Legislative Bulletin
March 12, 2007
The House Education Committee spent this afternoon reviewing
a draft of the comprehensive bill that the Committee will approve before the
end of the day on Friday. The draft is
36 pages long, and it includes sweeping changes to
Here is a brief summary of the most significant features in the draft proposal.
· The bill in its present form would give unprecedented power to the Commissioner of Education to unilaterally, by December 1st of this year, re-draw school district lines by “creating supervisory districts out of some or all of the current supervisory unions or the current school districts within those supervisory unions.”
· An “Education Restructuring Commission,” consisting of legislators and gubernatorial appointees, would be established to “recommend to the General Assembly any changes necessary to implement the plan promulgated by the Commissioner.”
·
The Commission’s implementation plan would be
completed by
o the creation of “community councils” to “ensure community involvement with local school decisions;”
o provisions for weighted voting to ensure “equitable membership for all member municipalities on the new supervisory district school boards;
o provisions to “ensure that small schools would remain open through shared use of resources with other schools…that if a school is the only school located in a municipality, (it) will not be closed unless the municipality agrees…(and) ensure that if a municipality agrees to close a school within its borders (it will have) an option to purchase the building at no cost beyond the assumption of existing capital debt;”
o provide methods by which towns will address differences in education property tax rates;
o any statutory changes needed to address “transitional issues’ such as ownership of assets, capital and other debt, existing contracts with private entities and school employees, school choice, technical centers and pre-school programs.
·
The Commission would follow a process
established in the bill that would include at least six public hearings in the
summer and fall of 2007 and the issuance of its report by
Comment. This proposal vests
extraordinary authority in the Commissioner of Education. The draft bill contains no direct way for the
legislature to reject the Commissioner’s plan, and the Commission is not
scheduled to begin its work until the plan has been announced. In theory, the legislature could reject the
recommendations of the Commission, thereby making the Commissioner’s plan
inoperable, but the fact remains that the Commissioner would be given unilateral
authority to create new municipalities (school districts) and to dissolve
existing ones. The proposal also leaves
unanswered essential questions as to the status of “community councils,” the
entities that would replace current district school boards. If the councils are given significant
authority over the operations of local schools, they simply become school
boards (although possibly not elected) in another name. If they are given only insignificant
authority over local schools, the result is that the supervisory district
boards would have jurisdiction to make decisions that are currently made by
local school boards, thereby distancing decision making from local communities.
· The bill before the Committee this afternoon would change the current name of “excess spending,” the point beyond which a district is required to raise $2.00 for every $1.00 of needed spending, to “high spending,’ and would reduce the current threshold from 125% of statewide average district spending to 123% in FY’09 and 120% in FY’10.
· The Committee is discussing whether to exclude the portion of special education extraordinary expenses that exceeds $50,000 from the high spending computation.
Comment. Reducing the high spending threshold to 123% would affect 31 school districts using 2007 spending figures. Fifteen of those districts tuition all or a portion of their students to out-of-district schools. Reducing the threshold to 120% would affect 50 school districts, again using 2007 spending figures. Currently, eight districts are subject to the excess spending penalty. The Ways & Means Committee has proposed further threshold reductions. The Ways & Means Committee would reduce the threshold to 120% in FY’09 and 115% in FY’10. Using 2007 spending figures, eighty school districts would be affected by a reduction to 115%.
· The bill under review by the Committee would amend the current statute authorizing a special education fiscal review panel to allow the Commissioner of Education to require “high spending special education districts” to explain their special education cost structure and to develop remediation plans to address special education spending. Ultimately the Commissioner would be authorized to reduce a district’s special education reimbursements by 25% in each year that the Commissioner determines that the district has failed to make “satisfactory progress” on its remediation plan.
·
A “high spending special education district” is
defined as a district that spends at least 20% more than the statewide average
of special education eligible costs per
· The only appeal from the Commissioner’s determinations as to the identification as “high spending,” the adequacy of a district’s explanation of its spending, the sufficiency of a district’s remediation plan or satisfactory progress toward meeting the plan comes at the end of the process—when the Commissioner decides to reduce the district’s reimbursement.
Comment. The Committee appears to believe that the penalty phase of this proposal is not likely to ever be invoked. Nevertheless, this proposal introduces a punitive approach to “helping” districts that are already exposed to high special education costs. Reducing their reimbursements merely shifts more of an already unusual burden onto local tax payers.
· This portion of the draft before the Committee would establish a review team process for extraordinary special education reimbursements (those reimbursements provided for individual special education cases where the cost exceeds $50,000) similar to the review process now in place for residential placements.
· The extraordinary reimbursement review team would have the authority to advise school districts on alternatives to services provided in IEPs, assist school districts in locating alternative services, request new IEPs when the team believes “less costly alternatives are available” and offer mediation to resolve disputes related to “services recommended for a child with a disability.”
· The proposal also would authorize the Commissioner to initiate due process proceedings to challenge services included in IEPs when the review team believes “that less restrictive costly alternatives are both available and appropriate for (a) child with a disability.”
Comment. This proposal would significantly alter the IEP development process by inserting the Commissioner into the process at the early stages of planning by an IEP team.
· The draft bill would require all boards within a Supervisory Union to bargain jointly with all employee bargaining units in the S.U.
· The draft would require ratification of any negotiated agreement by each board separately. Failure to ratify would result in further negotiation between those boards and their employees only.
· Separate provisions as to pay or any other conditions of employment for individual school districts within bargaining unit could be incorporated into the S.U. agreement.
Comment. Supervisory Union-wide collective bargaining is the norm in several supervisory unions now. In those places, it works to the satisfaction of both boards and employees. This provision calls into question whether all school districts and supervisory unions should be required to bargain in this manner. Several places where supervisory union bargaining is not being utilized have made decisions to keep collective bargaining local and are satisfied with the local process.
· H.15, the statewide school calendar bill, has already passed the House and been sent to the Senate.
· The draft bill before the Education Committee this week includes the provisions of H.15.
· The bill would authorize the Commissioner of Education to establish a statewide school calendar with 175 student days and five professional development days in common.
· All schools would be required to adhere to the statewide calendar, but would be free to set other student or in-service days that do not conflict with the statewide schedule.
Comment. There has been no showing that a statewide calendar would produce cost-saving benefits.
· This part of the draft proposal would require the Department of Education to “develop a detailed proposal to integrate the financial management systems among all school districts in order to assist districts to share financial information with each other, with the public and with the department and to ensure that all districts consistently use uniform, high quality practices.”
· The proposal would include “a process by which schools can identify by code all services provided by the district that the Department and Agency of Human Services agree are human-services related.
· The draft bill establishes two study committees, one called the “Committee on Unfunded Fiscal, Reporting and Program Mandates,” and the other a “Study on Education Services Funded by Medicaid.”
·
Finally, the draft proposal would require the
Department of Education and Agency of Human Services to report to the
legislature by