May 23 2015

Senate Bill 267 (equitable funding formula across all school systems) was amended by the House Education Committee to allow the inequity to continue for one more year! 

 Act now to indicate your support for funding to be fair across schools so schools serving students with disabilities will receive the money to cover needed services.

• Do you want for your child's school to have the money necessary to support the services your child needs to succeed?

• Do you want to make sure charter schools serve a fair share of students with disabilities? 

• Do you want the inequity to stop now? 

• Let your Representative know if you want to see Louisiana schools receive their fair share of funds.

• Let them know if you want this inequity to be corrected immediately or if we should continue to pad school system budgets with money needed to serve students with disabilities in other schools.

• Get friends and other advocates to join LaTEACH! www.lateach.org.Stay up to date by 'liking' LaTEACH on Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/LaTEACH?ref=hl

Contact your state representative to let them know how you feel about these issues.

What is the Inequity?

• Most charter schools (Type II) receive 'extra' money that should be provided to traditional public schools for services needed by students with disabilities.
• Almost every traditional public school system in Louisiana is losing money, millions of dollars, that is designed to cover the costs of services for students with disabilities.  The funds for students with disabilities are sent to charter schools that do not have an adequate number of students with disabilities enrolled to justify receiving those funds.

How is this happening?

• Charter schools tend to not serve a fair share of students with disabilities and the Department of Education is not distributing dollars in accordance with the Minimum Foundation Program (MFP).

During the debate in House Education, Representative Walt Leger introduced an amendment to delay the implementation of an equitable funding formula for one year. The Louisiana Department of Education provided data clearly illustrating exactly how much money most charter schools are receiving for not serving students with disabilities.

LaTEACH members and Senator Dan Claitor expressed concerns to members of House Education that delaying equity is not only unfair and unjust to students with disabilities but also a clear violation of the Louisiana Constitution. 

Click Here to watch the debate which begins at the 1 hour 13 minute mark. The debate on the amendment begins at the 2 hour and 38 minute mark.

Superintendent Doris Voiter, St. Bernard Parish, explained it well.  

"We (traditional public school systems) have been faced with a situation that we have been underfunded for our weighted pupil memberships, whether it be special education, career tech and all of these weights for quite a long time.  This (delay) would exasperate this situation. If the Legislature will make it clear that the MFP will be funded appropropriately, in accordance with student weights, ... schools will know how to adjust before next year." 

• Charter schools were created to serve students at risk - including students with disabilities.
   
• "How do School Leaders Respond to Competition?  Evidence from New Orleans" reveals that one third of charter school administrators readily admit they recruit and screen students - even though screening and selection practices are not (technically) permitted. Some statements of education leaders in the report are telling of how students with disabilities are viewed:
• "Choice is competition, by the way, for students."
• "Every kid is money."
• "We all want our numbers up so we can get more money, more funding."
   
• Charter schools receive (MFP) funds associated with students with disabilities regardless of whether any students with disabilities are enrolled in the charter school.  SB267 would ensure that funds associated with each student with a disability goes to the school that actually serves the student.

Why does the money not necessarily follow the right students?

The Minimum Foundation Program, or MFP, is the formula for how elementary and high schools get their piece of $3,500,000,000 - that is 3.5 Billion dollars.  While the formula is complex, the concept of how the formula creates inequities across schools is simple.  Relative to the amount provided for students without disabilities, each student identified with a disability in a traditional public school system brings in 2.5 times as many dollars as a child without a disability.   The amount of money taken from traditional public schools and provided to charter schools run by BESE and other school choice programs is determined by a different formula - an average amount of money which is the same amount for every student -regardless if the student has a disability or not.
 

When there is an imbalance of students with varying levels of need across traditional and certain charter schools or choice programs, whichever school has more than their share of students with needs that cost more is not receiving the funding necessary to cover the costs of the services for the students in their school.

adequate resources are provided to schools based on student need and there should not be financial incentives for schools to avoid serving students with more needs.

Which school systems are not getting adequate funds to serve the students in their schools?

Typically, the imbalance works against the traditional public school system because it does not receive its fair share of funding; however, the funding inequity can work both ways.  A charter school wishing to serve a student with a disability may not be receiving an adequate amount of funds needed to provide services to that student.  Parents should not have to wonder whether the school received the right amount of funds to serve their student.

To understand the funding imbalance between traditional and charter schools click the link to watch the webinar:  Louisiana Accountability and Funding Systems:  Impact on Students with Disabilities