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These are thrilling successes.
However, special education is expensive and becoming more so, and pointing that out is not a matter of taking sides.
Once the current budget was adopted and the school year began, there was no place to find funds for increasing costs of special education except from funds that otherwise would have been available for “the rest.” And indeed that is what has happened. Two additional teachers have been hired to serve increasing numbers of children identified as needing special education services, and two additional teachers’ aides have been hired for special education programs. Perhaps the administration should have anticipated these needs and put funds for these positions in the budget, but that was not done, and the funds have to come out of existing operating funds.
Schools have gone from being required to provide for the educable mentally retarded to the trainable mentally retarded to the custodial mentally retarded, often children who are not clearly aware of their surroundings. Schools are required to provide physical therapy and special furnishings for children unable to use conventional desks and chairs.
A new set of regulations will require the schools to monitor what happens to special education students over the summer and prov ide an extended school year for children who are unable to catch up in the first nine weeks of school to where they were when the former school year ended. Rappahannock schools have already provided such summer services in unusual circumstances. Now they will be required to establish a system to test each special education student to determine if summer services are needed.
It is interesting to speculate on how' some of these things became the responsibility of public schools. If, for example, physical therapy and special furnishings were considered medical needs rather than educational needs, then local taxpayers would not be responsible for the majority of the cost. But that speculation provides its own answer. The Federal Government has been able to require that these services be provided because the bulk of the cost is borne by local real estate taxes.
These regulations are the ultimate in unfunded mandates and not ones from which any relief is promised in the bills now being considered in Congress since they are covered by civil rights legislation.
These costs also mean that any comparison between what public schools are able to accomplish with their funds and what private schools or “charter schools” (or any school that is able to pick and choose which students to serve) accomplish with their funds is completely unfair.
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