly a circular phenomenon.
For whatever reason, the school isn't meeting a child's needs, so the
parents get an IEP for that student, then other parents see that the
school is doing better for the children with IEPs, so *they* get IEPs, and
so on.

As if! It doesn't work that way. I've mentioned before that I do
educational consulting as a side business. I do this because I know
how to wrangle services that most parents can't possibly negotiate.
I'm a professional advocate for LD kids, and I have a large number of
clients ongoing. With that said, I have *never* met a parent who can
just 'get' an IEP for a child. Even with an attorney in hand (and I
work with one) and a hired gun advocate, parents can't just demand an
IEP for their child. They have to go through a very lengthy and
complicated assessment period for their child, and the schools are
required to look at the big picture to determine if the student is
lagging so far behind as to need special services. Many more kids get
passed over than actually get services, even in states like MA where
they have extra strength SPED laws (766).

Many more parents don't want their child to be labeled SPED, which
they see as stigmatizing, and so do not go through the IEP process
until their children are very very far behind, if at all.

Maybe, if schools could be more accomodating in the first place,
parents wouldn't feel the need to go through the added cost of IEPs and
SPED in order to get their kids a decent education.
As I said, my husband reports that when he was growing up, most of the
gifted students had some form of IEP/sped, because that was the only way
to get special services for the gifted students.

Well, that's one data point. One. Gifted students in MA do not get any
special services. They no longer have resource rooms in most schools
except for the very impaired learners, as most children are
mainstreamed into regular classrooms. So your husbands claims are
really just not relevant, since they're a single data point in a huge
morass of stories. BTW, giftedness is NOT a learning disability
(obviously) and so does not qualify for an IEP in most states. There
are some that will accept giftedness as a reason for individualized
education, but most do not.

There's also a matter that schools are now expected to educate everybody,
rather than just warehousing disabled students or expelling troublemakers.
It's a societal change in expectations of what minority students deserve
(and I'm including the disabled as special ed).

Yes, that is a problem. Schools have always been expected to educate
everyone, as that is their charter. What I think you're trying to say
is that schools now are expected to give an *appropriate* education to
every student. In the old days, blind and hearing impaired kids went
to school but they often didn't have special services and were
expected to learn just like everyone else. I went to elementary school
with a blind boy in my class, and other than braille books, he had
*no* special accomodations. Not any.


[Sunday's Boston Globe article had an article on this aspect. To quote:
So much has changed, and so quickly, that it is difficult even to
recall practices that were taken for granted barely two generations ago.
Consider what was commonplace in education. School principals in the
Southwest expelled students who dared to speak Spanish on the
playground, and the same treatment was given to native French-speakers
in Louisiana. Miscreant students had fewer rights than accused
criminals. Athletics was a boys' club, with girls relegated to the
cheerleading squad. Native American children were shipped off to
government-run boarding schools, where they were drugged with Ritalin
into submissiveness as their history and traditions leeched out of them.
Mildly retarded or emotionally troubled youngsters got little more than
babysitting in classrooms far from ``normal'' students. Severely
disabled youngsters, regarded as ``uneducable,'' were locked away in
institutions or left to vegetate at home.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/08/24/the_other_civil_rights_movement/

All true. But now the turnaround is just as ridiculous. My son has a
friend whose parents (with my help) negotiated a special placement for
their GT/LD child in a private school setting that is costing our
school district $65K/year. Yes, it's a great placement for this boy,
but I don't feel that he really *needed* such an accomodation and
tried to get the parents to consider a similar school-based program in
one of our middle schools, but they didn't want to and went full guns
blazing in front of the school board to get this placement. My son,
with the same issues, is mainstreamed into a regular classroom
setting, which is more in keeping with my beliefs that children should
be with like peers rather than warehoused into special populations.

Finally, I think schools have become more rigid in certain aspects.
Have you ever read Thom Hartmann's Hunter/Farmer metaphor for ADHD?
Given the percentage of children who have ADHD, our schools are not being
designed to accommodate such students *without* bringing IEPs into the
picture.

Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but ADHD is not a reason alone to
get an IEP. Unless a child has ADHD and a learning disability, the
best you can hope for is a 504:

The Rehabilitation Act 1973 Section 504

Students with disabilities are protected by an additional source,
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Even students whose
disabilities are not recognized by the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act (IDEA) are covered under the civil rights of Section
504. A Section 504 states that no individual with a disability can be
denied access to any program or activity that receives federal funds
because of his/her disability. Programs that receive federal funds
must be accessible to people with disabilities. They must be barrier
free. "Reasonable accommodations" such as interpreters, assistive
devices, transportation, etc., must be provided when needed.



For example, as academic requirements have increased, budgets have
decreased, and schools try to squeeze in more learning without increasing
hours, recess and physical education are frequently eliminated,

Recess disappears in middle school anyhow. What takes it's place is
passing time in the halls, which gives kids frequent breaks to
socialize and jump up and down. I know people sound the alarm that
recess is going to disappear, but I haven't seen any evidence of this.
I *have* seen recess that is no longer supervised unless by parent
volunteers, but I don't see cutting recess as a cost cutting measure.
Additionally, PE in my school system has been paid for solely by the
PTO for many many years, without incident. I don't have a problem with
that. My children are athletic, skinny, and well toned, and none of
that is caused by their 2x/week PE classes.

giving
energetic children fewer chances to burn off excess energy, possibly
*increasing* problems in class. [Can you imagine a full workday without
any break?]

Yes, I can and do. I work straight through every day because I want to
knock off earlier to get to my kids. I haven't eaten lunch at work in
many many years. Additionally, as a teacher I wasn't even allowed
bathroom breaks when I needed to go, so this isn't a huge leap for me
at all.


And don't get me started on lengthy high-stakes pass-fail multiple-choice tests.

On that one I'm completely with you. I hate the damn things. But what
I hate more is that the day after they're done with the tests,
academic learning ceases to happen in our schools. Which really does
support the 'teach to the test' theory.

Marjorie

If you look closely, I was wrong, from the state Los Altos
receives $4446 per student, 3rd from the bottom in Santa
Clara County. Palo Alto Unified receives $7194, not quite
double. Los Altos spends $7550, Palo Alto $10415.

The difference, in the case of Los Altos, comes from a $597
parcel tax on each parcel passed under the 2/3 voter rule, state
grants some received from applications filled out by volunteers,
and a Los Altos Educational Fund donation of $1.2 million, culled
mostly donations of $600 per student supplied by students families.
I noticed Palo Alto also came up with over $2000 a student from
local taxes.

Yep, if an affluent community really wants to, it can pay for its own
schools. Not that I'm saying that's fair, but unless all schools
are funded to the top schools, parents who can are going to
put out to ensure their kids get a good education.

"David desJardins" wrote in message
...
Cathy Kearns writes:
I agree with your post, though, to be precise, as a parent of Los
Altos elementary, we are not basic aid, but receive the amount of
money per student any "rural" school would get. (Much less than say,
Ravenswood, the local disadvantaged district, or San Jose Unified, our
large urban district, and about 1/3 of what Palo Alto receives per
student.)

I'm not sure what you mean by "receives per student", but Los Altos
School District had revenue of $7749 per student in 2001-02 (112% of the
average in the state, for elementary districts). Palo Alto Unified
School District had revenue of $10749 per student (149% of the average
in the state, for unified districts). That's more, but it's certainly
not three times as much!

For California, you can look up these numbers at
http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/ (click on District reports and then select
Financial statement).

Of course, Palo Alto has such high local property tax revenue because
it's *both* a very expensive place to live, and also has a lot of
commercial real estate. Los Altos has the expensive homes, but not so
much commercial real estate. Funding of school districts based on
whether they happen to have commercial properties located within them is
certainly one of the many shortcomings of the California system.

We are hoping to become a basic aid district as houses turn over and
property taxes go up. We did pass a local parcel tax, at $597 a
parcel to make up the difference, but right now, if the state passed a
law that all schools would be paid the per student, we would get much
more money.

You left something out of this sentence, so I don't know what you're
trying to say. The (what) per student? As noted above, the Los Altos
School District does receive more tax revenue per student than the
statewide average (but not hugely more).

David desJardins

x-no-archive: yes

Noreen wrote:

But I do applaud your helping out with the special audio equipment and so
I'd say that is helping out the schools also, even though you wish to
emphasize how unobligated you are help them out.

I want to make a quick comment regarding this. The schools are legally required
to provide my daughter with the system so that she has "equal access" to an
education. If it turns out that when the school year starts, the school hasn't
dealt with this -- we may end up buying one for our daughter to use -- NOT one
to donate to the school district. We wouldn't be doing this out of the goodness
of our hearts but because it's really helpful to my daughter's education if she
can adequately hear the teacher. Personally, I'm frustrated that the school
district may choose not to comply with the law and purchase the system, as the
law requires. There are additional funding sources available if the district
wishes to seek them out.

So the applause isn't called for.

I'm really done talking about this, now.

beeswing

In article ,
(chiam margalit) wrote:

Elisabeth Riba wrote in message
...
chiam margalit wrote:
The greatest reason for why sped costs so much is that every kid in
the schools has a diagnosis these days.

I think it's partly a circular phenomenon.
For whatever reason, the school isn't meeting a child's needs, so the
parents get an IEP for that student, then other parents see that the
school is doing better for the children with IEPs, so *they* get IEPs, and
so on.

As if! It doesn't work that way. I've mentioned before that I do
educational consulting as a side business. I do this because I know
how to wrangle services that most parents can't possibly negotiate.
I'm a professional advocate for LD kids, and I have a large number of
clients ongoing. With that said, I have *never* met a parent who can
just 'get' an IEP for a child. Even with an attorney in hand (and I
work with one) and a hired gun advocate, parents can't just demand an
IEP for their child. They have to go through a very lengthy and
complicated assessment period for their child, and the schools are
required to look at the big picture to determine if the student is
lagging so far behind as to need special services. Many more kids get
passed over than actually get services, even in states like MA where
they have extra strength SPED laws (766).

Many more parents don't want their child to be labeled SPED, which
they see as stigmatizing, and so do not go through the IEP process
until their children are very very far behind, if at all.

Maybe, if schools could be more accomodating in the first place,
parents wouldn't feel the need to go through the added cost of IEPs and
SPED in order to get their kids a decent education.
As I said, my husband reports that when he was growing up, most of the
gifted students had some form of IEP/sped, because that was the only way
to get special services for the gifted students.

Well, that's one data point. One. Gifted students in MA do not get any
special services. They no longer have resource rooms in most schools
except for the very impaired learners, as most children are
mainstreamed into regular classrooms. So your husbands claims are
really just not relevant, since they're a single data point in a huge
morass of stories. BTW, giftedness is NOT a learning disability
(obviously) and so does not qualify for an IEP in most states. There
are some that will accept giftedness as a reason for individualized
education, but most do not.


The real problem with this is for gifted kids who are also learning
disabled, but so smart that they are able to keep up with their grade
level. They work and struggle to maintain C's, when they should be
getting A's -- but, because they are not falling behind in their grade,
they cannot get the special help they need to deal with their learning
disabilities. When I lived in Mass, I knew two families who finally
gave up and either put their child in a private school or started home
schooling -- they clearly had exceptionally bright kids, but the kids
were getting more and more unhappy and discouraged because they couldn't
keep up. In both of those cases, the kids got the special help they
needed to overcome specific, diagnosed (privately) disabilities, and,
eventually, returned to do very well in the public schools.

I'm not sure what the solution is -- but there does seem to be something
terribly broken when a child has a clear disability, but, because they
are so bright they are able to barely keep up, they don't get the
specialized help they need to truely meet their potential.

meh
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

Cathy Kearns writes:
If you look closely, I was wrong, from the state Los Altos receives
$4446 per student, 3rd from the bottom in Santa Clara County. Palo
Alto Unified receives $7194, not quite double.

I think you're seriously misunderstanding something. Here's the actual
revenue breakdown:

Los Altos School District
local funds $6162 (per student)
state funds $1449
Federal funds $138

Palo Alto Unified School District
local funds $8999 (per student)
state funds $1481
Federal funds $318

The local funds include property taxes (ad valorem taxes and parcel
taxes) and donations. You can see, from these numbers, that the
difference in funding is almost entirely due to the greater property tax
revenues in Palo Alto (I think donations are similar in the two
districts).

Again, this data is all at http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/

David desJardins

dragonlady wrote in message ...
In article ,
(chiam margalit) wrote:


The real problem with this is for gifted kids who are also learning
disabled, but so smart that they are able to keep up with their grade
level. They work and struggle to maintain C's, when they should be
getting A's -- but, because they are not falling behind in their grade,
they cannot get the special help they need to deal with their learning
disabilities. When I lived in Mass, I knew two families who finally
gave up and either put their child in a private school or started home
schooling -- they clearly had exceptionally bright kids, but the kids
were getting more and more unhappy and discouraged because they couldn't
keep up. In both of those cases, the kids got the special help they
needed to overcome specific, diagnosed (privately) disabilities, and,
eventually, returned to do very well in the public schools.

I'm not sure what the solution is -- but there does seem to be something
terribly broken when a child has a clear disability, but, because they
are so bright they are able to barely keep up, they don't get the
specialized help they need to truely meet their potential.

You are definately preaching to the choir here. There are two
advocates in the Boston area that specialize in GT/LD kids, and
they're starting to make a difference in *some* districts. I had a kid
last year in Needham that I represented who had been kicked out of his
private school (long long story) and was profoundly gifted but had
fairly severe LDs plus some other problem, and hearing loss. This
family got *great* accomodations from a district that is not known for
being generous, but only because there were 2 advocates and an
attorney at the IEP meeting. He's doing very very well in public
school!

What most parents don't understand is that GT kids with LDs can get a
504 (my son has one) and the schools have to follow it to the letter.
Most parents have never heard of 504 and nobody in the school system
is going to tell them out it. Only parents who are willing to either
do a ton of research or hire an advocate (we're not cheap, either)
will get the accomodations their kids need.

One thing I've discovered is, the poorer the district, the more
willing they are to find and fund outside help because they do not
have the resources within the district but can get money from 766
sources in MA. Waltham is a good example of this, sending their severe
ED kids into Boston private hospital-based programs instead of
sponsoring a program for ED kids within their schools.

Unbelievable as it might seem, MA is a lot more willing to deal with
SPED issues than is CA, and NY seems to be the best state I've dealt
with so far.

Marjorie

meh

"Cathy Kearns" wrote in message m...
If you look closely, I was wrong, from the state Los Altos
receives $4446 per student, 3rd from the bottom in Santa
Clara County. Palo Alto Unified receives $7194, not quite
double. Los Altos spends $7550, Palo Alto $10415.

The difference, in the case of Los Altos, comes from a $597
parcel tax on each parcel passed under the 2/3 voter rule, state
grants some received from applications filled out by volunteers,
and a Los Altos Educational Fund donation of $1.2 million, culled
mostly donations of $600 per student supplied by students families.
I noticed Palo Alto also came up with over $2000 a student from
local taxes.

Yep, if an affluent community really wants to, it can pay for its own
schools. Not that I'm saying that's fair, but unless all schools
are funded to the top schools, parents who can are going to
put out to ensure their kids get a good education.

I have close friends who live just above Palo Alto in Woodside, which
makes Palo Alto look like Poverty Row. Woodside has one
elementary/middle school, and a high school that they 'share' with a
part of Redwood City (much less affluent). Woodside has a yearly
auction fund raiser for the schools, and they raise close to a million
dollars on this auction every year. That money is used for specials,
PE, and other things the town can't raise in property taxes.

Down the Peninsula, where my kids attend school, we've also got a very
affluent community and a very large commercial tax base (thank you
Apple Computer!). We have one fund raiser for our elementary school
too, a walk-a-thon where the kids raise a goodly amount of cash also
for specials, PE, etc. But it isn't even close to what Woodside raises
in their one school. Schools in our district prefer to ask parents to
pay one fee at the beginning of the year (currently $150/family)
rather than be nickeled and dimed to death with fund raisers. We have
670 students in our elementary school, so that's a goodly amount of
cold cash raised.

Our per pupil spending is $6,257. Much less than Palo Alto, but we
consistantly rank equal to or above them in the yearly scores. And we
consistantly rank in the top 5 in the entire state, usually number 1
or 2. Money isn't everything, evidentally!

Marjorie

Cathy Kearns writes:
I think you're seriously misunderstanding something. Here's the
actual revenue breakdown:

Los Altos School District
local funds $6162 (per student)

Now where is this chart? I'm looking at
http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/Navigat...%2Fprofile%2Ea
sp%3Flevel%3D06%26reportNumber%3D16
It shows Los Altos receives $4446 under Revenue limits. For Los Altos that
is not property taxes, as we don't reach the
basic aid limit. For us that is state funds.

I think you're looking at the same chart, but you're not understanding
it. There's a line that says "Subtotal, Revenue Limit Sources." This
means, in the context of state law, local property taxes (not including
the parcel tax), plus supplemental funds from the state which are
mandated to bring the district up to its "revenue limit". (Thus, the
"revenue limit sources" for a district will always total at least as
much as the "revenue limit" for that district, but may be greater if the
local property taxes are already above the revenue limit.)

You can see, looking at the chart, that the $4446 figure is just
obtained by adding $4062 under Local Property Taxes and Fees and $384
under State Aid. It's not all (or even mostly) state funds. If you add
up the different types of state and local funds, ignoring which are
"revenue limit sources" and which aren't (essentially just a
technicality), you get the figures I posted.

LAEF, the district wide educational foundation last year gave the
district $1.2 million to ensure small class sizes and keeping programs
for its 4000 students. (This is in addition to $1 million raised in
spring of 2002 to keep the class sizes small, less than 20 K-3, less
than 30 4-8.)

PAFE, the similar district wide foundation, gave $350 thousand
for its 10,000 students.

That's true, but I think there's more giving to the individual schools
in Palo Alto. However, it certainly may be that there's more total
giving in Los Altos; that wouldn't surprise me.

My point is it probably takes closer to the $10k Palo Alto spends per
student to have a good educational program. Until all districts get
that, the more affluent districts are going to try and make up as much
as they can. Some are better at making it up than others. (See
Woodside Elementary.)

I think we both agree about that.

David desJardins