After appearing to give school districts the green light last summer to decrease spending on special education, the U.S. Department of Education is making an about-face.
Under federal law, schools are required to maintain or increase their funding for special education from one year to the next. If they do not meet the standard known as “maintenance of effort” without obtaining an exemption from the Department of Education, districts can lose out on future federal funding.
But when the Education Department weighed in last June about the spending standards districts must meet in the years after they fail to abide by the maintenance of effort requirement, government officials got an earful from special education advocates.
The reason: Melody Musgrove, director of the Office of Special Education Programs at the Education Department, signaled at the time that the department would only require schools to spend as much as they did the prior year — whether or not they had followed the rules.
Now, however, Musgrove appears to be backing down. In response to a critical letter from the Center for Law and Education, Musgrove and a colleague wrote this week that they are rescinding their previous guidance.
“After further review, we have determined that the level of effort that (a school district) must meet in the year after it fails to maintain effort is the level of effort that it should have met in the prior year,” wrote Musgrove and Alexa Posny, assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services.
The move has advocates breathing a sigh of relief, with the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates writing that they are “very pleased” and a joint statement from The Advocacy Institute and the Center for Law and Education indicating that they are “overjoyed.”
Despite the change of heart, however, the issue may not be fully decided. The Education Department said they plan to seek public comment on the matter.
Oh Please, it’s not as if school districts are being held accountable for this by anyone any way. Several years ago my school district, when asked, gave me a copy of their future SpED budget. I then told them it wouldn’t meet MOE & asked why would they lower spending & risk losing federal funding. Their solution was to MOVE, via (journal) accounting entry, more than one million dollars of expenses out of special ed to make it appear that the prior years spending was less. I asked for a breakdown of expenses that were moved to verify that all of them were SpED expenses. I then notified the district’s Superintendent, SELPA director (in CA the $ passes through SELPAs & for some strange reason the FEDS lets the state get away with making the SELPAs responsible for our LEAs) – nothing happened. I then sent copies of everything I had, to the USIG – US Inspector General. I did get a phone call from them, telling me they’d check it out and indicating that they would not let me know what the result of that would be. What happened was absolutely NOTHING.
The moral of this story is that while there may be rules, like MOE, it doesn’t really matter when those rules are not enforced &/or when nothing happens if & when those rules (laws) are broke.
While the FEDS may have, in the past, threatened to take funding away from states & sometimes they even go so far as to offer “technical assistance” they have never actually followed up on those threats. Like the parents of a naughty child that’s never disciplined the FEDS don’t get why their threats mean nothing.
Again—————-THE SCHOOLS WILL NOT DO IT. A friend told me in the future the only ones that will go to the public schools will be poor people or special ed. Its kind of sad but our future leaders are only taught how to shake hands, smile and sell. Turn a profit. and walk out to the next company. Thats our leaders also in the school system. There isn’t going to be much left after they get done with it.
sincerely,
mom of disabled child in mich that home schools