New Hampshire Lawmakers Seek More Special Ed Funding
WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 – Three decades ago, Congress approved landmark legislation aimed at improving the educational opportunities for children with disabilities. But the law has never been funded to the level originally promised.
Now, the members of New Hampshire’s congressional delegation are pushing for Congress to finally fully fund the program.
The 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act promised that 40 percent of the additional cost of educating these students would come from federal funding. However the federal government has never funded more than 18 percent of the total cost in the 30 years since the act was passed. And from 1975 until 1995 the funding level actually hovered under six percent.
“There is no program that impacts local school districts more than the cost of special education,” Congressman Charles Bass (R- N.H.), a long time advocate of increased federal funding for special education, said Tuesday. “This authorization mandate, passed so many years ago in Congress, is still valid and needs to be met — the promise needs to be kept. If there ever was an unfunded mandate that has not been met it is this one in terms of both its cost as well as its importance.”
Jamie Hopkins, the president-elect of Council for Exceptional Children, an international organization focused on improving education for students with disabilities, recently met with members of the House to discuss her concerns over the current low levels of federal funding for special education.
“It continues to put a great burden on school districts that end up having to take funds away from students in general education in order to pay for special education and that’s very frustrating. Some children are missing out on what they need,” Hopkins said Thursday. “It’s really becoming very stressful to get the money in order to educate our kids.”
Local school districts in New Hampshire have been forced to shoulder much more than the 60 percent promised in 1975. Bass reintroduced legislation on June 30 to fully fund special education and ensure that the federal government would be paying the full 40 percent by 2011. The bill would mandate annual increases in the funding so that the federal government would have to meet its promise to local school districts.
“That would certainly have a significant impact on every school district in the state,” Bass said Tuesday.
Under the leadership of Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who then chaired the Senate education committee, Congress reauthorized the program in 2004, overhauling it and promising full funding by 2011. But even with the new legislation Bass believes that his additional bill will be necessary to get full funding by 2011.
“I have doubts that Congress will ever make that 40 percent number — it’s an elusive goal. The bill essentially sets a guaranteed schedule or plan to meet that goal,” Bass said Thursday in reference to his June 30 bill.
Senators John Sununu (R- N.H.) and Gregg have both supported funding for the program in New Hampshire. Sununu, who served three terms in the House before being elected to the Senate, has played an integral role in funding increases from $2 billion in Fiscal Year 1997 to approximately $10.5 billion in Fiscal Year 2005 for the program, also known as IDEA..
“There is no greater priority for New Hampshire’s schools than to fully fund the federal share of IDEA, and I will continue the fight to ensure Congress fulfills the commitment it made nearly 30 years ago,” Sununu said in a press release Thursday. “When full federal funding of IDEA is achieved, local communities will once again be in the position to utilize critical local resources on important initiatives such as structural improvements to schools, technology upgrades, or to hire new teachers, rather than paying for the federal government’s share of special education costs.”
While there has been significant improvement, it is currently projected that the federal funding for special education for next year will not be more than 18.6 percent, not even half of what was promised in 1975.
“I know there are a lot of needs right now and Congress is really being pulled in many different directions as far as even helping pay for the victims of the hurricanes, but at the same time we’re not talking about legislation that was passed just a couple of years ago,” the Council for Exceptional Children’s Hopkins said . “We’ve been going on for 30 years like this.”
