Bass Helps Write Special Ed Funding Plan in House-Passed Budget
WASHINGTON, March 27–New Hampshire is in line for an increase of more than $4 million for special education programs next year and much more than that in later years under the budget resolution the House approved last week.
Rep. Charles Bass (R-NH), a member of the Budget Committee, played a key role in writing a provision that would ensure that the federal government, by 2012, fulfills its decades-old promise to pay 40 percent of state special education costs.
The proposed budget would provide a $1 billion increase for next year and annual increases over the next nine years that would bring the federal share up to the 40 percent level the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandated. The budget resolution would also change special education financing from discretionary to mandatory, thus freeing it from the unpredictability of the annual budget process.
The House-passed budget resolution would give New Hampshire $36.87 million next year for special education, a $4.32 million increase over current federal funds.
“This money is in a reserve fund, which can only be used for special education,” Bass said on Wednesday from his district office.
IDEA calls for all public schools to provide special-needs students under 21 with an appropriate education. This year, however, Washington is contributing only about 17 percent of the cost. Even that is a considerable change; as recently as 1996, the federal government contributed only 5 percent.
For the past 27 years, schools in New Hampshire and around the country have been grappling with the huge costs and sometimes bureaucratic and counter-productive processes educators must follow under IDEA.
Bass authored the provision that would authorize the Education and the Workforce Committee to set the annual spending level. He said he worked with Rep. John Sununu (R-NH), the Budget Committee’s vice chairman, in garnering support for IDEA.
“I wouldn’t say that it was all that high on the budget list in the past,” Bass said. “But visibility is very high now. Advocacy groups have effectively communicated how important this is to Congress.”
Bass said he and the other members of the New Hampshire delegation have been especially strong advocates because of the high level of awareness of the subject among Granite Staters. “Constituents, parents, community groups, school boards and principals have all relayed to me how important fully funding IDEA is,” he said. “In other parts of the country where education is funded differently than New Hampshire, there is less awareness of the lack of federal funding in the education budget.”
Last week, for example, students and parents from Merrimack and Concord joined others from around the country at a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on reauthorizing IDEA, cramming the hallway outside the committee room hours before proceedings began. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) is the senior Republican on the committee and will play a part in reauthorizing IDEA, probably this summer.
Published in The Union Leader, in Manchester, New Hampshire
