Lawmakers on Monday recommended a $20 million increase in the program that reimburses schools for educating students with severe disabilities.
If enacted by the Legislature, the recommendation -- made during a joint meeting of the House and Senate Education committees -- would be phased in and triple the size of the so-called catastrophic fund by fiscal 2018, which will begin July 1, 2017.
There's currently $11 million a year placed in the fund, but it has about $30 million in eligible expenses. That leaves at least $19 million in unmet need, said Sen. Uvalde Lindsey, D-Fayetteville, who made the motion to recommend increasing funding.
"This is a really big step," he said in an interview. "The number of kids who qualify ... is almost three times as high. Funding has been flat. So what we've ended up doing is funding about a third of the demand."
The number of eligible students increased from 487 in the 2010-11 school year to 1,136 during the 2014-15 school year, according to a legislative report. Funding per student decreased from $22,587 to $9,565 during that period because the pool of money -- about $11 million a year -- went unchanged.
Lindsey has long been a proponent of the funding increase, saying the status quo was not adequate for students nor fair to their schools. He chaired the Legislative Task Force on the Best Practices for Special Education, which had also endorsed the funding increase during a July meeting.
The lack of funding means schools have had to dip into money meant for other needs to educate their neediest students, Lindsey said.
"Some of it comes from teacher salaries. They have not given raises. They have not given bonuses. They have not done other things," he said. "If you've got a kid that needs it, you're required" to provide for their needs.
"Not only that, but school boards, people want to take care of that kid the best they can. So they're spending local taxpayer dollars to care of -- and provide that kind of care -- to the detriment of the rest of the kids in the school district."
The recommendation will be put into the joint committee's next school funding adequacy report that also will address other monetary needs of general education. There was no audible dissent during the voice vote and little discussion.
The adequacy report is required by a series of Arkansas Supreme Court rulings that addressed inequities in funding public schools. It helps lawmakers determine how to spend more than $3 billion a year on public schools.
In the wake of the multiple legal challenges involving the Lake View School District, the state's Supreme Court found that Arkansas did not provide an equitable or adequate education to students. The education committees were charged with ensuring "equal educational opportunity for an adequate education," under Arkansas Code Annotated 10-3-2102.
Special education students are specifically included under that state law.
House Education Committee Chairman Rep. Bruce Cozart, R-Hot Springs, said the committee is due to vote on the full adequacy report by mid-October. The full Legislature must then vote on the report during the regular session that starts in January.
Information for this article was contributed by John Moritz of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Metro on 10/04/2016