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Another special ed question
Kevin Karplus wrote:
In fact, if my child were going to a private school, I would be embarassed to ask the public schools to provide any services at all. If you are taking the child out of the public school system, and removing the per-child allotment from the school budget, why should they go out of their way to provide expensive services for you? I'm not realy following you're logic here. I pay property taxes to support my local school district and dont expect them to educate my children. How am I supposedly hurting the school district by doing this? I shouldn't be embarassed to ask them to educate all my kids for 13 year but I should be embarassed to ask for a few hours of speech therapy a month for a year or two? How does that make sense? The school district has exactly the same amount of money weather I send my kids to there schools or not. If there are 2 less kids in the district and the same money, that means the "per-child allotment" can be increased. so the district doesn't lose anything. the particular school my kids would of gone to might lose because the total of my property taxes is probably less than the amount of per-child alotment for 2 kids, even with the bigger alotments my taxes with no kids in school allow, but the also have 2 less kids to deal with. And as long the kids going to private schools are mostly spread out amoung all the schools in the district then really all the schools gain by some parents paying taxes but not sending their kids to public schools. its not like our overcrowded public schools would really benefit from having to squeeze in a bunch more private school kids, even given a few more bucks. Leandra |
#2
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Another special ed question
"Leandra" wrote in message m... Kevin Karplus wrote: In fact, if my child were going to a private school, I would be embarassed to ask the public schools to provide any services at all. If you are taking the child out of the public school system, and removing the per-child allotment from the school budget, why should they go out of their way to provide expensive services for you? I'm not realy following you're logic here. I pay property taxes to support my local school district and dont expect them to educate my children. How am I supposedly hurting the school district by doing this? I shouldn't be embarassed to ask them to educate all my kids for 13 year but I should be embarassed to ask for a few hours of speech therapy a month for a year or two? How does that make sense? I think Kevin is thinking more of the California school tax system, and is basically ranting about how it is funded. In California, yes property taxes go to the state to fund schools, but then how it is sent back to the local districts is pretty convoluted. The school district has exactly the same amount of money weather I send my kids to there schools or not. If there are 2 less kids in the district and the same money, that means the "per-child allotment" can be increased. so the district doesn't lose anything. the particular school my kids would of gone to might lose because the total of my property taxes is probably less than the amount of per-child alotment for 2 kids, even with the bigger alotments my taxes with no kids in school allow, but the also have 2 less kids to deal with. And as long the kids going to private schools are mostly spread out amoung all the schools in the district then really all the schools gain by some parents paying taxes but not sending their kids to public schools. its not like our overcrowded public schools would really benefit from having to squeeze in a bunch more private school kids, even given a few more bucks. Well, in a Basic Aid district in California, such as Palo Alto Unified or Sunnyvale, even if only one child was in that district the district would get the same generous amount of money. In these districts the amount of property taxes collected is larger than the state expects, so it keeps some and sends the rest back to the districts. If you aren't in a Basic Aid district then the state sends a certain amount per student who attended school per day. This is why California schools get so persnickity about parents pulling kids from school, the days the kids are out, they don't get paid. Depending on the district, and whether many years ago it was considered urban, suburban, or rural, you get different amounts. I believe the lowest amount per student in the state is given to the Cupertino school district, because at the time ofprop 13, Cupertino was mostly agricultural, or didn't have a high cost of living. These designations don't change, despite the fact that Cupertino is now smack dab in the center of Silcon Valley, and cost of living has sky rocketed. To add insult to these districts, the federal and state government mandate special education, but only fund around 50% of what it costs. So the district may be getting an extra $1K per SPED child, but they are spending and extra $2K per SPED child. Kevin alludes that children that require SPED but are not enrolled in school may mean the school receives no state money (or none of your property taxes) to pay for the additional resources needed to help that child. Though the vast majority of school districts do not shirk their responsibility to SPED students, they don't have tons of extra money laying around to spend just on SPED students. So in California, though it may seem they are making SPED parents jump through hoops, in actuality they are just trying to ensure all SPED students can get what they need for the least cost, so they can use that to pay for regular education. They way to make this not an issue is for the state and federal governments to fully fund all SPED, and ensuring the local districts won't need to dip into general education funds to pay for SPED. It would be really great if the SPED funds were so large schools had to find ways to ensure they spend all the SPED funds on Special Ed programs. Leandra |
#3
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Another special ed question
"Cathy Kearns" wrote in message
om... So in California, though it may seem they are making SPED parents jump through hoops, in actuality they are just trying to ensure all SPED students can get what they need for the least cost, so they can use that to pay for regular education. They way to make this not an issue is for the state and federal governments to fully fund all SPED, and ensuring the local districts won't need to dip into general education funds to pay for SPED. It would be really great if the SPED funds were so large schools had to find ways to ensure they spend all the SPED funds on Special Ed programs. How are the Federal funds applied, especially for the children who are not yet school age? -Aula |
#4
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Another special ed question
"just me" wrote in message m... "Cathy Kearns" wrote in message om... So in California, though it may seem they are making SPED parents jump through hoops, in actuality they are just trying to ensure all SPED students can get what they need for the least cost, so they can use that to pay for regular education. They way to make this not an issue is for the state and federal governments to fully fund all SPED, and ensuring the local districts won't need to dip into general education funds to pay for SPED. It would be really great if the SPED funds were so large schools had to find ways to ensure they spend all the SPED funds on Special Ed programs. How are the Federal funds applied, especially for the children who are not yet school age? -Aula Federal funds are based on special ed children recieving services, who are between the ages of 2 and 22 years of age. But they're a small percentage of the actual costs of SPED. |
#5
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Another special ed question
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#6
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Another special ed question
In article ,
dragonlady wrote: That's not how the funding works in California: the schools get $$ based on how many kids are attending. (Not even how many are enrolled: every time a child is off sick, the school looses money.) Ok, so that's just a little screwed up ;-) Do they have to even provide sped programs for the preschoolers in their district, even though they couldn't possibly be attending? Or do the schools get to count preschoolers enrolled in their adaptive preschool programs as "in attendance" (which could lead to a kind of perverse preference for providing full-time services to a child who really only needed a few hours). But, is the $$/student/day rate fixed by statute or something, or is it based somehow on (some percentage of) the state's total property tax revenue divided by the total average daily attendance figures? Vermont's education funding is kind of screwy too, but not a messed up as CA seems to be. --Robyn (mommy to Ryan 9/93 and Matthew 6/96 and Evan 3/01) |
#7
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Another special ed question
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#8
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Another special ed question
In article , Robyn Kozierok wrote:
In article , dragonlady wrote: That's not how the funding works in California: the schools get $$ based on how many kids are attending. (Not even how many are enrolled: every time a child is off sick, the school looses money.) Ok, so that's just a little screwed up ;-) Do they have to even provide sped programs for the preschoolers in their district, even though they couldn't possibly be attending? Or do the schools get to count preschoolers enrolled in their adaptive preschool programs as "in attendance" (which could lead to a kind of perverse preference for providing full-time services to a child who really only needed a few hours). But, is the $$/student/day rate fixed by statute or something, or is it based somehow on (some percentage of) the state's total property tax revenue divided by the total average daily attendance figures? Nope, nothing that simple or rational. The formulas for computing how much money a school district gets in California are so bizarre and convoluted that some school districts have gone bankrupt before realizing they were in financial difficulty. There is a $/student/day figure which depends on grade level and on whether the school district is participating in the class-size reduction program for K-3, with some variation based on whether the community generated lots of property tax at the time Prop 13 was passed. There are various targeted funds for particular programs (such as the federal Title I funds and local parcel taxes to pay the librarians). There is a mandate for providing SPED services for preschoolers, and I know that the schools are doing so, because my son had speech therapy before he was in school. I believe that they get federal, but not state funds for the preschoolers, and that the federal funds only pay about half the expenses. I may be wrong on this though, as I have not tried to get the true budgetary information from the school district. There have been some citizens trying to make sense out of the budgetary data from the school district, because of the draconian plans being pushed by the school district staff to balance the budget. It seems that it takes between 40 and 100 hours of study to get to the point where the baroque budgetary information is marginally comprehensible, and I haven't had that much time to spare this year. It seems to me that there has been a higher than normal absenteeism this year due to various viruses, which will hurt the school budget in two ways: less income due to students being absent, higher expenses due to having to hire substitutes for ill teachers. Coming on top of the annual and midyear budget cuts, it is going to be a disasterous year for school finances. -- Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels) Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed) Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics Affiliations for identification only. |
#9
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Another special ed question
In article ,
dragonlady wrote: However, saying that California's educational system and the funding thereof is "just a little screwed up" may be one of the biggest understatements I've heard for a while. . . I was trying to be civil ;-) --Robyn |
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