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In New Hampshire, the education commissioner Frank Edelblut is proposing that a cut in special ed funding can be fixed with vouchers. 

Edelblut proposes reducing the state’s very modest Special Education Aid program by almost a third. Of course, spending on special education and related services won’t decrease by a third. They’re mandated by state laws that incorporate the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Someone has to pay for these costs and the only place to go will be to demand higher education taxes from local taxpayers in towns with very different abilities to pay. Raising $100,000 to make up for state funding cuts in Moultonborough where there is $14 million in property value to tax for each child will be a lot easier than finding this money in Pittsfield where there is less than $1 million in property value to tax. The state average is about $1.9 million. It’s just the math of our very broken school funding system.

But let’s put what Edelblut proposes to cut in perspective. NH spends about $915 million on special education and related services. Approximately, $50 million of this funding comes from the federal government through the US Department of Education. Another $100 million is funded by the state through two funding streams discussed below. Add in $14 million in Medicaid funding which is predominantly federal aid. This means the bulk of special ed funding, about $750 million, is already funded by local property taxes. Edelblut proposes adding $12 to $13 million to this burden.

NH has two funding streams related to special education. The first is called differentiated aid. It is a part of adequacy funding. For every child who qualifies for special education, the state adds $2100 to the $4100 it pays in base adequacy. Both base aid and differentiated aid are arbitrarily low numbers and are being challenged in our Rand School Funding Suit. The differentiated aid increments for special ed add up to about $61 million. The funding stream that Edelblut proposes to cut amounts to about $39 million, which he would cut to about $26 or $27 million. This funding stream, which used to be aptly named “Catastrophic Aid,” is only for the costliest special education students. It doesn’t contribute a single dollar until a district has spent more than $70,000 on a student and then the Edelblut regime nickels and dimes school districts on their reporting of qualifying expenses.

Edelblut’s claim that the vouchers can make up for the cut to special education is just plain bunk. One of the problems with vouchers is that the private schools don’t want children who need special education services. Charter schools also stick the traditional sending school districts with the bill for special ed services. When Edelblut pushed his fraudulent voucher scheme and landed one of the largest federal grants in the country to expand charter schools, the worry was that he was trying to dismantle public education by concentrating all the high-cost kids in the public schools. This includes children who live in poverty and children who qualify for special ed services. This is likely still the case and why his voucher alternative makes zero sense.

Read the full post here.