With taxpayers covering $2 million in tuition and mediation costs for 29 students outplaced to 12 different schools — and $200,000 budgeted just for the lawyers — special education drew close scrutiny from the Board of Finance this year.
School officials explained and defended their approach to a budget area where disagreements with parents — often battled out with lawyers — make costs difficult to predict and contain.
Costs aren’t supposed to be the determining factor in the design of a program for a special needs student. But perhaps inevitably, school administrators are likely to have more awareness of budget implications than, say, a child’s parents.
And of 487 Ridgefield special education students this year, some 40 have tuition and additional costs of more than $100,000 each.
“I think of it as the Lexus or the Lamborghini,” school board member Chris Murray said at Monday night’s school board meeting.
“The laws are written in a very specific way. We’re required to do what’s reasonable … to benefit the child.”
No one, including finance board members, disputed that the special education program benefits many students — about 9% of Ridgefield public school students are in special education.
And none questioned that educating special needs students is of value not only to the kids and their families but also to society.
But the numbers keep going up. Total special education costs — about $11 million annually — are projected to rise by close to 6% this year to next. Within that, “tuition and mediations” are projected to increase more than 7%, and legal fees are budgeted to go up more than 11%.
“All the numbers are on the rise,” said finance board member Jessica Mancini.
“The numbers are rising, and the outplacements with the dollars. And the legal fees are rising.”
Mancini, who works with kids and talks to a lot of parents as the operator of a dance and fitness studio, had plenty of questions when school Superintendent Deborah Low and Assistant Superintendent of Special Services Karen Berasi led a delegation of school officials to a finance board meeting.
Are we doing enough?
Mancini wondered if the approach the school administration has long taken — trying to give as many special education students as possible what they need “in house” rather than “outplacing” them to special schools — is really working as it should.
“My question was, Are we doing enough for students, so they’re not suing for outplacements?” she said later.
At the finance board meeting, costs were the focus.
Special education represents about $11.4 million in Ridgefield’s more than $86-million proposed 2015-16 school budget.
Not all of that falls on town taxpayers. The town qualifies for “excess cost reimbursement” from the state when the expenses of educating an individual student run too high.
There’s a formula for figuring it out. Basically, the state takes the town’s systemwide average cost per student — $15,849 for Ridgefield this year — and multiplies that four and half times. Then, the state covers 70% of costs above that figure. Exactly what qualifies as an expense to be counted toward the total can vary.
Examples presented to the finance board showed one student with costs of $99,200; the town was due $19,511 back in excess cost reimbursement, leaving $79,689 for local taxpayers.
With services for another student costing $150,000, reimbursement was shown at $55,075, leaving $94,925 to town taxpayers.
Overall, excess cost reimbursements made up $2,257,000 of the 2013-14 special education budget, which totaled $11,370,000.
The year before, 2012-13, the excess cost reimbursements totaled $1,955,000 against a special education budget of $10,687,000.
About 9%
Enrollment in the Ridgefield schools is 5,162 in the current year, and is projected to decline to 5,054 for next year. The number of special education students, which generally runs about 9% of total enrollment, is projected to increase by just one, from 486 this year to 487 next year.
But the school officials made it clear to the finance board that the special education enrollment can increase at any time — due to new students moving to town, or to students already in the schools being recommended for special education services.
Students receiving special education services include students with autism, intellectual disabilities, or multiple disabilities, emotionally disturbed students, and students with mild to severe learning disabilities.
“Most of our kids are kids with moderate learning disabilities,” Berasi told the finance board.
The cost increases, school officials said, are driven not by rising enrollment but mostly by the increased level of services many student require — more students with multiple disabilities and complex needs.
In mid-January, of 487 Ridgefield special education students, there were 395 with tuition and additional costs that amount to less than $10,000 a year.
There were 52 students with tuition and additional costs of $40,000 to just under $99,999. (No students fell in the $10,000-to-$39,999 range.)
And 40 students have added costs of more than $100,000 a year. There were 35 students in the $100,000-to-$149,999 range, four between $150,000 and 199,999, and one with costs of more than $200,000 a year.
Free and appropriate
The law says everyone is entitled a “free and appropriate” education, the school officials said. The question of what’s “appropriate” can be the field of disagreement.
Today’s parents are less likely to simply accept what the schools recommend, and are more likely to push for increased services — sometimes including outplacements — than in the past.
“That has changed,” Berasi told the finance board. “People are more aggressive. People are more litigious.”
“And better informed,” Mancini said.
“And better informed” Berasi agreed.
Federal and state special education law gives parents the right to file for due process hearings, or mediation, to contest the recommendations of planning and placement teams, often called “PPTs,” that design an individual education plan, or “IEP,” for each special education student.
In due process proceedings, the “burden of proof” is on the school district to show the “student is receiving an appropriate program,” Berasi’s budget presentation said.
Outplacements can be costly, but sometimes they are what school officials recommend through the planning and placement process.
“Most of the student we outplace are emotionally disturbed students,” Berasi said.
Collaborative process
The process is designed to be collaborative, with parents, school officials, and consulting professionals all serving the goal of what is best for the child. But it can become adversarial.
Parents may have a different vision of what’s appropriate for their child than school administrators — who do have budgets to manage.
“If three hours of speech and language is enough to move a child forward, the parent says — may say — ‘I want five hours,’” Superintendent Low told the finance board.
Why?
“Some of it is ‘more equals better.’ Part of it is emotional: ‘Can’t you do more for my child?’ Some of it is advocates and lawyers saying, ‘Let’s try this …’” Low said.
Private special education schools interested in having students placed there, at taxpayer expense, may help parents make the case that what they offer is the appropriate education for a given student.
“You can go to them, and they have an attorney they recommend. They have educational consultants they recommend,” Berasi said.
Mancini wondered about the cases that end up in due process proceedings.
“If they’re coming in for mediation, they feel they’re not getting the services,” she said.
“We get back to ‘free and appropriate,’” Berasi said.
‘Lawyer to lawyer’
Finance board member Marty Heiser wanted to know how many “lawyer-to-lawyer” proceedings the school system had.
“There were about 20 last year,” Berasi said.
“How many did we win?” Heiser asked.
“It’s not winning,” Berasi replied.
Most disagreements over special education plans end in settlements reached before the case gets to a formal contested hearing.
“When we went to hearing, we went to three, and we won all three,” Berasi said.
She said the legal aspect of special education was indeed looming larger, with parents regularly coming to planning and placement team meetings with lawyers and educational experts as consultants.
The parents’ lawyers and other consultants question and contest the school system’s recommendations for a child’s education — the IEP. And that can lead to due process hearings — with lawyers and experts running up costs for both sides.
A chart in the special education budget presentation shows settlement agreement costs and related attorneys fees for each of the last four completed school years:
• 2010-11 — settlement agreement costs, $521,690; attorneys fees, $137,639.
• 2011-12 — settlement agreement costs, $325,394; attorneys fees, $166,283.
• 2012-13 — settlement agreement costs, $486,973; attorneys fees, $273,132.
• 2013-14 — settlement agreement costs, $547,173; attorneys fees, $258,936.
It used to be parents would turn to lawyers when they were unhappy and frustrated with the special education services the schools offered their children. Now lawyers are more routinely part of the process.
“Parents are bringing lawyers to PPTs,” Ms. Berasi said.
“In the last year we’re seeing families move to Ridgefield and their first PPT they’re bringing their attorney,” she said.
Services, costs
Mancini said the focus of concern shouldn’t be legal costs but rather the special education services students receive.
“Are we doing the best thing for the student?” she asked.
The majority of students aren’t outplaced, but receive special education services in the Ridgefield schools, with much of their day spent in regular “general education” classes and special education service often coming from a contractor agency that provides both help for students and training for teachers.
Mancini said she understood that the school system’s goal in this was to hold down outplacements by providing students what they need here in town.
“That was the theory,” school board member Murray agreed. “We’d bring the service in-house, and the need would go down.”
Mancini had doubts.
“What I’m hearing — I don’t have a child who’s in special ed — it’s a very one-size-fits-all program,” she said.
“You’re more inclined to hear the complaint than the success story,” Murray said.
Mancini said what she’d heard wasn’t all flattering to the school system.
“The attorneys say Ridgefield is one of the three hardest towns to get services in,” she said.
“The attorneys would say that,” Murray replied.
Low reminded the finance board that many parents in special education are satisfied with the district’s efforts.
“In the scheme of things, it’s a few cases,” Low said.
“The majority of our students, they’re getting appropriate services and they’re seeing progress in their child.”