BILL ANALYSIS
AJR 31
Page 1
Date of Hearing: March 24, 2010
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Julia Brownley, Chair
AJR 31 (Buchanan) - As Introduced: February 4, 2010
SUBJECT : Special education funding
SUMMARY : Recognizes the current shortfall in funding available
from the federal government for special education purposes and
the need for the federal government to generate sufficient funds
for, and allocate sufficient funds to, special education.
Specifically, this bill :
1)Makes findings as to the importance of special education, the
insufficient levels of federal funding for special education
in California and across the country, and the existence of
bills pending in Congress that would act to increase special
education funding.
2)Resolves that the Legislature respectfully memorializes the
Congress and the President of the United States to enact HR
1102 or one of the other special education funding bills
pending before Congress, so as to fully fund special
education.
3)Resolves that the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies
of this resolution to the President and Vice President of the
United States, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives,
to the Majority Leader of the Senate, and to each Senator and
Representative from California in the Congress of the United
States.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Provides support for special education through a combination
of federal, state and local funds.
2)Establishes special education local plan Areas (SELPAs) as the
entity responsible for distributing state allocated special
education funding to school districts and for coordinating
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services to students with disabilities.
3)Allocates state, federal and local funding to each SELPA based
on a historical rate per average daily attendance (ADA) which
was substantially equalized by 2001, the total ADA in the
SELPA, growth and cost of living adjustments (COLA),
additional adjustments for equalization, and a special
disabilities adjustment to offset the fact that pupils with
high cost/low incidence disabilities are not uniformly
distributed across SELPAs.
FISCAL EFFECT : This bill has been flagged as non-fiscal.
COMMENTS : The disabilities that qualify a student for special
education vary widely, from a mild speech or learning disability
to conditions that require specialized, individual care that
goes well beyond classroom instruction. About half of students
enrolled in special education have a learning disability, and
another quarter have a speech or language impairment. These
conditions qualify a student for extra assistance but, in
general, have a moderate impact on the cost of education. Much
more dramatic are the costs of educating the other quarter of
students with more serious disabilities, including mental
retardation; visual, orthopedic, or other health impairments;
emotional disturbance; loss of hearing and/or sight; traumatic
brain injuries; or multiple disabilities.
Special education is funded with a combination of state, federal
and local funds. The state and federal governments together are
providing funding of approximately $5 billion in the current
fiscal year for special education; less than $2 billion of those
funds come from the federal government. This funding, which
goes first to the SELPA and then is distributed out to
districts, does not cover the full cost of educating students
with disabilities. Local educational agencies (LEAs), school
districts and county offices of education, are expected to
provide a share from property tax and other revenues, including
the base revenue limit funding received for students with
disabilities in the same way as for all other students. The
primary funding problem facing special education stems from
shortfall in funding provided by the federal government relative
to the commitment that was historically made. This shortfall
means that a LEA must use its general fund revenues to
supplement local special education expenditures beyond what was
historically expected of them.
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In the initial 1975 authorization of the Education for All
Handicapped Children Act (the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act or IDEA is the current reauthorization of this
act), Congress recognized the mandates that were being imposed
on states and LEAs, and stated a goal that the federal
government would provide special education funding equal to
forty percent of the funding necessary to cover the national
average expenditure per pupil in public schools. Estimates of
the current ongoing federal contribution to special education
funding have ranged from thirteen to twenty-five percent -
clearly short of the forty percent commitment. The burden for
making up this shortfall has fallen on the states and LEAs which
must comply with the mandates. This situation has been
exacerbated by rapid growth in the number of students with
disabilities, particularly those with higher cost disabilities
such as autism.
This federal funding shortfall, and more specifically the
slowdown in federal grant increases for special education
through the middle part of this decade, has also led to changes
with respect to funding the special education COLA. From
2002-03 through 2004-05, increases in the federal grant were
used to fund COLA and growth on the full special education
funding entitlement; however, this resulted in a change in
federal law that prohibited states from using federal funds to
pay for any adjustment for COLA or growth that is required by
state law. Subsequent to that change, budget actions have been
taken to provide funding for COLA and growth on the state and
local portion of the special education allocations using state
funds, and to provide for COLA and growth on the federal portion
using increases in the federal grant. Thus in years when the
federal government does not provide sufficient special education
funds to cover COLA and growth, those adjustments are not fully
provided for federal funds.
A $1.2 billion infusion of federal funds for IDEA was made
available for allocation to California local educational
agencies as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
(ARRA) from federal FY 2009 funds. This large one-time
increment in special education funding was meant to be used for
short-term investments that had the potential for long-term
benefits for students with disabilities, rather than for
expenditures the LEAs may not be able to sustain once the ARRA
funds were expended. It was hoped that these funds would begin
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to bridge the funding gap between the federal forty percent
commitment and the actual level of funding provided to special
education, and that Congress would take action to make those
one-time funds permanent. Unfortunately, it has become clear
that these ARRA funds will not be on-going; on December 16,
2009, the President signed Public Law 111-117, the Consolidated
Appropriations Act, 2010, providing approximately $11.5 billion
in on-going FY 2010 funding for special education, the same
level as was provided in FY 2009. Additional Congressional
action would be necessary to increase this funding, and thus
relieve some of the funding pressure placed on the state and
LEAs.
A number of bills addressing funding for special education are
currently pending in Congress. This bill specifically points to
HR 1102 (Van Hollen; MD-8), the Keep Our Promise to America's
Children and Teachers Act or the Keep Our PACT Act, which makes
specified appropriations for programs under the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act, and for the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act. Among other provisions, the bill
would increase special education funding for FY 2009 to $12.4
billion, provide increases annually up to $30.5 billion in
funding for FY 2016, and provide an amount equal to 40 percent
of the average per-pupil expenditure in public elementary
schools and secondary schools in the United States (adjusted for
COLA) in FY 2017 and beyond; this 40% funding level would equal
the initial federal commitment for special education funding.
The purpose of this resolution is to convey the Legislature's
support of HR 1102 and other Congressional actions that would
lead to full funding for special education. Committee staff
recommends, as it has previously, that the Committee and the
Legislature continue past efforts to request that Congress
provide sufficient ongoing funding for special education.
Committee amendments: Committee staff recommends, and the
author has accepted, an amendment removing specific reference to
HR 1102 from the bill, so as to place the resolution's emphasis
on any or all Congressional actions that might be taken to fully
fund special education. These actions might include passage of
any of the bills currently pending before Congress, including HR
1102 or passage of a supplemental appropriations bill.
Previous legislation: The Legislature has adopted numerous
resolutions that are substantially similar to this measure,
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including AJR 83 (Daucher), Resolution Chapter 132, Statutes of
2004, SJR 11 (Alpert), Resolution Chapter 68, Statutes of 2003;
SJR 10 (Poochigian), Resolution Chapter 19, Statutes of 2001;
AJR 40 (Wildman), Resolution Chapter 87, Statutes of 2000; and
AJR 12 (Lempert), Resolution Chapter 76, Statutes of 1999.
These measures have all asked the President and Congress of the
United States to provide the full federal share of funding for
special education programs to the states so that California and
other states will not be required to take funding from other
vital state and local programs to fund the under-funded federal
special education mandate. Also, AB 602 (Davis), Chapter 854,
Statutes of 1997, implements the current special education
funding system that allocates federal and state funds through
SELPAs to LEAs.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
California Alliance
California Communities United Institute
California School Employees Association, AFL-CIO
California School Nurses Organization
California Speech-Language-Hearing Association
California Teachers Association
Coalition for Adequate Funding for Special Education
Special Education Local Plan Area Administrators
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087