ED-RED

Honorable Members of the Education Funding Advisory Board: ED-RED* respectfully requests the following actions on the part of the Education Funding Advisory Board:     

• Renew the Continuing Appropriations Act     
• Increase the Foundation Level     
• Maintain Hold Harmless in the current formula     
• Identify poverty students using the most reliable count available     
• Provide assistance to every student in the poverty count     
• Increase Special Ed personnel reimbursement     
• Implement unified Special Ed formula to replace other categorical programs      
• Eliminate tax rate ceilings to provide flexibility within the tax cap     
• Recognize the substantial erosion of EAV/property value due to Property Tax Appeals Board decisions in Cook County 

 *ED-RED represents 104 suburban school districts, 2 special education joint agreements  and 2 Intermediate Service Centers, all located in Suburban Cook, DuPage and Lake  Counties. ED-RED Districts serve approximately 300,000 children. 

Special Education Funding

Why Change Is Needed 

Both federal and Illinois law mandate that special education be provided to students with disabilities. Approximately 13% of Illinois students receive some sort of special education services and the costs of these programs are having an increasing impact on Illinois school districts for several reasons:

•  The Illinois special education mandate exceeds federal requirements and prescribes maximum class sizes and teacher caseloads. Waivers of these regulations are not permitted and local boards of education have less control over the growth of special education costs. 
• Special education costs have grown significantly and are consuming a greater portion of district budgets. A recent national study reported that more than 38 percent of all new education dollars between 1967 and 1991 went to special education, while only 26 percent of new monies went to general education.
• The students receiving special education services have increasingly severe disabilities and the services they require are costing more. The Center on Special Education Finance estimates that special education costs 2.3 times more per student than regular education. For example, the annual cost of educating a child with a severe disability can often exceed $25,000. 

Personnel reimbursement is the largest source of state funding for special education. This program, defined in 5/14-13.01 of the School Code, provides $8,000 reimbursement for each full-time certified special education professional employed by a district and $2,800 or 50% of salary (whichever is less) for each non-certified employee. 

The primary difficulty with this formula results from the fact that it is based upon a flat, fixed rate.  Consequently, the formula has not kept pace with inflation and normal increases in teacher salaries and school districts have had to assume local responsibility for an ever increasing proportion of these costs. For example, in 1985, the $6000 reimbursement contributed approximately 32% of the $26,000 average teacher salary. In contrast, the average salary in FY96 was $40,900 and state reimbursement contributed only 20% of the cost. Despite steadily increasing personnel costs there has been no change in the reimbursement level since 1985 (see charts below). 

Proposed Changes

• Increase the level of Personnel Reimbursement to provide a greater proportion of actual costs.
• Support the proposed unified special education funding formula (HB558).  HB558 had been approved unanimously by the House and has strong bipartisan support.