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5 BEFORE THE WYOMING STATE LEGISLATURE
6 JOINT EDUCATION COMMITTEE
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9 JOINT EDUCATION COMMITTEE PROCEEDINGS
Volume I
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8:30 a.m., Monday
11 December 16, 2002
Cheyenne, Wyoming
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1 P R O C E E D I N G S
2 (Meeting proceedings commenced
3 8:30 a.m., December 16, 2002.)
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: Committee, I would like to
5 call the meeting to order. Our recorder is here and our
6 plan for the day is to go through the new agenda pieces
7 this morning and break for lunch and then come back and
8 take up the continuation of the agenda this afternoon
9 until 4:00 p.m., at which time we will break to attend
10 Superintendent Catchpole's event, which is in the Hathaway
11 Building.
12 And then we will begin the agenda tomorrow
13 morning to finish up the other pieces. And I guess we'll
14 just see how far we get, not knowing the amount of
15 discussion.
16 Welcome, Marlene. I do have the pleasure of
17 telling you that some of our new committee members, those
18 appointments have been made for the upcoming session and
19 we do have some in attendance.
20 Senator Jim Anderson will be moving to
21 Education. With his background, we're very pleased.
22 Representative Gentile will be moving to the
23 House piece, and Chairman Wasserberger will be doing the
24 House piece.
25 Is there anyone else in the process of trying to
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1 get our agenda together that I've missed?
2 Superintendent Blankenship, you are in the
3 corner there. Okay, thank you. Welcome.
4 Committee, I don't think there are any other
5 points that we need to discuss. Today and tomorrow will
6 most likely be our last days for preparing our legislation
7 for the upcoming session that will go forward to the new
8 committee.
9 And with that, I need to ask for the approval of
10 the minutes that have been circulated. Could I have a
11 motion?
12 COCHAIR STAFFORD: So moved.
13 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Second.
14 COCHAIR DEVIN: It has been moved and
15 seconded that the minutes from November 22nd be approved.
16 All in favor, aye.
17 With that we have Dr. Tom Parrish and Dr. Jim
18 Smith who are going to bring us the additional information
19 on special education. And I know it is extremely
20 difficult to do what you've done in four hours with us,
21 probably, on a thumbnail sketch, but we do have some
22 committee members who haven't had an opportunity to be
23 here because of other circumstances, and then we've got
24 new committee members that you just heard introduced, so I
25 think it would be helpful if you could at least give us
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1 the skeletal framework and the significant supporting
2 documentation to the cost work that you will be looking at
3 today, if that would work for you.
4 If you want to come forward.
5 Is there anyone here from the Department, if we
6 do have questions?
7 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and Committee
8 Members, good morning.
9 I will try to recapitulate a year's work in
10 about five minutes, and then I'm sure there will be
11 questions and I'll be happy to answer them as best I can.
12 This study did begin about a year ago. I'm Tom
13 Parrish, by the way, and I'm from the American Institutes
14 for Research. And we took on a study with three purposes.
15 The first purpose was to develop an independent
16 measure of expenditures on special education in Wyoming.
17 And Wyoming has a pretty good handle on how much you spend
18 on special ed because of your 100 percent reimbursement
19 system; however, certain things are counted in certain
20 ways that are a little different than what other states do
21 and many other states do not have a good handle on what
22 they spend on special education.
23 It just so happened that the Wyoming study of
24 expenditures was occurring at the same time that similar
25 studies were occurring over ten other states and also a
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1 national study. This was the first national study
2 estimating expenditures on special education since about
3 1985-'86. So these data really have not been available
4 for quite a long time to be able to take a snapshot of
5 Wyoming and compare it to the nation and to ten other
6 states, using the exact same approach and methodology. So
7 that was one objective of the study.
8 A second objective of the study, then, was to
9 attempt to determine adequate appropriations or funding or
10 resources for the Commission of special education within
11 the context of Wyoming. It is important to keep in mind
12 that these are subjective determinations. There is no way
13 to objectively determine exactly what delivery systems are
14 required for the population.
15 We did use a professional judgment model. We
16 had a committee that worked very hard with us to assist
17 us. But ultimately the determination of the standards of
18 adequacy were derived by the study team. We used a large
19 portion of the input of the committee. We also looked to
20 all of the other information that we could find wherever
21 we could find it about what was adequate, appropriate,
22 recommended under the guise of special education
23 provision.
24 So we looked at what Wyoming was actually doing,
25 we looked at what other states were doing, we looked at
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1 data from our national study, we looked at professional
2 recommendations from groups such as national speech
3 therapists groups and so on.
4 There's not as much out there as one would like
5 in the area of special education, but I think Wyoming is
6 on the cutting edge in the sense that they're starting to
7 ask the question not only what are we spending but what
8 should we be spending. I think other states will be
9 following that lead because I think that is ultimately the
10 direction in which we have to go.
11 A third component of the study was to make
12 recommendations about how the resource standards developed
13 through the definition of the adequacy, which was the
14 second component of study. And we were to cost those out,
15 get a dollar estimate of cost of that adequacy and what
16 recommendations could we make about how that would be
17 funded or how that would develop into a funding model for
18 the state. So those were the three components of the
19 study.
20 I really wasn't prepared to totally summarize
21 the findings, but I will give you kind of a thumbnail
22 sketch of what I remember to be the salient points and we
23 can move to where we are in terms of specific
24 recommendations today.
25 The most salient points, as I remember them --
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1 and I'm sure I'm going to miss a few, but one was there
2 were concerns expressed under the 100 percent
3 reimbursement that we might see a huge incentive, to, A,
4 place students in special education in Wyoming; and B, to
5 sort of pad the services that they receive. 100 percent
6 reimbursement could be seen as a blank check and there
7 were certainly concerns about the potential for abuse
8 under that type of system.
9 So we did look and were asked to look at
10 expenditure patterns and identification patterns
11 historically in the state and as compared to other
12 neighboring states and the nation.
13 Having done this, we concluded that there was
14 little evidence to suggest, A, runaway identification,
15 runaway spending, or extensive abuse under the system.
16 Wyoming's identification rate has risen somewhat
17 faster than the nation over the last five or six years,
18 but at the end of that period the overall identification
19 rate of students, in other words, the percentage of total
20 students in special ed is pretty close to the national
21 average.
22 Spending, as best again we could estimate it --
23 we only had data we had 100 percent confidence in in the
24 year that we actually collected it, but using the best
25 data available to try to assess what occurred over time,
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1 it did not appear that we see runaway increases in
2 spending.
3 However, it did appear that we see spending, as
4 best as we could indicate, that was faster than it
5 occurred at the national average. And at the end of the
6 day we did find that in Wyoming the identification rate is
7 somewhat higher than the neighboring states but relatively
8 commensurate with the nation, and spending was higher on
9 average than the neighboring states as well as the nation.
10 I think we saw that spending was something like
11 about, for special ed students, 15 percent higher than the
12 national average, while spending on general ed students
13 was something like 5 percent higher than the national
14 average. So there is some sense that spending is somewhat
15 higher, but again, no clear evidence, at least, of runaway
16 spending or inflation.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: Dr. Parrish, at that point
18 in our notes in the presentation you had -- and I know
19 I've sort of sprung this on you -- but you had presented
20 last time that our spending is 17 percent higher. Is that
21 still --
22 DR. PARRISH: That hasn't --
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: That our identification
24 rate was 5 percent higher were the two figures I had down.
25 DR. PARRISH: Than the national average?
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1 So I would still stand by that. I don't have that with
2 me. But again, the national rate was pretty close, so
3 you're probably talking about 12.1 as opposed to 12 which
4 would be 5 percent higher, but still pretty close to the
5 national average.
6 But the spending at 17 percent higher would
7 be -- and that was relatively new news. We didn't really
8 know that until we were able to do our independent
9 assessment of spending in Wyoming and be able to relate
10 that to the national average which became -- those data
11 weren't available until the very end of the study because
12 we were analyzing that information right up to the last
13 point.
14 Other things that we found, because one of the
15 issues as a study team was to consider the viability and
16 desirability from our perspective of continuing the 100
17 percent funding formula in Wyoming, our recommendation was
18 that the State not continue the 100 percent funding
19 formula.
20 And there were a couple of reasons for that.
21 One reason was just the viability of perpetuating that
22 into the future. But I think that probably the most
23 pressing concern from the perspective of the study team
24 was the rather large variation in identification rates and
25 in spending and services provided in districts throughout
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1 the state of Wyoming. So that when we think about
2 adequate provision of services, we believe that those
3 adequate services should be provided and be made available
4 to all students according to their needs, and irrespective
5 of their zip code.
6 And so when we saw districts that ranged in
7 variation from something like 28 to 29 percent
8 identification rates to more like 6 or 7 percent
9 identification rates, average spending per student that
10 was twice in some districts to what it was in others, some
11 districts where virtually all students receive, at least
12 the data indicated, speech therapy and other districts in
13 which virtually no one, for example, received speech
14 therapy, we saw wide swings in the levels of service being
15 provided that we felt were not within the context of what
16 we would consider adequate and appropriate guarantees for
17 all students, as I said, irrespective of their zip code.
18 So those concerns led us to recommend that a
19 cost-based funding model, resource model and funding model
20 be implemented that we felt over time would provide much
21 more even levels of services for students throughout the
22 state.
23 At the same time, we recommended strengthening
24 the regional provision of services. We did not recommend
25 that we go from district-based to totally regional-based
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1 at all. It is not something that has to be dramatic and
2 occur in year one, but over time we felt that it was
3 important that we see much more district collaboration,
4 the regional provision of services, regional management of
5 scarce resources, regional treatment of low-incidence
6 students such as, for example, deaf or blind or very
7 severe students that may find themself in very small
8 districts, that increased regionalization would be
9 important.
10 We also felt that to -- whether or not the State
11 decides to adopt the resource guidelines underlying our
12 funding provisions or not, we still felt that those
13 resource guidelines would be important standards of
14 service to help communication between the state department
15 and its monitoring and looking at districts in terms of
16 what they're actually doing, to be able to talk about what
17 is appropriate and what is adequate for students.
18 However, the staff of the state department
19 seemed so meager in its ability to really go out and look
20 at what districts were doing that we recommended a
21 bolstering of state staff to be able to monitor and work
22 with districts in a way to implement regional services,
23 monitor what was going on, and provide technical support
24 for things like low-incidence disabilities.
25 Another provision that we felt was very
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1 important and that needed to go part and parcel with the
2 recommendations toward a cost-based funding system is the
3 importance of a contingency fund. In other words, our
4 recommendation was moving to a much more, we felt,
5 evenhanded, equitable and adequate, as defined, provision
6 of services for all districts across the state.
7 However, because the funding is based primarily
8 on the total enrollment of districts, very small districts
9 could incur costs that could be substantially beyond what
10 the cost-based model would predict. So the cost-based
11 model works best the larger the district and the greater
12 the scale. And we all know, there's some very small
13 districts in Wyoming, but even for large districts,
14 circumstances that can happen that we would consider
15 somewhat unusual and would drive cost, for example, in a
16 single year well beyond what the cost-based model would
17 provide.
18 So we felt that a contingency fund was an
19 essential complement to this cost-based model, so we
20 recommended a contingency fund of about $2 million to
21 which districts could apply in circumstances of unusual
22 cost. And we felt that unusual cost could occur from at
23 least three circumstances.
24 One might be identification rates that are much
25 higher than what the model predicts. Now, keep in mind,
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1 districts need to be able to make the case and to justify
2 that if they're identifying something like 20 percent of
3 their kids as special ed, they need to be able to
4 demonstrate that this is something that is truly their
5 incidence rate.
6 A second reason might be some -- a few
7 particularly high-cost students, and again, those cases
8 would have to be demonstrated.
9 A third case that we thought of -- and there
10 certainly could be others -- is that we know that there
11 are a number of districts in the state that have attempted
12 to hire therapists who are in very short supply, not only
13 in Wyoming but across the nation and they sometimes have
14 to pay on an annualized basis perhaps 100, $120,000 a year
15 for these therapists. And that ought to be a situation
16 where they can apply to the contingency fund for relief.
17 The State through the bolstered efforts will
18 work with the districts over time to allow them to find
19 more efficient ways to provide these services, but until
20 that's resolved that should be another reason why
21 districts could apply to the contingency fund. Awards of
22 that fund could be based on state department evaluation,
23 could be based on evaluation of peers, in other words,
24 directors from other districts. States have done it in a
25 variety of ways, but most states have a contingency fund
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1 of the type we've recommended.
2 If you stay with 100 percent reimbursement, it
3 wouldn't be necessary because, arguably, districts could
4 claim whatever they're spending.
5 I think I'll stop for a moment and that kind of
6 brings us up to the present and where we are now. I went
7 over a lot in a hurry and may have skipped a few things.
8 I don't know if you want to pause to see if there are --
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: Committee, are there
10 questions of that review?
11 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman.
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative McOmie.
13 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: In Wyoming we have
14 the developmentally disabled preschools and they're
15 mandated to take in a lot of these children. They all
16 have EIPs -- IEPs -- I always get that wrong -- and they
17 have quite an impact on the schools. Did you measure in
18 your study any of that that's occurring? They're growing
19 in leaps and bounds. These children are coming into this
20 system and we're constantly underfunding because they're
21 done through the Department of Health and not through the
22 Department of Education.
23 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman,
24 Representative McOmie, this is a provision under federal
25 law, increased identification of preschool and infants and
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1 toddlers as well, in fact, and you're quite correct, not
2 only in Wyoming but nationally this is by far the fastest
3 growing population simply because, arguably, it has been
4 substantially underserved in the past and there's been new
5 federal legislation to bolster the identification of those
6 students.
7 So we think that's a national phenomenon. We
8 did not look at it that it would affect one district
9 uniquely in relation to another. But when we did compare
10 what's going on in Wyoming to the nation and other states,
11 the same phenomenon is occurring nationally.
12 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman.
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Sessions and then
14 Representative Lockhart.
15 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, I have
16 a question on a regionalization concept, and maybe the
17 Casper people could answer this. You referenced the blind
18 and deaf students. I do believe we regionalized here a
19 long time ago and we had the schools in Casper, the deaf
20 and blind school in Casper, which from my understanding
21 was an abysmal failure because with our distances in our
22 state, students were having to come and stay and the
23 effect on those students away from their families and the
24 distances traveled was detrimental.
25 So I don't know, you know. I agree, you know --
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1 so you've got a thing here in this state, I don't know how
2 you would -- unless you traveled -- unless your
3 specialists travel, and yet, you know, we -- in looking at
4 all the -- of the state, I look at -- and I've looked
5 carefully and different areas in the state where your
6 specialists can travel, and it is still a real problem.
7 The windshield time, as we call it in the legislature, is
8 just phenomenal for specialists.
9 And I don't know what the answer is. I think
10 school districts have struggled with this, communities
11 have struggled with it for a long time.
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: We did have a bit of
13 discussion last session of this and just one thing I do
14 want to make clear, that was a misconception by some of
15 the individuals there is that it is not the intent that
16 students would have to travel and be somewhere but it is
17 the intent that on a regional basis we develop some of the
18 personnel and the support that is not there now to
19 actually get the adequacy of services to some of these
20 areas and to get it there cooperatively to reduce that
21 burden.
22 But I think there was that misperception that we
23 would be moving students and that is not the case or the
24 recommendation, but you may want to elaborate on that.
25 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and Senator
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1 Sessions, I'm glad you raised that point. We would really
2 like the strong -- sometimes regionalization is
3 misconstrued or associated with practices of the past that
4 we would not want to be associated with. I'm not going to
5 say that it never makes sense to bring kids together for
6 services of that type. For example, especially for the
7 deaf community it is sometimes argued that you need a
8 certain critical mass of other children with whom they can
9 communicate. So we're not going to take a position on
10 that. I think the State needs to determine that.
11 But generally the notion of least restrictive
12 environment we feel should apply. Our recommendation is
13 not to move to vast regionalization where children would
14 be moved large distances and kept from families in other
15 communities. That's not what we would like to see. We
16 would like to see a district with a hundred kids who has a
17 very involved child not be out there on their own trying
18 to figure out how to meet the complex needs of that child.
19 At the very least, consultative services should
20 be available on a regional and state basis. So that
21 district is not there on its own. That works within the
22 spirit of least restrictive environment for the best
23 interests of that child is what we had in mind.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: You had a follow-up.
25 SENATOR SESSIONS: This is on a different
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1 concept, and I have harped on this myself. And I wondered
2 when they did the averaging they've done here, if you
3 considered this. When we were discussing with Mr. Smith a
4 long time ago on averages -- I took the number of children
5 in our districts. We have two segments in our state. We
6 have very few medium-sized schools. We have large areas
7 of attendance and we have small areas of attendance. And
8 I'm wondering, did you break those costs out? Did you
9 divide those districts and did you break the costs out for
10 your large districts and the costs out for your small
11 districts?
12 Just running down this list, you know, I see
13 where you -- where the averaging does not -- I mean, you
14 know, when we lump everything in Wyoming together, the
15 averaging does not give a true picture of actually what
16 the costs are in the various segments of our schools.
17 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and Senator
18 Sessions, we did take scale into consideration. I think
19 this is the first meeting in which our printout actually
20 hasn't been organized by size. Of course, even that
21 wouldn't tell you whether or not we accounted for size in
22 the model, but we did. We did in two ways. We looked --
23 we did not attempt to make an evaluation about whether
24 small schools and small districts were necessarily small,
25 so I know in the past Dr. Smith and the MAP model may have
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1 looked at or may not, I don't know, the extent --
2 sometimes it is an issue, are you small because you're
3 remote and you need to be small or are you small because
4 you've chosen to be small.
5 And sometimes the implication is whether the
6 State wants to fund the diseconomies of small scale are
7 dependent whether you're small by choice. We assumed that
8 everybody was small because of remoteness.
9 Now, the itinerant or windshield time services
10 were specifically differentiated for what we identified as
11 remote locations, and we went through kind of a long set
12 of procedures to try to identify who was remote and who
13 wasn't and how we would define that. So more resources
14 were poured into remote schools, whether in big or small
15 districts, but small districts would be more likely to
16 have them, I think.
17 The second thing we did was differentiated
18 pretty considerably so that would affect services and we
19 also differentiated fairly considerably in terms of the
20 administrative component based on scale.
21 So we were able to pump considerably more
22 administrative resources sort of per capita in the very
23 small schools than in the large ones for that exact
24 reason.
25 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, just a
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1 comment -- and I understand -- I can see that from here.
2 But when you say average, when they say the average cost
3 is this in the state, the average cost is this, then you
4 get a different picture. And that's the sound bytes that
5 the public and the majority of the legislature pick up on.
6 And my contention in this whole battle of school funding
7 has been we've got to recognize that we have real
8 variabilities in these schools. We are not like our
9 surrounding states with huge attendance centers, you know.
10 And I just -- I don't know how many times I've
11 said this. Anyway, I won't say any more. I'm saying when
12 you lump everything together in averages, that is not the
13 correct picture of what our states are.
14 When I take Laramie 1, we educate students for
15 far less than Utah, North Dakota, Colorado, whatever per
16 student in my district alone. And I look at the special
17 ed costs, here again are less. So I guess I have a real
18 problem with this throwing out statewide averages, in this
19 state particularly. And I won't say any more.
20 COCHAIR DEVIN: I think Representative
21 Lockhart was next.
22 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Dr. Parrish, I
23 think at the very onset you spoke of looking at the costs
24 to see whether they were out of line and you did say that
25 there was a fairly significant increase in the last few
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1 years.
2 I am under the impression that we've done some
3 pretty good improvements on teacher salaries, at least
4 moneies directed toward salaries for the teaching
5 community, and that's really been greater in the last
6 couple years. Was that encompassed in that look at that?
7 Were you familiar with some of the things we've done in
8 the last few years to increase wages?
9 Because most of the special ed -- a lot of
10 special ed cost is manpower and we had that significant
11 effort the last few years.
12 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and
13 Representative Lockhart, we didn't specifically look at
14 change in salary over time. We did look at changes in
15 total expenditure over time and then the year in which we
16 did our analysis, which would have been the last school
17 year, I believe, could be one reason why Wyoming then
18 suddenly looked to get higher in relation to the national
19 average in special ed spending when in the past we've sort
20 of had the impression it wasn't higher. It could be sort
21 of because of that recent increases in salaries. It would
22 have been reflected because in the salary analysis we used
23 it was a fairly recent snapshot, but we did not analyze
24 over time changes in salary.
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: A couple of things in the
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1 review. You recommended a six-year phase-in; is that
2 correct?
3 DR. PARRISH: Well, we did. We've been --
4 Madam Chairman, we've been a little inconsistent on our
5 recommendation and I'll just mention that. I think at one
6 time we had 12 years. We moved to six years. We've now
7 in our latest -- what we're presenting you today, this
8 suggests two years. And we will talk -- I can explain why
9 I think we've changed that.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: You can do that later so I
11 won't take you off of track of your presentation again.
12 Representative Simons.
13 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: I have to agree
14 with Kathryn. Wyoming is a unique place, we've got Crook
15 County and Weston County and Niobrara County. Those
16 children have nowhere else to go without being bused 80,
17 90 miles. It is small schools that are there.
18 It is very costly for the special education. We
19 have a bus that goes from Crook County over to Gillette
20 and takes the older students out of high school now over
21 there for rehab training and for things like that. They
22 go every day and that's a big cost to our small district
23 to have to go clear to Campbell County to get that done,
24 but we do it because that's in the best interests of our
25 special ed students.
23
1 The MAP model and all of this stuff is -- the
2 way we've been doing it is what keeps putting us in a
3 problem with funding small schools. I have to agree with
4 Kathryn.
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
6 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, question
7 with regard to variation. As I remember looking at the
8 numbers last time, the -- when you look at the size of the
9 district, the variations in special ed spending were much
10 greater among the smaller districts than they were in the
11 larger districts, suggesting to me that some of what we
12 were seeing was simply random variation depending on the
13 severity of the kids which you would expect with the small
14 size of some of our districts.
15 Could I get you to comment on that?
16 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, Senator
17 Scott, discuss -- because it is all in the same vein
18 here -- first of all, in terms of recognizing smallness
19 and scale and referring back, Senator Scott, to the
20 numbers that you looked at, we tried to understand the
21 considerable degree of expenditure we saw, so not what's
22 in our cost model where we did attempt to account for
23 small schools, because we do believe that small situations
24 do have diseconomies, do have higher cost, in the cost
25 model we attempt to account for that, let's look and see
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1 what is actually occurring under expenditures, which is
2 the question that I think Senator Scott is raising.
3 And what we found is the variation we saw on
4 actual expenditure really didn't represent what we think
5 we believe which is that smaller schools cost more.
6 Smaller schools aren't necessarily spending or getting
7 more under sort of the freedom to spend what you will, 100
8 percent reimbursement system. We saw some relation
9 between size and cost, but not -- true expenditure, that
10 is, but not much. I would argue that the cost model
11 actually does better for small situations than sort of the
12 old expenditure system.
13 To what degree is that likely to be a variation
14 in sort of random variation in incidence of students? I
15 think certainly that's a component. My own professional
16 judgment would be having looked at this over a number of
17 years, these issues, is that there is a combination of
18 factors. When we see one district that's at 28 percent,
19 another at 12, one spending twice as much as another,
20 you're right, it is more likely to occur in very small
21 situations.
22 And my own interpretation of it, again having
23 looked at it, would be it is a combination, a variation in
24 true incidence. In other words, if we would really look
25 through independent assessment at kids of both districts,
25
1 we probably could see that some districts are more
2 impacted than others and it is also an artifact of the
3 variation in local interpretation of law and subjective
4 judgment.
5 Exactly where that continuum leans in one way or
6 another, you almost have to look district by district, I
7 think, to make a determination. But I do question when I
8 see two districts of very like circumstances -- and I can
9 understand in a few-year period how that one district
10 might have a certain set of families with children with
11 certain severe disabilities that would create higher
12 expenditures over a certain period of time that's fairly
13 well defined.
14 When I see that over a large period of time of
15 28 percent identification as opposed to 14, for example,
16 then I have to wonder about the extent to which it is
17 subjective as opposed to objective. But it is a dilemma
18 and it is difficult to zero in on the exact relationship.
19 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you, Madam
20 Chairman.
21 Dr. Parrish, have you looked at the poverty rate
22 in each of the school districts versus the special
23 education identification and the dollars spent, poverty
24 rate and also the drug and alcohol abuse rates per
25 district, looking at those numbers specifically and trying
26
1 to correlate why you have a higher identification in some
2 districts, both of those categories?
3 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and
4 Representative Miller, in terms of poverty we did. Drug
5 and alcohol rates, per se, we did not. So we did not look
6 at the second one.
7 In terms of poverty, again, when we saw the
8 considerable variation that we did, we tried to look to
9 see to what extent might that be explained by poverty, to
10 what extent might it be explained by size and several
11 other factors. We did not see a clear relationship of
12 variation in poverty. Again, these are averages and
13 averages -- there are problems with averages.
14 Now, do I believe that the true incidence, as
15 Senator Scott was referring to, is likely to correlate to
16 high poverty? I do. And that's one of the concerns,
17 though, I think we had under the old sort of system that I
18 felt was considerably open to local interpretation, is
19 that we didn't see a relationship in variation in spending
20 or identification that correlated very well with poverty
21 which is what we would have expected.
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: Any other questions?
23 Senator Scott.
24 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, is this
25 the appropriate time to ask about the interplay with
27
1 federal funds?
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: Well, I would ask as you
3 go forward, I would like to know if we were to go down --
4 I'm a little concerned. We may have already -- because of
5 what I'm hearing on supplanting and these types of issues,
6 we may have already dug our hole fairly deep by doing the
7 100 percent reimbursement temporary program and that now
8 we may be in a spot that it will be very difficult to go
9 to another system or to back off the 100 percent.
10 But I would like to know -- I know we're
11 expecting substantial increases in federal funds, and how
12 that interplays -- what will happen with those and how
13 that interplays with whatever system we would choose to go
14 forward with at the State.
15 And Senator Scott, do you have anything
16 additional?
17 SENATOR SCOTT: That's basically the set
18 of questions I want to explore.
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: As you're doing your other
20 presentation, I need to understand those pieces.
21 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and Senator
22 Scott, why don't I just respond to that and then I will go
23 into this which I think will talk about it a little bit
24 more?
25 Having looked at this, my own opinion is that I
28
1 don't see a considerable maintenance of effort problem in
2 the state, again, my own opinion. And you would think
3 this should be sort of crystal clear because it is a big
4 issue at the federal level that's constantly discussed.
5 We have made some inquiries, tried to get as
6 clear of answers as we could. All I can say is that the
7 clear answers seem to be somewhat elusive. However, we
8 looked carefully into the rules and regulations and made
9 our own determinations based on what we think we see in
10 the rules and regulations. I think the rules and
11 regulations, in my opinion, are fairly clear.
12 And again, my opinion would be that the
13 depiction that Becca depicted created a little more
14 complex picture than I think is really the case right now.
15 I believe that the requirement is simply that states must
16 maintain the same level of funding that they did in the
17 prior year, and the districts cannot spend less in state
18 and local funds than they did in the prior year. And
19 really, it is about as simple as that, I believe.
20 Now, there are circumstances under which they
21 could spend less, by the way, but I don't know if we
22 really want to get into those. There are a few
23 circumstances under which maintenance of effort is not
24 even required or could be relaxed, let's say. The
25 maintenance of effort requirement I think is pretty simple
29
1 and straightforward.
2 And while you have through the 100 percent
3 reimbursement and the variations we've created means we're
4 going to have what we had called in the past hold harmless
5 because I know hold harmless has some other meanings under
6 the MAP model, I think we're going to move to a different
7 term. I think we will call it a maintenance of effort
8 floor that every state would have to maintain and the
9 districts would have to maintain. In my opinion, as long
10 as we maintain the maintenance of effort floor in the
11 funding model, I think we're all right in terms of
12 maintenance of effort.
13 Maybe I should go through this handout. I think
14 that will also demonstrate some of that.
15 The one that has a 1 with a circle around it in
16 the upper right-hand corner, this really summarizes what
17 you're going to see in the subsequent pages here. I know
18 we've kind of moved back and forth from trying to look
19 into the future to kind of going back to the base year in
20 which we had data.
21 And Mary Byrnes and Jim Smith and I met on
22 Friday in California. We really tried to think how we
23 might present this in a way that was dealing with sort of
24 known numbers to the greatest extent possible because as
25 we look into the future we're really looking into numbers
30
1 we're not sure about. We thought there would be some
2 advantage to going back to years for which we have all of
3 the data and we could kind of show how three alternatives
4 would have made out for the year 2001-2002.
5 This page -- the subsequent pages will provide a
6 little more detail of where these numbers came from, but
7 this is a summary page showing what every district would
8 receive in state funds had each of these three systems
9 been in place in that year.
10 The first column is simply the system that was
11 in place that year, so what was forthcoming, what did
12 districts receive in state funds with the system that was
13 in place in 2001-2002 which, of course, was 100 percent
14 reimbursement. That's column A. And there are no
15 subsequent sheets to provide more support for that because
16 I think that's fairly straightforward as to what actually
17 occurred.
18 B shows what would have been the State's share
19 of the cost of adequate special education services using
20 the AIR model for the year 2001-2002 with the maintenance
21 of effort floor in place. And that is shown in column B.
22 And I will show you the subsequent sheet that sort of
23 shows where those numbers came from.
24 But again, to do an overview, then, column C is
25 a third alternative that we think is before this committee
31
1 for consideration, and that would be a transitional model
2 that would allow for a two-year phase-in of the AIR cost
3 model in which the first year would be a one-half funding
4 from the cost model and one-half from reimbursement and
5 then this would say if the 2001-2002 year had been the
6 phase-in year or the one-half/one-half year, what would it
7 have looked at.
8 Turning to page 2, we will see a little where
9 the numbers for the cost models were derived. For
10 example, Albany 1, we see 3.9 million, and we look in
11 column C-3 and we see the 3.9 million and that's just
12 relating it back to the summary.
13 How do we get that 3.9 million? The AIR
14 simulation cost or what we simulate the costs would have
15 been in Albany under the cost model, looking at the full
16 cost of an adequate special education in 2001-2002 for
17 Albany 1 we estimate at $4.1 million. Federal funds
18 provided about half a million of it, or 400,000 for that
19 year, which what we're considering a base year would have
20 left the State responsibility of about $3.7 million.
21 But because, if we look in column D, what the
22 districts had spent in state funds in the prior year was
23 $3.9 million, through this maintenance of effort floor,
24 would kick in additional 266,000, so that the funding for
25 Albany 1, for example, would be $3.9 million, would have
32
1 been $3.9 million had the cost model been in place in
2 2001-2002.
3 In short, what you really see here is what is
4 developed by the cost model in its entirety, but every
5 district is held to what we're going to call the
6 maintenance of effort floor. So if more was spent in the
7 prior year, then the State has a responsibility through
8 the maintenance of effort as you see in column C-2 to make
9 sure that that effort is maintained or that districts can
10 maintain that effort. And so that's how we see the
11 funding in C-3.
12 So C-3 is basically what the model would have
13 predicted or what was spent in the prior year at a
14 minimum.
15 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes, Representative
17 McOmie.
18 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Thank you, Madam
19 Chairman. I've got -- maybe I'm getting ahead of you, but
20 what if you took at the column in C-2, this would be, say,
21 after the hold harmless period, this would be how much
22 less the districts would be receiving but would become
23 eligible for maybe federal funds? Is that what we're
24 trying to do here?
25 DR. PARRISH: No, what we're trying to do
33
1 here is say as we move from a reimbursement system to a
2 cost model system, what we're going to find, of course, is
3 that under the old reimbursement system some districts
4 were spending more and some less than we would have
5 predicted or what we believe the true costs are.
6 When districts were spending more, as in the
7 case of Albany 1, the State has a responsibility, though,
8 to assist them in maintaining this maintenance of effort
9 floor.
10 So the $266,000 in that case would be an
11 additional state funding that would go to Albany 1. It is
12 not that they would be eligible or have to apply for it,
13 it would be just a part of their allocation, but it comes
14 through not what the model projects but through this
15 maintenance of effort floor. That's what it is designed
16 to show.
17 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Excuse me, Madam
18 Chairman. What that means is because Albany 1 is spending
19 more, forever and ever they receive more?
20 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and
21 Representative McOmie, we would expect that this would
22 taper out over time. This would be more of an
23 implementation issue. We would expect that through the
24 model these things would probably even out over time and
25 that there wouldn't be a continuing -- the State will
34
1 always have a maintenance of effort requirement, as would
2 districts, but we would expect the amount in column C-2 to
3 taper out over time.
4 REPRESENTATIVE WASSERBERGER: Madam
5 Chairman, I don't know if I'm allowed to ask questions.
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: I am going to allow that
7 latitude because I think all of our incoming members need
8 an understanding. And that's what we're struggling for
9 here.
10 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Just one
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: All right, just one.
12 REPRESENATIVE WASSERBERGER: Madam
13 Chairman, I have a question and the question is if our
14 students in Wyoming are in special programs, they are
15 qualified for special programs according to federal
16 requirements.
17 Once they qualify for federal requirements don't
18 we have to from now until forever provide that program for
19 them and isn't the system we have now cost based? The
20 only testimony I've heard is that smaller districts are
21 not providing federal special programs to the students and
22 so in the future will see that as an additional cost.
23 Could you discuss the federal requirements and
24 special programs and how we take a student who has been
25 qualified through testing and assessments for federal
35
1 special programs and say, "No, you can't have that
2 anymore?" Because I think we would have a lawsuit if we
3 did do that.
4 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and -- and
5 I'm sorry, I don't know --
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: Wasserberger.
7 DR. PARRISH: Senator.
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative.
9 DR. PARRISH: Sorry. You don't have a
10 nametag.
11 It is an important question, a good question.
12 Special education is more important than any other program
13 for the reason that you do point out. There is a
14 contractual relationship between families and school
15 districts and the State once an IEP is specified. I think
16 that is why even if federal law did not require a
17 maintenance of effort, I think we would have recommended
18 as a study team a hold harmless because we think -- we
19 know that these legal, binding contracts are in existence.
20 They do need to be maintained.
21 And, quite frankly, that's how we got to the
22 original 12-year phase-in. I think we realized after we
23 thought about it because we're holding -- because we're
24 holding everybody harmless or phase-in level, the 12 years
25 was only hurting the winners and the so-called losers were
36
1 being held harmless anyway. So we moved away from the 12
2 years.
3 But that level of effort of maintaining the
4 districts where they were in the prior year would never
5 drop off because of the exact reason that you mentioned.
6 I would like to comment, though, on one other
7 element which I think is important, and there's
8 considerable debate about this, I think, among the
9 education community and I think it is worth just putting
10 it on the table, but it is a very complex issue and I
11 think that issue is the extent to which we believe and
12 subscribe to the notion that we have clear criteria for
13 identifying students, therefore, students are objectively
14 determined.
15 Again, even if you believed students were
16 objectively determined, which I think is a point of some
17 contention in the literature -- but even if you believe
18 that, then the services that are prescribed, though, for
19 students is a matter of professional judgment. And I
20 think we would all agree that there's considerable
21 latitude under that professional judgment.
22 The literature would also suggest even though
23 there are federal rules and regulations as well as state
24 rules and regulations in regard to qualifications for
25 special ed, the reality is that every study that's looked
37
1 at this shows a vast degree of latitude in regard to who
2 is identified for special ed and who is not.
3 But the point still remains that once a student
4 is identified and a legal contract is formed, the State is
5 obligated as well as the district to make good on that
6 contract. And that's the reason for the maintenance of
7 effort.
8 REPRESENTATIVE WASSERBERGER: Madam
9 Chairman, if I could ask one more question -- I was
10 thinking about the special program costs in the small
11 districts and I think the reason we have less cost there
12 is -- and the disparity between small districts is
13 twofold. Number one, chances are in one district you
14 could have a student that requires much higher cost in
15 qualifying special programs because of the uniqueness of
16 the ruralness of Wyoming and that could last until that
17 student reaches the age of 21 years.
18 But secondly, I think also the reason why the
19 costs are disparate in small school districts is because
20 of small class size. And I think that the special
21 programs -- and the superintendent's people have written
22 IEPs in such a way that the teacher using an aide can
23 handle that student within the classroom because of the
24 small number of students within the classroom. I think
25 that's probably the reason why we might be seeing that.
38
1 Did you look at that in any regards?
2 DR. PARRISH: We did. The first factor
3 would be small class size. I think that would contribute
4 to the diseconomies of small scale which we do attempt to
5 reflect in the cost model.
6 But I think that would be true across all small
7 districts and really wouldn't explain the considerable
8 variation that we saw across small districts in
9 expenditure or identification rates.
10 But another factor that I actually just
11 remembered in addition to poverty that we did look at
12 because we tried to explain or understand the considerable
13 variation we saw throughout the state to say to what
14 extent do we believe that variation is based on some kind
15 of a rational argument we could understand, so one was
16 poverty and the other one was, indeed, the percentage of
17 students in what we're going to call more severe,
18 low-incidence, high-cost disabilities.
19 And, again, we did not find a relationship, so
20 while I would agree that if a district had a much higher
21 percentage of students who were high-cost, low-incidence
22 disabilities, we would expect spending to be higher and we
23 believe under the cost model they would get more money now
24 than they did under the 100 percent reimbursement we did
25 not see statewide looking at relationship between the rate
39
1 at which students were identified low incidence, high cost
2 and the amount of money districts were claiming. And that
3 was one of the disconcerting elements to us.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: We've really got two
5 elements to the study. One is the cost question, but the
6 other is the great disparity in identification and
7 services that's being delivered, which I think is quite --
8 was pretty well established in the presentations we heard
9 before, that there is tremendous disparity.
10 Now, the rest of these issues, I think, we're
11 getting good questions on, but -- did I see another
12 question down here before we go on? Senator Sessions.
13 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, just a
14 couple questions. One is in those areas that you did not
15 see -- that you can't correlate it to poverty and other
16 things, is it just an attempt to -- is it just
17 nonidentification of special students that are there that
18 have not been identified that brings that, and then on
19 some of the other high-cost areas, is it
20 overidentification? I mean, you know, do you feel that
21 there's overidentification in some areas and
22 underidentification in other areas?
23 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, Senator
24 Sessions, that would be a determination of professional
25 judgment, and my own professional judgment would be yes,
40
1 that we did see evidence of that. But as mentioned in the
2 report, you know, we're never really going to know.
3 If we see, again, a district that year in and
4 year out identifies 28 percent of its students as special
5 ed, I guess to me my own judgment would be that that's a
6 problem. But no one is really going to know for sure
7 until someone goes in and looks at those kids in that
8 local circumstance. Is it possible that 28 percent of
9 those kids are truly eligible?
10 And that's why we strongly recommended a
11 bolstering, monitoring, technical support system on the
12 part of the Department, because again, it is not designed
13 to be just punitive. I think the notion is if 28 percent
14 really have special ed, good, we need to acknowledge that
15 and make sure the resources are getting in there that need
16 to be in there.
17 If they're not really 28 percent but if they're
18 really -- at least in my experience it is not because
19 people are out there trying to do the wrong thing or a bad
20 thing, but they have a model in their mind that every
21 child who has a problem needs to be served through special
22 education and our own analysis over the years suggests
23 that's not the best model for all children.
24 And one advantage, for example, of the approach
25 that we're recommending is it would allow some latitude
41
1 for districts to serve children who may have, let's say,
2 learning difficulties outside of special education. Right
3 now under the 100 percent reimbursement system if I have a
4 child with a learning difficulty and I want to be rebursed
5 for serving that child, I need to identify them as special
6 ed and I can get 100 percent reimbursement.
7 Under the cost model, while districts are
8 required to maintain effort of what they've spent the
9 prior year, new monies could be used in a more flexible
10 way to serve children in a preventative mode.
11 Either in that circumstance there are really 28
12 percent kids, although I tend to be skeptical about that,
13 but if there are, I suggest that technical support is
14 needed to look at that. And I think the Department would
15 help and this cost-based funding would help.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: The point made earlier by
17 one of the committee members was that the situation we're
18 in now, one you allude to, one of our greatest areas of
19 needed intervention is in the area of reading and learning
20 disabilities and so forth. But now we have to be in a
21 situation where that student comes to the forefront by
22 being mostly two standard deviations behind grade level.
23 And we spend about $2000 testing them to get them $80
24 worth of reading help.
25 And that's -- that total inflexibility of our
42
1 current system says you don't get a dime until you get a
2 label on this child and submit the bill. And so then
3 there's no early piece, there's no piece that the district
4 can be creative about addressing. That discussion did
5 occur earlier.
6 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chair, can I comment
7 on that?
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes.
9 DR. PARRISH: I think it is an important
10 point and a point I would like to emphasize from these
11 findings because I think there is naturally a lot of
12 emphasis on districts that appear that they will not be
13 able to -- no one really losing in an absolute sense.
14 Everybody will get at least the amount they got last year,
15 but some districts will not be able to grow as they have
16 in the past. There's emphasis on that.
17 We have to place also emphasis on districts that
18 are suddenly getting a lot of additional resources through
19 this model. And the situation you point out may be what's
20 happening here. Districts that were spending less than
21 the model would have directed in the past, you can see one
22 of two circumstances. One is they could have just been
23 underserving special ed kids, perhaps they weren't doing
24 their job in special ed, that could well be. Also, it
25 could be that some of these districts were making
43
1 concerted efforts to serve children outside of special ed
2 to the extent appropriate and that they could.
3 Looking for alternatives, for example, reading
4 interventions funded out of the general fund whereas other
5 districts might say everybody who has a reading problem
6 needs to be in special ed so I can get 100 percent
7 reimbursement, other districts said I'm going to make
8 every attempt to serve that child outside of special ed
9 which, in my opinion, is what least restrictive
10 environment requires. And a strict interpretation of
11 federal law looking at what is required for children, they
12 got punished for doing the right thing and the cost model
13 would provide them with the supplemental resources to the
14 extent they've been underfunded in the past. That's
15 another side. We don't want to lose sight of these
16 districts as well.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Sessions.
18 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, I find
19 it -- I don't know how you go about convincing a parent if
20 their child is not special education to sign that form
21 that identifies them as special ed. From my perspective
22 and what I've watched, it is very difficult most of the
23 time to get a parent to recognize and to sign that form.
24 And so I think it is more -- I don't know. I think you're
25 right in the sense that we need to look at the districts
44
1 that have the high costs and see if they are actually high
2 cost.
3 But I worry about the children coming in and
4 when you see a problem, maybe we won't go after it as
5 aggressively as maybe we should in the beginning if we're
6 not allowing anybody to grow.
7 And so I guess there's two sides to that. I do
8 worry about the aggressiveness because I believe we have
9 to, especially in the younger grades. That's where you do
10 it.
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Peck.
12 SENATOR PECK: Dr. Parrish, how did you
13 deal in your analysis with the large minority populations
14 where, for example, in our county we have a high number of
15 Indian children and many of them are taught differently.
16 Are they readily identified in need of special education
17 or is there cognizance given to differences in cultural
18 backgrounds?
19 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and Senator
20 Peck, we did not build in a percent minority factor, if
21 you will, into the cost model. One could. Again, we
22 looked at the correlation -- we did not look at the
23 correlation between percent minority and spending under
24 the current system, but we did look at the correlation
25 between percent poverty and the current system. As you
45
1 know, there's some correlation between poverty and
2 minority although it is not perfect. And you can get into
3 a long discussion whether it is really the minority status
4 or poverty.
5 But to the extent that minority students, high
6 percent minority students were in smaller districts, we do
7 believe that the cost model really does bolster funds to
8 smaller districts, many of which have high percent
9 minority students.
10 Now, it bolsters it in those districts that were
11 arguably underserving these students in the past. It
12 doesn't necessarily bolster it in those districts that
13 were spending well above the state average in the past.
14 But could a poverty factor be built in? It could. We did
15 not include one in the model in this case.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative Simons, did
17 you have a question?
18 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: No, Madam
19 Chairman. I was just going to make the comment that in
20 the northeast corner of the state, because the funding for
21 education is so low in South Dakota, we have had families
22 move into Wyoming because of the special education and
23 they commute back and forth to South Dakota to work but
24 live in Wyoming because of the fact that we are more --
25 pay more attention to the special education. This has
46
1 come through Appropriations doing some radical funding
2 back under Dick Wallace to try to supplement some of this
3 stuff. But they have actually moved into Wyoming because
4 we offer more than South Dakota does.
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: We heard that on a number
6 of our border areas, that not only are we seeing the
7 students move, we're seeing the special education teachers
8 move because they like the latitude of our system that
9 provides what they feel is needed.
10 DR. SMITH: Madam Chairman, I want to
11 follow up on Senator Peck's notion about relationship to
12 minority. That is a very sort of sensitive area. In
13 fact, in other states, I know California, for example,
14 overidentification of minority groups in special education
15 has been the subject of lawsuits and in California, for
16 example, I don't remember precisely, but African-American
17 students are prohibited by law from being identified as
18 mentally retarded. So there are other -- because they
19 were disproportionately identified.
20 So poverty is a -- probably is a much more
21 objective measure of need than minority status.
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: Which I suppose you could
23 take that and make an argument then for the flexibility of
24 a cost-based system to allow those students to be
25 addressed at an appropriate level, not have to be
47
1 special ed for their problems.
2 Senator Anderson, you had a question or comment.
3 SENATOR ANDERSON: Thank you, Madam
4 Chairman. A question that I have goes back somewhat to
5 what Representative McOmie mentioned earlier in regard to
6 the developmental disabilities and disabled,
7 identification not only in Wyoming but across the United
8 States, Wyoming is just now starting to take a more
9 careful look at preschool, either identification pieces
10 and recently early childhood development through increased
11 preschool standards and whatnot.
12 The question I have in regard to preschools and
13 early childhood development: Many of the programs in
14 place are in place through the Department of Health and
15 others are found primarily in the more densely populated
16 areas of our state. We have several experimental kind of
17 pilot projects going on. One in particular that I'll
18 mention in Casper, Paradise Valley School, seems to reveal
19 a fairly dramatic drop, particularly in those
20 environmentally affected children as they come into
21 school, a significant drop in the special education
22 population as a result of efforts being put forward in
23 those preschool programs.
24 So I guess the question I have for you is in
25 your study did you look at with regard to what current
48
1 cost differences might be between those more populated
2 areas that have preschool programs and those less
3 populated areas, smaller, more rural schools that are in
4 many instances not able to provide preschool and other
5 developmental programs? And did you anticipate any
6 significant cost differentials between so-called large
7 schools and more rural schools in the future as a result
8 of the impact, hopefully the positive impact of those
9 preschool programs?
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: And I guess when you
11 answer that, if you might also incorporate -- you made a
12 comment a little earlier that new monies coming in under
13 the new federal system would, if we had a cost-based model
14 with the latitude to develop new services, so if that
15 integrates into that answer would you answer that because
16 we're still trying to get a feel for how the infused --
17 the expected new federal monies are going to impact our
18 state and our programs.
19 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, Senator
20 Anderson, just touching on the last point first because it
21 is fresh in my mind, but I think it is all related, I
22 would like to emphasize, I think the flexibility through
23 the cost-based approach also applies to some state money,
24 so I think the State could allow districts to -- in other
25 words, under the old 100 percent reimbursement you had to
49
1 make an expenditure within special ed to be able to claim
2 the money.
3 Under the new system, because it is based on a
4 more objective model separate from what you actually do,
5 you could allow -- beyond the maintenance of effort floor
6 allow state monies also to be flexible in regard to what
7 districts can do with that money. And many states do not
8 require that all state money for special ed be spent on
9 special ed.
10 A recommendation -- I think we mentioned it in
11 the report -- there be allowed some flexibility. We did
12 not recommend that that flexibility be applied to all
13 programs, but we would recommend that it be applied to at
14 least prevention-type activities or prereferrals, so other
15 remediation type of activities. So some flexibility could
16 be gained for state dollars as well as federal dollars
17 under the proposed system.
18 Now, to talk about the preschool, it was not
19 part of the study, specifically excluded from our scope of
20 work. We did not look at preschool programs per se, but I
21 think the points you raise are extremely important. We
22 believe the regionalization we recommend could contribute
23 to early intervention programs being implemented much more
24 statewide rather than just in the urban centers.
25 So while we did not look at early intervention
50
1 as part of this study, we've certainly looked at it in
2 other studies and one we just completed for the State of
3 Kentucky, for example, our number one recommendation, the
4 very foremost recommendation, was a much bolstered effort
5 in early intervention. We really feel if we want to be
6 cost effective in the use of special ed monies, it is
7 really not to spend a ton of money after the problem has
8 really gotten out of hand, but to intervene as early as
9 possible to try to do preventative kinds of things.
10 So I know while that doesn't directly answer
11 your question, we did not fully anticipate the impact of
12 varying levels of implementation throughout the state on
13 cost, we did recommend and do recommend through the
14 regionalization that this be something, again, that's
15 provided to children statewide irrespective of their zip
16 code.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: Do you need to move on to
18 page 3?
19 DR. PARRISH: Page 3 simply takes page
20 2 -- kind of again, while we tried to keep everything to a
21 base year of 2001-2002, we thought it was important under
22 the model to show what might happen in a subsequent year.
23 Now, again, numbers have changed since then.
24 The exact impact, if you were to adopt the model on the
25 first year of implementation in terms of state cost and
51
1 everything else would remain to be seen because it is
2 dependent on some numbers we don't have right now.
3 I think there are a couple things shown here
4 that are pretty fundamental in relation to our discussion,
5 so I thought it was useful.
6 The question I keep hearing is about losers and
7 that how much money certain districts are going to lose.
8 And I think it is open to interpretation as to whether
9 there are losers or not. So I think this page fairly well
10 sort of depicts it, but basically what you have here is
11 the money that districts would have received, as you see
12 in column C, what would be the State responsibility if the
13 AIR model were in place, then we look at for 2002-2003 and
14 what would be the State responsibility if the model were
15 in place.
16 And basically, what you see is that some
17 districts gain no additional dollars. So they lose in the
18 sense they may not continue to grow at the rate they had
19 been growing in the past. So under 100 percent
20 reimbursement as we say, we saw a lot of variation, a lot
21 of districts spending more than we would project costs to
22 be and they would lose in the sense that the latitude to
23 continue to do that wouldn't be there.
24 But in the sense of actual getting less dollars
25 than they got the year before, as you see in column G, no
52
1 one gets less. And in fact, you know, about a third to
2 half of the districts are going to get more because the
3 estimate is that they were spending less under the old
4 system than what the cost model would project.
5 Also keep in mind that these gains do not
6 reflect any increase in federal funds which these
7 districts would receive, nor does it reflect any change in
8 cost of living which the state may choose to implement in
9 the future as you go from one year to the next. But I
10 think in those two years there was no cost of living
11 increase, as I understand it.
12 But I think that's really what's shown, I think,
13 on page 3. There are some assumptions that need to be
14 incorporated, but basically it shows how the maintenance
15 of effort floor is put into place, what the state
16 responsibility would be, and it sort of shows, I think,
17 the notion of yes, there are some losers in the sense they
18 don't gain to the extent they had in the past, but no
19 losers to the sense that people get fewer dollars than
20 they did the prior year. And if you factor in federal
21 funds, in fact, every district would get more dollars than
22 in the prior year and some districts underfunded,
23 arguably, in the past would get considerably more.
24 Maybe I will move to 4 fairly quickly. There
25 may be questions, but I think 4 is fairly straightforward.
53
1 4 takes the total from model A and B and says what if we
2 did in implementation year one-half of A and one-half of
3 B, how would that come out for each district.
4 Again, the notion would be that would only be
5 for one phase-in year, a hundred percent to one-half
6 one-half year and then to a full implementation of the
7 model is the idea.
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: Is there any more
9 discussion on the magnitude of the federal funds expected?
10 At the time of the implementation of the act they had said
11 that federal funds would pay about 40 percent of the costs
12 and, in fact, they've paid 7 and 8 percent, I think the
13 high was maybe 12 percent. I'm not sure where we are now,
14 but I know that the target of 40 percent is being talked
15 about.
16 That's a very large amount of dollars. I don't
17 know that we may reach 40 percent, but even if we approach
18 significant increases, do you have any idea of the
19 magnitude and what the type of system you have in place --
20 if those large increases of federal funds do come, what
21 the impact of that is?
22 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, of course it
23 is always a matter of speculation as to what the federal
24 government will do. My own guess would be that while the
25 40 percent so-called guarantee -- and even that's
54
1 debatable whether it was ever a guarantee, but the 40
2 percent, while it appeared imminent in the last couple
3 years and I got a couple calls suggesting it was imminent,
4 almost a done deal, actually it never came to fruition, my
5 call is it is no more imminent than it was then.
6 My prediction would be it is not imminent we're
7 going to move to 40 percent. Adjudging future behavior by
8 past behavior, we do seem to see a ground swell of
9 support, though, for an increased role in supporting
10 special ed and it seems to be bipartisan.
11 So we have seen considerable increases in
12 federal funds over the last few years. So I think it is
13 reasonable to expect that we would continue to see
14 nontrivial increases to federal government, again depends
15 on what you measure the 40 percent against. But let's say
16 we're at about 12 percent in terms of federal support
17 right now. But the federal funds have probably about
18 doubled over the last two to three years.
19 So I think we would expect to see a continuing
20 influx. However, with the question as it is, the
21 possibility of a war, I think there are a lot of wild
22 cards that are making that a little hard to predict.
23 I think the impact, let's say, if we do project
24 that the federal government will continue to increase as
25 it has in the past, I guess one interpretation in my
55
1 opinion would be that we questioned as a study team the
2 ability of the state to sustain a 100 percent
3 reimbursement in perpetuity. And it does provide, in our
4 opinion, a good opportunity now with the fairly
5 substantial influx of new federal funds as a time in which
6 a transition could be made that could be a very soft
7 transition, a relatively easy transition for districts.
8 We think that there could be some added
9 flexibility, new federal funds. 20 percent of new federal
10 funds through special ed can be used for purposes other
11 than special ed. They can be used to offset some local
12 efforts. So there is some flexibility, also, that comes
13 through new federal dollars.
14 Just one other point, if the federal government
15 would ever move to a huge influx, I think there has been
16 considerable discussion on the table that that 20 percent
17 would probably have to broaden, that probably we could not
18 expect the maintenance of effort just to stand as it is at
19 the same time we poured huge amounts of new federal money
20 into this program.
21 Again, my own view is that's probably not very
22 likely anyway, but that's the suggestion.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott, you said
24 you had a question.
25 SENATOR SCOTT: I would comment from what
56
1 we heard back at the NCSL fall forum, I would agree with
2 Dr. Parrish's analysis of what is likely to happen. The
3 demands on feds from the war on terrorism and the
4 exploding health care costs amongst other things are going
5 to restrain a desire that I think is again right at the
6 front seat to increase the funding here. So I don't think
7 you're going to look at 40 percent, at least right away,
8 although some increases are necessary.
9 I was wondering -- I know we talked about it at
10 the last meeting. Can you give us a quick summary of how
11 the AIR cost model works?
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: You're speaking of page 4?
13 SENATOR SCOTT: Or page -- you see it on
14 page 2. It is all through here, the State responsibility
15 under the AIR cost model. How does that model work?
16 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, Senator
17 Scott, I suspect I may need to go a little bit back to the
18 beginning because, as you mentioned, there are probably
19 people who haven't. I won't belabor it, but people can
20 ask additional questions.
21 But to make sure that we're all kind of on the
22 same page with the background, basically the AIR model
23 started with an attempt to define or specify adequate
24 special education services. I talked a little bit about
25 it at the onset, but again to recapitulate that a little
57
1 bit, we attempted to identify all of the areas of cost
2 that we believe pertain to K-12 special education and
3 those are the so-called ingredients of the program that
4 were then costed out to attempt to develop an overall
5 estimate based on these sort of resource standards of what
6 we think the cost would be in each district had they
7 implemented special ed under this uniform set of
8 cost-based assumptions and cost-based uniform resource
9 standards.
10 So I can answer more questions about that, if
11 desired. But that's kind of where the numbers came from.
12 So then it turns us to, let's just say, page 2,
13 and we see, then, in column A, that what is the amount for
14 2001-2002 that would be produced for each district. If
15 you look at column A, it is really saying that had these
16 uniform cost-based, resource-based standards been applied
17 in every district in that year, what would we estimate
18 their cost to be for serving special education students.
19 And that's what you see in column A.
20 And it is important that we say, well, what
21 year, because the salaries that we use, the average salary
22 used to move from resource standards, in other words, so
23 many teachers per student and so on to dollars is, of
24 course, dependent upon the salary amount that you use,
25 average salaries. And we used them for 2001-'02 which is
58
1 how the amounts are derived.
2 What we see in column A is our independent, sort
3 of cost-based assessment of the cost of providing adequate
4 special ed services in every district throughout the state
5 in the year 2001-2002.
6 How do we get to C-1 which is the State
7 responsibility -- Senator Scott, am I moving along the
8 lines would you like to move here?
9 SENATOR SCOTT: No. Madam Chairman, see
10 if I can explain. If I got that answer to that question
11 on the floor, I would say, okay, fine, how does it work,
12 how do you get there, where does the model come from? You
13 assert that it is cost-based. What evidence do you have
14 that it is cost-based?
15 DR. PARRISH: So we're really, Madam
16 Chairman, Senator Scott, going back to the more
17 fundamental elements of column A? That's helpful to know
18 kind of where -- because the model has sort of the
19 underpinning, conceptual elements and then how you would
20 implement it.
21 Going back to the underpinning or conceptual
22 elements, I think conceptually it is very much in
23 keeping -- and, Dr. Smith, I believe, would agree, it is
24 very much in keeping with the notion underlying the
25 overall MAP model which sort of underlies all of the rest
59
1 of your finance formula in the state, and that is that
2 rather than sort of throwing money at a problem, we want
3 to say, well, first of all, what resources do we think are
4 appropriate to provide adequate services.
5 And the only real way that we have been able to
6 come up as an education research -- well, there have been
7 other ways. I shouldn't say that. At least in terms of
8 going to the ingredients and trying to specify things like
9 student-to-teacher ratios and therapist-to-student ratios
10 and so on that we've come to rely upon is professional
11 judgment. I mean, there's no book that will be definitive
12 about this, although there are places to look other than
13 just professional judgment of educators in Wyoming, and
14 that is what practices do we see throughout the country.
15 Even though those reflect a more positive
16 standard rather than a normative standard of what we
17 should be doing, some implication of what we should be
18 doing I think can be derived from what do we see people
19 are doing in various constituencies. That's a context for
20 starting in the definition of what reasonable entails.
21 Looking at other states, then, we also could
22 turn to some professional organizations, not many, who
23 were willing to get off the dime and say here's what we
24 think a reasonable caseload is for a speech therapist, but
25 most professional organizations did not want to take a
60
1 stand on that. To the extent we could find that, research
2 about effective practice, I think we really did a very
3 broad search to help us to try to define appropriate
4 standards of service for students under varying
5 conditions. So we specified those standards and then we
6 simply costed them out to come up with what you see in
7 column A.
8 That's kind of a quick explanation. I'm sure
9 there may be other questions.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
11 SENATOR SCOTT: So basically what you did
12 was where there were some caseload standards, you used
13 them, but by and large there weren't, so what you did was
14 you used the caseload standards you thought were
15 reasonable and costed those out; is that right?
16 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, Senator
17 Scott, I would only amend it by you. In other words, I
18 don't believe it was my judgment or just the study team,
19 although ultimately the study team had to do some sort of
20 what I call more tweaking around the edges or
21 determination or balancing from what we heard from our
22 committee, as well as I will admit we based it to a large
23 extent on what we saw as current practice in Wyoming.
24 And there wasn't that much disparity between
25 what the committee thought was appropriate and what we saw
61
1 as current practice. But current practice does go back to
2 that sort of notion of average. While we saw an average
3 caseload and we had a committee to say does that seem
4 appropriate, sometimes we felt we needed to lower it, we
5 felt we did need to lower it certainly for remote
6 situations or other situations that would warrant a
7 lowering, but it was ensconced, I think, largely in
8 Wyoming professional opinion as well as in Wyoming current
9 practices on average.
10 We feel that's appropriate because we believe
11 that what is appropriate within the context of the state
12 of Wyoming may not necessarily be appropriate within the
13 context of the state of New York or California, that there
14 are -- while we're all governed by federal law, you have
15 circumstances unique to each state that need to meet
16 professional judgment within the context of the state.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: It is my understanding and
18 from previous discussions that the committee that advised
19 you of professionals from the state of Wyoming had a fair
20 amount of discussion on this subject and a fair amount of
21 input.
22 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and Senator
23 Scott, we met, I'm just guessing, but I think at least a
24 half a dozen times full-day meetings, so there was a lot
25 of input, and my sense of it is, and I'm sure there are
62
1 committee members here who may want to speak, but my sense
2 of it was that we had fairly solid agreement about the
3 standards.
4 I think where we disagreed, the study team
5 recommendation differs with the desire of the committee
6 was less around the standards, per se, than how they were
7 to be implemented. I think the committee desired that
8 those standards be used only as guidelines for monitoring
9 and not a basis for funding whereas the study team
10 ultimately believed they should be a basis for funding.
11 On the standards themselves, while I won't say
12 there was complete unanimity, I think we realized a fairly
13 decent consensus.
14 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
15 SENATOR SCOTT: Then you applied them to
16 the district's ADM or the district's ADM, did you modify
17 that by any other factors?
18 DR. PARRISH: We did not. We applied to
19 the district's ADM and it was only modified to the extent,
20 again, that we saw remote schools. There was a remote
21 school factor. And we also modified it to the extent that
22 we did put schools into size categories and we modified it
23 for the administrative component which we felt was not an
24 artifact of ADM but we tried to reflect diseconomies of
25 small scale.
63
1 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, you did
2 not modify then by any factors you thought would lead to
3 more special ed kids?
4 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and Senator
5 Scott, I believe that is correct. That was our intent.
6 And I can't think of any incentive. One always thinks
7 about those. I suppose we could have missed some, but I
8 believe not.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Sessions.
10 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, I just
11 have a model -- I have a question about the actual
12 practices of the model. These numbers we see here, are
13 they going to -- are you going to -- are the rules and
14 regs going to be done differently so that districts that
15 get the recommended additional money then can -- do they
16 still have to apply and justify a special ed student and
17 all of this kind of stuff? Do they automatically get that
18 money? Does it still remain under the same structure that
19 we have now?
20 Are they allowed to go up to that and then -- I
21 mean, you know, these recommendations, you see some and
22 then those that remain zero, no matter what happens they
23 remain zero? I mean, no matter what happens within their
24 districts, no matter what the identification process is
25 that shows increased funding, then we take it away from
64
1 the actual funding out of the regular classroom in order
2 to help special ed students? Tell me how that works.
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: Well, I think a piece of
4 that that's important to remember is in the model that we
5 cost-based this, it would go forward as a piece of the
6 block grant and the district would get that. Then they
7 would also be eligible for the contingency fund if they
8 had high numbers of justifiably identified students, they
9 could justify that theirs was higher and it was justified.
10 That was one criteria I had written down from the earlier
11 discussion, a particularly high-cost student or a
12 particularly high-cost personnel issue were at least three
13 issues you could go to the contingency fund for, and then
14 new monies which have been infused into the system after
15 this year that's demonstrated and would be continued, any
16 new monies could then address some of those issues.
17 Now, I think those -- I don't think we can
18 consider one piece of this without the other without
19 looking at the contingency piece too and the new monies
20 piece.
21 I'm sure you have --
22 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and Senator
23 Sessions, I think you answered it adequately and fully as
24 far as I can see. There may be -- I don't know if you --
25 I think the bottom line is, yes, districts would get the
65
1 additional funds. They wouldn't need to apply for it. I
2 think the notion is that their costs -- these are costs
3 that have been there all along, that they have not either
4 claimed -- perhaps they've served these children outside
5 of special ed.
6 Perhaps these children are underserved. I think
7 that possibility is real and we thought it was important
8 we have increased regionalization to provide assistance to
9 them. I think we really need to look at -- in fact, we
10 heard a number of districts say we don't provide speech
11 therapy because we can't hire a speech therapist. That is
12 out of compliance with federal law. If a child is
13 eligible for speech therapy, we've got to find a way to
14 get that child speech therapy. We need to give you the
15 money and the technical assistance to make sure it
16 happens.
17 For districts that get zero additional new
18 money, keep in mind they probably would get some
19 additional new funds through federal because that's not
20 shown here. Be that as it may, let's say for a moment
21 they get zero additional new money. If they can justify
22 they have additional new costs, they can apply for an
23 offset against the contingency funds and that's the exact
24 reason for that fund.
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative Robinson.
66
1 REPRESENTATIVE ROBINSON: Madam Chairman,
2 Dr. Parrish, in part of your discussion this morning,
3 well, a lot of discussion has been hinged around a need to
4 change from the 100 percent reimbursement when I believe
5 you said there hasn't been any evidence that it has been
6 abused to any great extent.
7 The other part of the discussion has been around
8 how identification takes place and whether or not the
9 districts are identifying -- overidentifying or
10 underidentifying the students in need of special
11 education.
12 I feel that our first responsibility is to
13 providing the best possible education for all children in
14 Wyoming, and in doing that, it would seem that the first
15 step would have to be in looking at how the children are
16 being identified and solving that problem or getting the
17 answer, at least, to that question, whether or not they're
18 being identified properly, before we decide that we're not
19 funding it properly.
20 What is your feeling on that? Wouldn't it make
21 more sense to look at how districts are identifying
22 children and making sure that they're being identified
23 properly before we make this big decision on how we fund
24 it or that the system that we're using right now is not
25 the proper system?
67
1 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman,
2 Representative Robinson, I think you raise a good point
3 and certainly it is an alternative this committee could
4 consider. Our final recommendation, though, was that we
5 believed it would be more effective to do the two
6 simultaneously, and part of the reason being that we think
7 that this is going to be an ongoing process and it is a
8 difficult process.
9 It is a process in which all states as well as
10 the federal government are struggling with right now.
11 Special ed identification rates across the country are
12 going up. They have gone up every year since the passage
13 of IDEA, and it is really a national issue to try to
14 understand what is occurring, what's driving that, what is
15 going on and it is a struggle that will continue for a
16 long time.
17 And I think tying funding to that in a way that
18 casts light on it will be helpful, not harmful, especially
19 given the cost-based model and the way we have recommended
20 its implementation we believe will begin to provide
21 adequate funding for all districts. We believe it will
22 provide relief to districts we believe have been
23 underfunded in the past rapidly.
24 And we also believe that the bolstered state
25 department recommendation we made is essential for what
68
1 you suggested to occur, that we really need to look more
2 carefully at what districts are doing to provide them with
3 guidance.
4 But I think the last point I would like to make
5 is as we move to a cost-based system, what it really
6 allows us to do under the identification issue is to
7 provide more flexibility because as long as we say that
8 you really cannot get supplemental help for children and
9 that decision about whether you place them in special
10 education or not -- and again we're talking children on
11 the boundary, okay. They do not qualify for supplemental
12 help until you place them in special ed and claim 100
13 percent of whatever you choose to spend or whatever the
14 committee decides is appropriate, that we remove a certain
15 amount of flexibility to serve students in other ways as
16 well.
17 We think both nationally and within the state
18 that's part of the long-term solution, looking for
19 alternatives to special ed for children who have
20 deficiencies in areas like reading which we know is a
21 national problem as well as a problem in Wyoming.
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: I think that's a
23 distinguishing difference between the bills you will be
24 considering. One requires identification of the student
25 as a special education student and the other bill would
69
1 not require that identification, the district would just
2 receive the monies.
3 And now we have also -- and Mary, I'm not sure
4 whether these would be at your fingertips. We've used
5 terms. It is not runaway inflation or runaway abuse, and
6 yet I think we also have to have in mind, we've had, as I
7 recall, double-digit inflation in this area for at least
8 the last three years.
9 MS. BYRNES: Madam Chairman, I do have
10 last year. The rate of growth on this issue has been
11 about 11 percent going from school year '01 to school year
12 '02 expenditures, and these are reimbursed the next year
13 from the State. The 11 percent was the last rate we've
14 had experience with. On your pages you can look, you can
15 see on page 2, column D, those figures were spent in
16 school year '01, $88 million, and you can compare that to
17 page 1, column A, these were the most recent expenditures
18 for school year '02 at 97.7 million.
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: So our struggle has been
20 to get a grip on whether this is realistic or not, but it
21 is certainly significant. And everybody's definition of
22 runaway, I guess, varies, but it might be a poor word to
23 use. I kind of wanted the committee to get a numbers
24 concept of what's happening, and I think there have been a
25 series of years where this has looked very similar, so
70
1 we're seeing a trending that has been pretty consistent
2 upward in a fairly steep manner. Our attempts have been
3 to try to get a handle.
4 (Discussion held.)
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: Go ahead.
6 REPRESENTATIVE WASSERBERGER: Madam
7 Chairman, just one question. For Dr. Parrish, I think
8 that hasn't the federal requirements in IDEA expanded over
9 the years and that's the reason for the increase in
10 expansion of special program students. As the federal
11 government expands what is allowable for a special program
12 student, then districts have responded because if they
13 don't, they are legally liable for not allowing that
14 student to receive special programs?
15 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and -- I'm
16 sorry -- Representative Wasserberger.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: Wasserberger.
18 DR. PARRISH: But I will write it down
19 this time. I apologize.
20 You're correct, the requirements have increased
21 over the years and in some instances, many instances,
22 states have chosen to add requirements on top of what the
23 federal government requires.
24 So, you know, would we expect some growth in
25 relation to the expanded requirements? I think we would.
71
1 We are looking at comparative growth, however. We see
2 growth growing at a faster rate in Wyoming.
3 Just referring back also to the point made by
4 Senator Devin, I think it is important to make the
5 distinction between abuse, runaway and sort of increases
6 that are worrisome, I guess, from a policy perspective.
7 And I think that increases that are worrisome from a
8 policy perspective is one of the reasons that led us to
9 the recommendation of moving to a cost-based system.
10 And I would also like to mention that a number
11 of districts told us when we talked about the possible
12 dilemma between sort of the blank check and the fact that
13 there hasn't been runaway spending anyway, and many people
14 told us that's because we knew a review of this system is
15 imminent, we're expecting it to come, we know this could
16 end anytime now, so I do worry about an endorsement that
17 would suggest it is going to continue into perpetuity and
18 what that might mean in terms of the potential.
19 We know the potential is there 100 percent.
20 There's a reason why no state in the union has anything
21 close to 100 percent reimbursement, so that's another area
22 in which we had concern.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: I think most states range
24 from 50 percent to 80 percent, in that neighborhood.
25 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, it is
72
1 actually 50 percent, I believe, is the next highest. So
2 it is 50 percent to about 10 percent.
3 Now, having said that, let me be clear about
4 that. That's of those states who have percent
5 reimbursement systems. There are states that have other
6 kinds of systems that do fund 80 percent of what appears
7 to be total spending. But it is not a reimbursement
8 system so districts don't have the latitude to spend
9 whatever they like and get reimbursed. But states do pay
10 a larger share than 50 percent.
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: We need to take a break
12 really shortly here. Did you have a quick question?
13 SENATOR SESSIONS: I would like -- the
14 suggestion on the commingling of the funds, when we take
15 the state special ed funds and fuse them into the block
16 grant when our block grant -- we're still struggling to
17 make it accurate and to meet the court mandate at this
18 time, I'm very uncomfortable with that.
19 My personal view is I think we ought to keep
20 special education on the outside of it, whether we go to
21 the cost-based model or the hundred percent, so that
22 actually you can track, you've got a much better knowledge
23 of it and keep it out of that block grant. Until we solve
24 the problems within the block grant model according to the
25 Supreme Court I'm very uncomfortable with fusing that
73
1 money together.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: That question may have a
3 rather lengthy answer. Can we take it up after the break?
4 REPRESENTATIVE WASSERBERGER: Madam
5 Chairman, didn't our old classroom unit reimburse at 80
6 percent?
7 COCHAIR DEVIN: 85 percent.
8 Let's take a 15-minute break.
9 (Recess taken 10:20 a.m. until 10:40 a.m.)
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: Let's go ahead.
11 Dr. Parrish, the answer to the question.
12 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, Senator
13 Sessions, if I can remember -- if I don't get the question
14 exactly right, correct me, but I remember the issue was
15 around commingling. Keep in mind, of course, the
16 maintenance of effort requirement. And so whether the
17 check for special ed comes in a separate check or whether
18 it comes rolled into -- a separate check or it is just one
19 single check for the block grant, the maintenance of
20 effort requirement as required by the federal government
21 still requires an accounting for and being able to move as
22 much money was spent on special ed out of state and local
23 funds in the current year as in the subsequent years.
24 So there's a requirement already in place that
25 says you cannot spend less than you did in the prior year,
74
1 except under a few circumstances. To me it is less of an
2 issue whether it is one check or two but the issue of
3 whether all supplemental monies beyond that should be
4 required to be spent on special ed is a determination, I
5 think, of course the State will have to make.
6 Our recommendation would be that some
7 flexibility be allowed in terms of the supplemental funds
8 beyond the maintenance of effort, but that the flexibility
9 would only be around spending it on special ed or
10 related -- what we would call related areas such as
11 prereferral intervention or specific remedial services
12 designed to look at alternatives for children other than
13 just placing them in special ed. But that certainly is a
14 determination the State would have to make and the states
15 vary considerably in regard to the practice on those
16 requirements.
17 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, I have
18 a question and maybe the lawyers in the room can answer
19 this.
20 If we put the special ed funding into the block
21 grant, then, to me it would immediately come under the
22 scrutiny of the court. It would be part of that whole
23 thing on whether our block grant is whatever we're trying
24 to work out the problems with it.
25 Then you get the legal question of if you go to
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1 a cost-based model and you've got -- and there's some
2 problem with a cost-based model and you have someone
3 asking a question if you're only going to pay me so much
4 for a special ed student and that costs my district more
5 than that to provide those services, then that is not
6 cost-based. As a consequence, the other part that's
7 supposed to be cost-based in that model, you will be
8 taking money out of the regular education student's
9 funding for special ed.
10 And in addition to putting the funds together, I
11 guess if I -- and I don't mind voting for money for
12 education, as probably everybody knows, but if I'm going
13 to be committed to a special ed student and that funding,
14 I want to know it goes to the special ed student.
15 And I'm not in the habit of bashing school
16 districts, but I worked in various ones long enough to
17 know that I want special ed funding to go to special ed
18 students, period. And we have enough other funding,
19 hopefully, to do the other parameters that we need to do
20 in education. But I guess I see enough fragile people in
21 our schools and enough fragile people coming into our
22 schools as kindergarten and first grade that I want the
23 money there for them for their education.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: I guess the only comment
25 you might have to that is we're not able to use any of
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1 these monies or the new monies under this piece to help
2 some of those fragile individuals unless they have a
3 special education identifier, and that's part of the
4 dilemma here that we're trying to decide in these bills.
5 Senator Anderson.
6 SENATOR ANDERSON: Thank you, Madam
7 Chairman, for auditing these questions over here in left
8 field.
9 There was a practice that was coming in when I
10 retired from classroom teaching -- I retired as a teacher
11 about six years ago -- a practice referred to as
12 inclusion. The practice of inclusion meant basically that
13 special education children were left in the regular
14 classroom in terms of the least restrictive environment
15 and the special education teacher collaborated closely
16 with the regular classroom teacher and actually at times
17 came into the classroom.
18 The question I have has two parts. First of
19 all, did you look at the practice of inclusion, is that
20 practice continuing, is it increasing, how does that
21 affect costs?
22 The second part of the question is in regard to
23 do we want a, quote, bright line between special education
24 and regular education? Given the collaboration between
25 special education and regular education teachers, does
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1 that, in fact, become problematic in regard to the mixing
2 and mingling with regard to the bright line between
3 special education funding and other funding?
4 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, Senator
5 Anderson, those are good questions. In response to the
6 last one, yes, inclusion does -- is very difficult in
7 terms of drawing that sort of distinctive line. Of
8 course, least restrictive environment, as you know, is not
9 a new concept. It was written into the original law. New
10 emphasis has been placed on it in the last probably
11 decade, and we do see more inclusion of students and that
12 does make it more difficult, that notion of tracking
13 dollars to students.
14 It was much easier, although arguably not better
15 for students when we placed them off in the trailer and
16 knew how much the trailer cost and everything was
17 separate. It was much easier to keep track of funds. It
18 is much more difficult now.
19 In terms of the inclusion in regard to the
20 study, one of the reasons why we did the resource
21 standards the way we did in a fairly generic way was
22 exactly because of the increased prevalence of
23 inclusionary practices, if you will.
24 When we did a study of special ed in Illinois
25 and Alaska some 20 years ago, that was a similar study to
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1 this one in the sense that it was looking at resource
2 standards and what should be out there. At that time we
3 were able to say what should a self-contained classroom
4 for special ed kids look like, what should a resource room
5 look like, what should related services look like. We
6 could define it in very specific types of services. We
7 did not do that 20 years later, for one reason, the extent
8 to which we see inclusion. So we looked at more overall
9 ratios rather than trying to say where a child is being
10 served because we see so much variability.
11 Were we able to track the costs of inclusion
12 over time in a comparative sense? We were not. Again,
13 this wasn't a longitudinal study, is one reason, but as a
14 part of the national study at the very least we were
15 looking at the cost of serving students in mainstreaming
16 situations as opposed to more segregated situations.
17 Those data haven't fully been released yet or fully
18 analyzed, but they will be forthcoming in the next year.
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: Any other questions?
20 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman.
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative McOmie.
22 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
23 would like to ask, I think Dr. Parrish mentioned about 28
24 percent, stated 28 percent, some of these percentages and
25 where they came from, how they were arrived at, where you
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1 went to get your measurements. Did you get them from the
2 Department of Ed, from the school districts? Where did
3 all of this come from?
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: Were you speaking of the
5 numbers, percents identified in each district?
6 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Yes.
7 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and
8 Representative McOmie, we collected the data independently
9 through survey analysis from districts, but we have some
10 data directly provided to us by districts, but I think
11 probably the data that -- well, I know the data we
12 presented to the committee was data from the department,
13 so primarily they come from the department and from the
14 state's SEEDS database that lists every special education
15 student and the services they receive.
16 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: You didn't go to
17 each school? Whatever the department had gathered is what
18 you used?
19 DR. PARRISH: To be clear, we did survey
20 each school, so we had survey information. We primarily
21 tried to collect data not available from the department,
22 however, just to reduce the burden but we did survey every
23 school in the state and each district.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: We did implore them not to
25 ask the districts to submit additional data they had
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1 already submitted one time. And so the SEEDS database, as
2 I understood, Becca Walk, is something that districts
3 report in to you. Can you elaborate on that?
4 MS. PULLEY: Yes, Senator Devin. I'm
5 Cheryl Pulley. I manage the SEEDS database at the
6 Department of Education.
7 The SEEDS database, the districts submit a form
8 with all of their information on the individual students
9 that are identified. Those are put into the department
10 database and cleaned up and we've put together tables on
11 percentages in each district.
12 Now, there are some errors in how some of those
13 percentages -- I know the two districts that have K-8
14 schools, those percentages were not as accurate because
15 they included those high school students that they still
16 keep on their SEEDS roles but are not in their district
17 receiving services. They go out to other districts to
18 receive services. So those two districts that have K-8
19 schools may be off a little bit on that spreadsheet that
20 we have.
21 The districts verified their count with us
22 through a fax signature back to us.
23 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman,
24 the reason I asked the question is because during the
25 break there was one of the schools here, some of the
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1 representatives are here that are shown as 28 were only
2 like 11 or something like that. If I could ask them to
3 relay what has happened here so I could find out -- is
4 that all right, Madam Chairman?
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: We will go to the public
6 in just a minute, if the committee doesn't have more
7 questions at this point.
8 Senator Scott.
9 SENATOR SCOTT: One quick question on
10 page 2.
11 Is column A included -- including the federal
12 funds that are shown in column B, or are they -- are the
13 federal funds in addition to the ones in column A?
14 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and Senator
15 Scott, the funds shown in column A are simply a result --
16 they're not designed to represent varying revenue sources.
17 They're designed to say once we specify an adequate
18 special education, as we talked about before, and cost
19 that out, what does the model produce overall as our
20 estimate of cost? That's what you see in column A.
21 Then a determination -- I should say, though,
22 when we did that we didn't attempt to separate out those
23 functions for which some districts may have in the past
24 claimed federal funds. We tried to think of it in a
25 comprehensive manner. So, in other words, what all should
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1 be included under the concept of a definition of an
2 adequate special education, irrespective of where those
3 funds may have come from in the past. That's what column
4 A is.
5 Column B is -- in the base year subtracts out
6 the federal funds actually received as a starting point
7 with the idea that A is supposed to be the entirety and
8 the state obligation would be the difference between that
9 entirety and what the federal government provided in that
10 year.
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: And I think the
12 information at break that was kind of interesting, that
13 our federal funds have increased -- and perhaps Mary
14 Kay -- have increased 6 million and we're slated to get
15 another 2 million increase. Is that this year or the
16 upcoming year?
17 MS. HILL: Madam Chairman, the 2 million
18 would be for the next fiscal year and then the additional
19 6 are currently being paid out to districts right now.
20 COCHAIR DEVIN: So that's the magnitude of
21 recent increases, just for the committee's information.
22 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, just a
23 thing on inclusion for people who are not familiar with it
24 maybe, and I just have to say this in relationship to
25 cost, inclusion is a wonderful practice for special ed
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1 students. It is an absolutely wonderful opportunity for
2 them to be either full day, part day, whatever, within a
3 regular classroom for the interaction with kids.
4 But it is not a cost savings. It is not a
5 cost-saving procedure because unless you provide the
6 support and all of the stuff that goes with the
7 inclusion -- you have to do that to protect the rest of
8 your kids' education in the classroom and to make it
9 really work.
10 So, you know, it does not save you any money,
11 but it is a wonderful way to provide for special ed
12 students.
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: I would like to move to
14 the public. I would like to make the request that we not
15 reiterate the testimony of the last two education
16 meetings, if we could. But you have had new material
17 presented to you today, a new piece, and I would like you
18 to be able to comment on that, and I think that's that
19 piece. If we can expedite this along, Dr. Parrish does
20 need to leave, I think, at 11:45 and we have another
21 individual to speak with the committee at 11:45.
22 So I would like to hear the comments and hear
23 anything you would have to add to thoughts you had from
24 last time and remarks you had. And perhaps we'll start
25 with Representative McOmie's request that on our data
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1 sources if the discrepancy here is as was described
2 possibly before, if there's something else on the 28
3 percent identification, if you would identify yourselves,
4 we would appreciate that.
5 MS. CURCIO: Kathy Curcio, special ed
6 director, Fremont County 21. And we've often been
7 mentioned today as the district with 28.9 percent of our
8 children identified as special education, and a lot of
9 worry has gone into the fact that perhaps we're
10 overidentifying.
11 Actually, we're a K-8 school with 300 students,
12 but we track our children in Lander. The Lander students
13 in high school are added into our special ed numbers and
14 then divided by the 300 students. So the numbers are very
15 high, but they don't reflect what is actually going on at
16 Fort Washakie.
17 We actually have a 13.8 percent identification
18 rate at Fort Washakie which is well within the standards,
19 and it just looks different on the SEEDS report because
20 the high school students -- because we don't have our own
21 high school. The high school students in Lander are added
22 into our count and that is how it works.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: And just as a question of
24 finance, does that money for those special education
25 students that are high school -- does it flow through your
85
1 district or does it go directly to the Lander district?
2 MS. TAFT: Roxie Taft, business manager at
3 Fremont County School District 21 in Fort Washakie. The
4 special ed money is money we get to spend for our
5 students. I have a teacher and aide in Lander in the
6 school system I pay for. I report those as contracts on
7 the special ed report and I'm reimbursed for that money.
8 All the other costs for the high school students are borne
9 by Lander.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: Reimbursed by the State?
11 MS. TAFT: Yes.
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: So the K-8 situation was
13 mentioned earlier as being one where the form might make
14 that look slightly different than in actuality all of
15 those numbers of students are in special ed but they're in
16 there in a different manner than other school districts.
17 Other comments, then.
18 MR. LEAHY: My name is Lou Leahy,
19 Newcastle, Wyoming, and I'm up in the northeast with
20 Marlene.
21 A couple things I would like to say, first of
22 all, the 100 percent reimbursement, we've got so used to
23 saying it, we put a period there. That's not true. It is
24 100 percent reimbursement of allowable costs. In other
25 words, I have to write down per the nickel everything I
86
1 spend in special ed. If I buy a piece of equipment, buy
2 an aid, a teacher salary, whatever, it goes on the
3 bookkeeping system as a special ed expense.
4 First, I check to make sure it is an allowable
5 cost and then I put it on the books and that report, then,
6 goes to the State. The State reviews that. If it is not
7 an allowable cost, they red-line it off the sheet and say,
8 "Sorry, Lou, we can't reimburse you for that. It has to
9 be an allowable cost."
10 So, consequently, what could be more cost based
11 than to look at every single nickel that was spent on the
12 program and then submit it to the State and they've
13 already put the brakes on the system by saying you can
14 only be reimbursed for what we say are allowable costs?
15 So that's the one issue.
16 On another issue, on identification, that's a
17 mechanical process. You could almost do that with a
18 machine and computer because the federal law is what we
19 implement. Anybody can make a referral, anybody. And
20 once they make a referral, it is prescribed exactly what
21 you have to do as far as testing and evaluation. And once
22 they either make it in or out of the program, then you
23 serve them. It is like an automatic process.
24 The one area I would agree with Dr. Parrish here
25 and that is we could use some work in bringing some
87
1 guidelines to staffing issues and helping us provide
2 better services in our more rural areas.
3 I would like to add another comment. Marlene is
4 exactly correct. I live in a border area, ten miles south
5 of her place, and we do get South Dakota people coming
6 over to Wyoming like she said. I worked in South Dakota
7 and I have property in South Dakota.
8 And I would like you to know two things very
9 much different: The number one reason for school district
10 failure in South Dakota -- I'm talking about school
11 districts that have gone out of business and
12 consolidated -- was special education. Small school
13 districts got special education children in that district,
14 they could not afford to pay for the services. In South
15 Dakota, as has been pointed out, they pathetically
16 underfund the system and so the school district fails.
17 They have no choice but to consolidate with a bigger
18 district until they get a funding base big enough to
19 support it.
20 Now, how can that be? The option there in South
21 Dakota, I see it on my property bill for the property I
22 have there, there's a 2-mill local levy that school
23 districts levy for purposes of special ed. You can see
24 the cost of special ed right up front and personal.
25 So we don't have any local taxation authority
88
1 anymore in Wyoming. There is no way to raise money. And
2 so I don't know what you would do if you had a high-cost
3 system and you had a formula-driven system and you were
4 out of money. That's why Dr. Parrish suggests this
5 emergency fund, because otherwise you're out of business.
6 I would finally like to conclude by saying that
7 I am typically sort of an antibureaucracy kind of guy and
8 maybe some of you read some of my outlandish statements on
9 that. But anyway, the whole concept of this cost-based
10 system is the idea that we set up intricate formulas and
11 somehow we make them work. We've been at that -- I think
12 we started that, what, 1986 or so and Dr. Smith is still
13 here.
14 DR. SMITH: Pleased to be here, as a
15 matter of fact.
16 MR. LEAHY: I want to conclude by saying
17 the United States entered and went on to a glorious
18 victory in World War II in only three and a half years.
19 Thank you very much.
20 COCHAIR DEVIN: I would like to ask you,
21 then, a question. I will say the State of Texas was in
22 this 26 years and when we started I thought oh, my gosh, I
23 hope it won't take us that long. Now I'm saying I hope we
24 settle in that time. This is not unusual for new systems.
25 I would like to ask you your feelings on the
89
1 preventative issues that have been raised in terms of the
2 kids on the fringe, fragile children, as was referred to,
3 and the ability to serve some of these particularly
4 younger children who are on the fringe of special ed
5 without having to make that identification.
6 What are your thoughts on that piece?
7 MR. LEAHY: We do that. We have a lot of
8 preventative programs or try to put those in place. As a
9 matter of fact, years ago the legislature worked with the
10 Department to implement the BIT system, building
11 intervention team system, where it mandates that building
12 principals look at other alternatives to special education
13 placement prior to serving the child. And those have been
14 successful.
15 But, you know, with all of the litigation you
16 get into and all of the fine points of special ed, if it
17 was up to me, what I would do is put the flexibility into
18 the at-risk programs under the main school funding model.
19 In other words, there should be part of that MAP model, as
20 we call it, that addresses the needs of the at-risk
21 children.
22 Because once -- that would be an excellent
23 place to provide flexibility and preventative programs,
24 et cetera. Once you get into special ed, you come under
25 the whole privy of due process, of potential litigation,
90
1 of federal regulation, and so it probably is better from a
2 practitioner's point of view to keep those things separate
3 because the rules are so different.
4 But I truly would like to see some more funding
5 in the area of at risk, children who are not in special
6 ed. We could do some preventative programs and I think
7 that would help a lot. I agree with you, I think that
8 would help a lot in keeping the cost of special education
9 down.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: Other comments?
11 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
13 SENATOR SCOTT: On the previous speaker, I
14 wasn't clear what his position was with the school
15 district. Could he make that clear?
16 MR. LEAHY: I'm director of special
17 education and federal grants coordinator.
18 MR. KOURIS: I'm here again. Maybe I'll
19 get help from above like last time. I'm Mike Kouris,
20 special ed director in Riverton.
21 I don't want to say again all of the things I
22 said last time and I will try to keep from it. Please
23 correct me if I do.
24 I need to clear up a couple of things first that
25 I've heard today. When we talked about the special
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1 education in the state of Wyoming is spending 17 percent
2 more than the nation, Senator Massie several months ago on
3 the stakeholders committee said regular ed is spending 10
4 to 12 percent more, so why is that unusual that we're
5 spending more in special education.
6 It is really not that unusual. We do have
7 programs for children and we develop them to meet their
8 needs.
9 And so now I need to get personal to my
10 district. I have double the amount of children that are
11 identified as emotionally disturbed. Dr. Parrish, I give
12 all of the respect to him for this study but he missed the
13 mark on how to fund programs in my district for those
14 children. If we go under a census-based -- which his is
15 census-based, not a cost-based approach -- I won't have
16 the money to fund those programs.
17 Although there's this contingency fund for high
18 cost, these are recurring costs yearly. I've got double
19 the amount of children with emotional difficulties. And
20 like I said before, I'm not willy-nilly identifying those
21 children. We've got the largest alcohol and drug abuse in
22 our county. Maybe it is because we have an honor farm in
23 our community. Maybe it is because God willed it. It is
24 the luck of the draw that we have those children there and
25 we program for them K-12 and it costs a lot of money.
92
1 In that funding model they wouldn't get funding
2 and I would have to immediately apply to that contingency
3 fund for 800,000. I'm going to be short that much.
4 To continue on, I have the Child Development
5 Center doing early intervention. They're sending 23 new
6 students to me next year, 23. I have to have funding for
7 those children. If I'm frozen at 11, I won't have the
8 funding. I will lose probably 7 with my senior class,
9 special ed children. So those are just some points.
10 Dr. Parrish's probably -- and he was real up
11 front about this -- suggested some of the negative things
12 about it. One of the negative things is if we're not
13 funded for programs locally, we will have to look at
14 residential centers for children that might otherwise we
15 could take care of in our district.
16 Another thing it would cause, it would cause us
17 to try not -- to underidentify. If we're not funded for
18 students that legitimately qualify for special ed, it
19 would encourage districts to underidentify. And
20 Dr. Parrish pointed that out in a study he did several
21 years back.
22 Also in this kind of system it is going to
23 increase litigation. If I have to -- if I'm not going to
24 be funded for the children that I serve, of course their
25 parents are going to bring litigation. And to me that's
93
1 not an equitable system. It is far from it.
2 I think that's all I have. Thank you very much.
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: Other comments.
4 MR. MONTEITH: Madam Chairman, Brian
5 Monteith, superintendent of schools in Cody, Wyoming. I
6 did serve on the committee. I wasn't at all six meetings,
7 but I felt I was a part of that and understood the
8 process. I'm standing to urge you to support the 100
9 percent cost reimbursement with an oversight method for
10 controlling the costs which may seem to be inappropriate.
11 Five years ago the Cody public schools had a 9.3
12 percent rate of special education students within the
13 entire student body. I think as of last year we were 10.3
14 percent, so we've had a net gain of five-tenths of a
15 percent over the period of that year and that includes
16 going into the 100 percent reimbursement model.
17 I think you've probably heard the testimony as
18 it relates to the types of models, the reasons for those
19 models, but I'm a little like Riverton, I need to put a
20 face on this for you so you understand some of the issues
21 we're dealing with in our district, and I think that will
22 help you understand what all districts are facing.
23 I think you will notice on page 3 that we would
24 be eligible to receive approximately 252,000 more dollars
25 based on the model being advocated this morning. I can
94
1 assure you as of this morning we spent 238,000 of that
2 already. The needs in our district continue to increase.
3 Let me give you data about why that is for Cody.
4 Since September 1, '01, 91 students have been
5 exited from Cody's special education program. In the same
6 period of time we have entered 94 students into our
7 special education program. That's only a net increase of
8 three students, but the nature of the needs of these
9 students has changed dramatically and continues to change
10 dramatically and become more needful in terms of the kinds
11 of obligation that our district has to meet.
12 Of the 94 students who have entered, 26 receive
13 special education equal to or in excess of 10 hours a
14 week. 11 of these students require one-on-one coverage
15 because of the natures of their disabilities and that
16 means an individual person hired to work with that child
17 and that child alone. And I don't think anybody in our
18 district simply points to a child and says let's make this
19 one to one.
20 We analyze the nature of the IEP and the kind of
21 disability they come to us with and essentially make a
22 determination they can't be successful in the special
23 education program in our district without that assistance.
24 Five of the new students have severe mental
25 disabilities. That is, three of these have multiple
95
1 disabilities including orthopedic disabilities, seizure
2 and hearing disability. All five require full-time
3 attention.
4 Because of the nature of the 94 students who
5 have come into our district in the past 18 months, we've
6 had to institute a developmental classroom for students
7 with multiple disabilities. This classroom is staffed
8 with a special education teacher, a para-educator and a
9 full-time special education nurse. The nurse is hired to
10 take care of the safety of the student with a permanent
11 tracheotomy and feeding tube and two students with ongoing
12 seizures which happen unannounced.
13 Two of the new students are served in their
14 neighborhood schools and require additional one to one
15 from para-educators throughout the entire school day. One
16 is completely deaf and requires teachers of deaf service.
17 We do that in our district because we're fortunate enough
18 to find a teacher for the deaf. If we didn't, that
19 student would be in a school in Billings, Montana at a
20 cost of at least 100,000 more than we're currently
21 spending in Cody to provide services for that child.
22 Five of the new students require one-to-one
23 support for serious emotional and behavioral problems
24 identified within an IEP for those students.
25 Two of the high school -- two of the students
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1 are in the high school. One is severely aggressive and
2 has inadequate social behavior which does not even allow
3 them to intermingle with their peers without getting into
4 physical dilemmas, I guess, I would say fights.
5 One of them is schizophrenic and requires a one
6 to one, and by the way, came out of a residential
7 placement being paid for by the State, so just by virtue
8 of the fact we can put a one-on-one teacher with that
9 student, we're saving the State about 110,000.
10 We have only had to place one student out of
11 district in the past three years and this is the one
12 that's gotten beyond our control in terms of the
13 behaviors. The behaviors became so severe we had to do an
14 institutional or residential placement program.
15 Fourteen of these students require extensive
16 academic support which means they all require more than
17 ten hours of services to meet their special education
18 needs in the inclusion model classroom of the district.
19 That takes 238,000 of the 253,000 left available to us.
20 We already know next year we have five children
21 coming to us with severe needs that will completely
22 exhaust that amount of money and put us beyond the
23 maintenance floor level, and then we're going to be left
24 with a decision of what we do to try to meet the needs of
25 these children according to law.
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1 And I can assure you that what will likely
2 happen in our district is what happened before 100 percent
3 cost-based reimbursement and that is they were put in the
4 classroom, regular classroom, with less special education
5 help than was available for the district to provide and
6 putting an extreme amount of pressure on the regular
7 education teachers for the inclusionary model.
8 We had classrooms with as high as five LD kids
9 in them, and each LD child has a different kind of a need.
10 It is not as though you can put them in the classroom and
11 they're all alike. And the regular education teacher had
12 to cope with those folks and that is not, as Senator
13 Sessions has said, not good for the rest of the regular
14 education kids in those classrooms at the same time.
15 I am going to advocate once again you seriously
16 consider the 100 percent model with rules oversight and,
17 in fact, I would encourage you to consider looking at the
18 rules and if they need tightening, that should be done.
19 That is one area where there's a certain looseness in the
20 interpretations. You can restrict some of your costs by
21 tightening those rules up. And I guess that's kind of
22 where I need to go.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: One question: The
24 increases that you're seeing, and the increases in the
25 severity and magnitude, are they coming from within your
98
1 own community or are they moving in?
2 MR. MONTEITH: Madam Chairman, I think
3 you've heard some evidence this morning that there are
4 people moving to districts where they can get the
5 services, and, in fact, they may move from South Dakota to
6 Wyoming to get services and they may move from smaller to
7 larger school districts in Wyoming to get more
8 comprehensive services.
9 I will tell you based on my observations that
10 the kinds of children we have been getting historically
11 have increasingly high levels of need that were not
12 typical five and ten years ago. I think that's part of
13 the example I was trying to demonstrate here. Of the 94
14 kids we got to replace the 91, they're coming with more
15 severe needs to have to deal with.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: Thank you.
17 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
18 would like to add to what I think part of this problem is.
19 I've attended a number of DD group meetings and listened
20 to the testimony of parents that are totally amazed to see
21 what happens to the children going out in these systems
22 and the improvements in quality of life.
23 And the people that did not -- kept the children
24 home and tried to care for them themselves are now
25 starting to request IEPs and get these kids out there so
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1 that they can take advantage of the marvelous things that
2 happen to those children once they get into these
3 programs. It is totally amazing to hear that kind of
4 testimony. And I think that's where this growth is all of
5 a sudden starting to come from. I have two different
6 friends that took advantage of these kinds of programs and
7 it has made all of the difference in the world to these
8 children.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
10 SENATOR SCOTT: Chairman, question. I
11 hear what you're saying about the increase in severity and
12 I think we can speculate on the causes, but they're
13 probably multiple. My question deals with the kids that
14 aren't so severe.
15 There are a number of things, I think, that do
16 seem to be effective in preventing those from actually
17 needing the level of services of special education:
18 Preschools, some of the special reading interventions.
19 With the 100 percent reimbursement system, what
20 kind of incentives can we put in that to encourage the
21 districts to use the preventative programs?
22 MR. MONTEITH: Madam Chairman, Senator
23 Scott, I don't know I have all of the answers to that, but
24 let me frame something for you I think is true for us in
25 Cody. And I would follow on some of the things that
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1 you've said. When you are a district that believes very
2 strongly in the least restrictive avenue, you try all of
3 the alternate strategies you can think of, through the BIT
4 program, any other program you can have to provide a solid
5 educational opportunity for children before you're
6 absolutely forced to put them in the special education
7 program.
8 And I think some of you heard me say this before
9 and I'll say it again: You don't fix children by putting
10 them in the special education program. That is not what
11 special education is for. You do the best job you can for
12 your children in the regular education setting as much as
13 you can.
14 So whenever it is possible, we provide
15 alternative pathways to be successful for children within
16 the framework of our regular curriculum, including special
17 programs like reading intervention. Even at that, we're
18 still seeing the percentages of children with needs
19 increasing in our district.
20 COCHAIR DEVIN: Any other public comment?
21 MR. CURRY: Dal Curry, executive director
22 of student services in Casper. I've been pulled in by
23 your system.
24 Just to follow up on that, we just completed our
25 December 1 SEEDS child count so I have some numbers in
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1 mind. We gained like seven kids this year with a slight
2 increase in overall enrollment, so we're pretty flat.
3 What we've seen in the last few years is a marked increase
4 in the identification of learning disability students
5 which is a high-incidence disability and marked increase
6 in the areas of autism and health impaired. Health
7 impaired usually are severe kids.
8 To echo what he said, the numbers are holding
9 steady but the composition of the population is changing.
10 And I don't think you can -- we welcome monitoring, as do
11 all districts, I think, but I don't think you can argue
12 with the identification of the severe DD, severe autistic
13 kids. If you can, great.
14 Also, just a point, over 90 percent of our
15 state-reimbursed special ed funds are in salaries and
16 benefits. If we hit a ceiling to where we're no longer
17 going to be able to increase that, the only cuts we can
18 make are in personnel to hold that line.
19 Thirdly, economy of scale is a wonderful thing
20 and we do benefit from that as being one of the larger
21 districts. However, realize that our economy of scale is
22 spread over 36 school buildings, so although you might not
23 realize it, we have a lot of windshield time, too.
24 Also, by being a larger district, we do have
25 more comprehensive services I would sure hate to lose.
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1 And we also attract -- since the last meeting you all had
2 in November -- actually, the week before that, we've added
3 seven high-risk kids that have moved to the district,
4 three of them autistic, two of them severe health
5 disabilities. So we do attract students.
6 With regard to a comment earlier, we have lifted
7 our efforts to increase inclusion. It is a wonderful
8 thing for some kids. It is considerably more expensive
9 because you're spreading special ed staff then not only
10 over more kids but over more sites.
11 MS. GAZEWOOD: Thank you, Madam Chair,
12 members of the committee. I welcome the opportunity to
13 address you once more.
14 COCHAIR DEVIN: We need your name.
15 MS. GAZEWOOD: I'm Ramona Gazewood,
16 director of Special Services with Laramie County School
17 District 1. I have three pages here but a lot of people
18 have already addressed some of the areas that I was going
19 to address.
20 As you can see, the factors that we need to
21 consider and the complexity of the laws governing services
22 for the provision of services for children with
23 disabilities is very complex. A thorough and accurate
24 analysis of how to provide those services is very
25 challenging and difficult.
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1 I think that Dr. Parrish has put together a lot
2 of data, but I do believe that the accuracy and the
3 validity of some of the data that we've been pointing out
4 is still questionable. One of the points I want to make
5 sure that the committee realizes is that when we compare
6 ourselves to other states, we are not comparing same data
7 because in other states, the funding mechanisms that exist
8 in those states are different than Wyoming.
9 For example, I recently visited California, and
10 they were talking about the placement in this one
11 district, the placement of a student residentially. And
12 the director was saying to me, "Boy, you know how
13 expensive those residential placements are." And I said,
14 "Yeah, they are very expensive." This student in
15 California was being placed in a residential facility in
16 Texas.
17 I said, "Just about how much is this going to
18 cost your district to place that student in Texas?" She
19 said, "Well, it is going to cost us 35,000." I kind of
20 had an intake of breath because a comparable placement for
21 us in Wyoming would have been anywhere from 100 to
22 $150,000. That's because in California other agencies
23 contribute to the funding of the educational placements of
24 students. It is not totally on the educational system.
25 Also, in many states Medicaid reimbursement is
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1 actively participating. There's occupational therapy,
2 physical therapy, speech and language, psychological
3 services, counseling are picked up under Medicaid
4 reimbursement scenarios. We in Wyoming do not have that
5 opportunity because our Medicaid plan is different. The
6 school districts bear the total burden of these costs.
7 So when you look at costs across states and you
8 try to compare those costs, you're looking at a lot of
9 different data.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: I would like to just
11 comment at that point, though, three years ago when I
12 brought this Medicaid use back from the national meeting
13 and talked with Special Education about the Medicaid
14 piece, the response I got was it is too much paperwork
15 since we get 100 percent reimbursement anyway.
16 And that's been pretty discouraging to me that
17 we don't take advantage of our Medicaid match because
18 the -- on these expenses, which is substantial, and we use
19 all state dollars because it is reimbursed at 100 percent
20 anyway to those that had to fill out the paperwork. That
21 response didn't come from you, but I will tell you I've
22 tried to float and push this for three years and that's
23 the response I have received.
24 MS. GAZEWOOD: I'm not a Medicaid expert,
25 but I think it is also based on the state plan.
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1 COCHAIR DEVIN: Very easily fixed if the
2 community wanted to go forward with it. That can be
3 amended anytime. I guess I'm rather discouraged about
4 that feeling that it is too much trouble to fill out the
5 paperwork to get almost a 50 percent reimbursement for
6 medical expenses.
7 MS. GAZEWOOD: I think that's an area that
8 we can look at. But my point is that right now many
9 states, their data is different than our own because the
10 state -- the districts are bearing the total cost.
11 I also have a concern about the utilization of
12 our Part B money in these scenarios, as many of the costs
13 we've been talking about do not include the kinds of
14 things we use for our Part B monies and some of those
15 things have not been, as Mr. Leahy outlined, allowable
16 costs, such as summer programs, such as parent resource
17 center coordinator, technology needs, in-service training
18 not only for special ed staff but for regular ed staff,
19 our paraprofessionals, parents, administrative costs and
20 other supplemental programs that have not been allowable
21 in the past.
22 I would strongly encourage the committee to
23 consider maintaining the 100 percent funding, but to look
24 at some other issues that could give us some guidelines in
25 regards to service provisions to take the guidelines that
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1 we have started on and have the task force finish the task
2 with the state department, to review and if need be revise
3 our eligibility criteria so we can address those issues,
4 to increase the state department's ability to monitor and
5 assist the districts.
6 As many of the individuals have -- that have
7 given testimony have provided, we need these services more
8 than ever. Our services, our severity are growing with
9 these children. Cheyenne, too, is at the confluence of
10 two major interstates. We get a lot of students from
11 other states. We also in Cheyenne serve a military base
12 and we are noted as one of the districts, one of the
13 states, that have excellent services for children with
14 disabilities. And those parents whose children have been
15 identified that are in the military many times are
16 relocated here to Cheyenne because of those service
17 provisions.
18 So those are some of the points I wanted to
19 make. Thank you for your time.
20 COCHAIR DEVIN: Thank you.
21 Any other comments?
22 SENATOR SCOTT: With regard to the
23 Medicaid issue, you would have to ask if we're going to
24 get into that two questions: One, with regard to the
25 actual paperwork and how much that actually costs as
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1 opposed to a federal match; the second is if you have to
2 modify the state plan to get that reimbursement, as I
3 think you would, frequently they won't allow modifications
4 that would be just restricted to the educationally
5 relevant services that we provide in special ed but would
6 go well beyond that. And you would have to say what is it
7 going to cost the State for that expansion.
8 And you would have to do the analysis to figure
9 out would we really be better off using the Medicaid funds
10 in this area or not. And I'm not sure I -- I wouldn't
11 care to predict off the top of my head which way that
12 analysis would come out.
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott, the
14 presentations that I heard from the consultants states --
15 that it spent multiple thousands of dollars to get this --
16 was that their savings was substantial in the area. It
17 was at an education meeting, but they reported at least a
18 25 percent and greater reduction in their special
19 education costs due to that piece.
20 But I've just not -- there's not even been the
21 enthusiasm to look at it here because of the alternatives.
22 SENATOR SCOTT: The only point I'm making
23 is that there are significant costs to getting there and
24 you have to remember some of those other states --
25 virtually we're about the lowest in terms of Medicaid
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1 spending because we have restricted the scope of our state
2 plan. And I would think you would have to be very careful
3 to be sure that you weren't incurring some very large
4 costs that other states have already chosen to incur and
5 we have not.
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: Dr. Parrish, the SEEP
7 data, I had understood that that was -- that national
8 test -- that national piece was to try to compare -- to
9 use comparative data. And so when we look at the cost of
10 a piece, we are looking at apples to apples in that piece.
11 Can you tell me to what extent that effort has
12 been made to give us that kind of data in that SEEP
13 project nationally?
14 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, I can. Does
15 the reference refer to the Medicaid discussion or more of
16 the discussion raised by Miss Gazewood?
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes, more of the
18 discussion raised by Miss Gazewood.
19 DR. PARRISH: I think we're looking more
20 apples to apples, but the argument can still be made that
21 the degree to which services are provided by other
22 agencies outside of the school -- in other words, if
23 another agency comes in and provides, let's say, physical
24 therapy within the school context, that should have been
25 captured in the cost whether it is education providing it
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1 or some other agency.
2 However, I think if there were services provided
3 outside of the school context, that might not have been
4 captured. There may be some mix. I think the best
5 attempt to combine apples to apples that could be made was
6 made. I think the comparative data are about as valid as
7 you're going to find.
8 However, could involvement of other agencies
9 have some impact? I think it could.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: I appreciate that.
11 Do you have any other comments before we go to a
12 description of the bills?
13 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, we would
14 like to make just a few comments.
15 First of all, I think the notion of
16 distinguishing between expenditure-based systems and a
17 cost-based system is important. I kind of heard
18 throughout what could be more cost based than just
19 reimbursing me for whatever I spend and I think we need to
20 get the distinction between expenditure and cost. We
21 often use the words interchangeably in the vernacular, but
22 economists are very adamant about distinguishing between
23 the two things.
24 One would be an example -- maybe it is
25 oversimplistic -- if I have two children who are twins and
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1 I sit there and say I'm going to give you an allowance for
2 your lunch and it is a fixed amount, that might be some
3 cost-based assessment of what I think they need or is a
4 reasonable amount for them to spend on lunch.
5 Conversely, if I give them 100 percent
6 reimbursement of whatever they spend and one spends twice
7 as much as the other, do I say it costs twice as much to
8 feed Johnny as Billy? That's the distinction. A cost
9 tries to look at some kind of standardized result. Billy
10 says I play football and I have to eat steak every day and
11 Johnny doesn't, that might be a cost adjustment. The
12 notion of just allowing 100 percent reimbursement on
13 expenditure equates to cost is just not true conceptually.
14 Another point of clarification I would like to
15 make is it is true Wyoming does spend higher on average
16 for general education students overall than other states,
17 but at least the data we looked at from the National
18 Center for Education Statistics looked like a special ed
19 differential of 17 percent as opposed to a general ed
20 differential of about 5 percent. There was a fairly
21 substantial differential, at least in the data we looked
22 at from the National Center.
23 I think those are the primary points of
24 clarification.
25 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Madam Chairman.
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1 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes.
2 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: I think it is rather
3 odd we've had the Fremont County district used as an
4 example of rampant overidentification, 28 percent, so on
5 and so forth, and go on down the road, it was 6 or 7, and
6 now we hear it is actually 13 percent because it is a K-8
7 district.
8 And I want to know why that didn't come to your
9 attention before this morning because that's been used
10 over the last three meetings or four meetings of an
11 example of overidentification, and finally at our last
12 meeting we hear that no, that's not exactly what the case
13 is. I would like to know, it seems like if you called the
14 special ed director at that district she could have told
15 you what we heard today and we wouldn't have heard this at
16 all of these meetings.
17 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, Senator
18 Goodenough, I think that's a good point. I'm glad you
19 raised it because I think it is an important point.
20 First of all, we were asked to rely on data
21 provided to us by -- if the State already had data they
22 had a high level of confidence in, we were specifically
23 directed not to try to ask again things the districts had
24 already reported. There was a lot of pressure on us in
25 that regard. That would be one thing I think we need to
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1 keep in mind.
2 The other thing, when we sort out the
3 differences for a few schools K-8 we will find the degree
4 of variation we've talked about is still going to hold.
5 We will find a few for whom the data probably could have
6 been reflected more accurately by the Department in
7 conveying it to us, but I'm convinced the degree of
8 variation we see is still to the degree of magnitude we've
9 been talking about.
10 And we did visit many districts and, in fact, if
11 you remember, the last presentation I made to this
12 committee I told you of two districts we visited, one of
13 whom -- very similar populations, five miles down the road
14 from one another, one district identified at about twice
15 the rate of the other one. And when we looked it up and
16 figured out what the districts were, we said it can't be.
17 On this chart the director told me 12 percent but on the
18 chart the State provided it said 24 percent. And we were
19 trying to figure it out. I think that might be explained
20 by the same dilemma.
21 The fourth point I would like to make and I will
22 just -- I think at the very least it does suggest the
23 importance of increasing state monitoring and vigilance
24 about what is going on. I guess I'm a little bit
25 concerned if indeed we get assurances from the State these
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1 are the identification rates, they've been certified, so
2 on and so forth, and I wonder if nobody else ever looked
3 to say why is that district at 28 percent, is that a
4 reasonable place to be. And nobody said it is because of
5 an artifact of accounting that really is kind of silly in
6 terms of the real indicator we're trying to get at.
7 I would suggest at the very least that the kind
8 of monitoring we talked about for the state, if it were to
9 be taken seriously, which it only appears to increase
10 staff, this kind of clarification to review the data and
11 be more careful about the implications of them would fall
12 out and that would be an important artifact of that, if
13 nothing else.
14 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
15 have one more question. Early on you said you talked
16 about why we started with 12 years, went to 6 years and
17 now we're down to this. I have a scenario I'm going to
18 pose and see if this is what this is about, because my
19 scenario is I've got seven or eight students that it is
20 $300,000 to place out of district. I have to place them
21 out of district. And two of those students, one of them
22 leaves the district, the other one turns 21. They're
23 200,000 of the 300,000.
24 If the runout went 12 years I would still be
25 receiving the credit for those, but is that coming down to
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1 the two years or one year you're talking about now, that
2 would take care of that problem so we wouldn't have this
3 overfunding?
4 Did I make that clear what I'm trying to say?
5 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman,
6 Representative McOmie, I'm not sure you have it exactly
7 right but I think it is a good point. And maybe I don't
8 have your question right, but I'll try. I think the 12 to
9 6 to 2 is confusing. It was kind of a conceptual lapse on
10 our point as we moved clearly to think beyond the
11 recommendations as to how we would actually implement, we
12 were sort of thinking about how do we sort of let the
13 so-called losers land as softly as possible? We would
14 stretch it over 12 years.
15 We stopped and thought about well, wait a
16 minute. We're holding the sort of losers harmless anyway.
17 The only people affected by that 12-year phase-in are the
18 winners and why should we phase them in over a long period
19 of time? It is the whole idea made less sense.
20 Dr. Smith pointed out in a Supreme Court case in
21 Wyoming that the winners would be delayed, and the idea
22 that this should be sort of phased in was ruled out. We
23 thought then we should give the money to the winners or
24 the people arguably underfunded all of these years right
25 away. And the two-year phase-in I think was offered as
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1 one possible way of just maybe phasing it in over two
2 years.
3 Our recommendation is actually model B with the
4 notion that the winners would be actually fully funded in
5 year one.
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: All right. Was there
7 further comment?
8 MS. CARMEN: Betty Carmen. I am a parent
9 of a child with a disability, 15 years old, and he has
10 autism. He was diagnosed at a very young age, two and a
11 half, and because of the early interventions that we had
12 talked about he made progress. He had no language. The
13 only thing this kid could do was sit in the middle of a
14 floor and spin things, but he continually made progress.
15 When he got to the school district, because of
16 the wonderful school district that we have, because of the
17 wonderful school system that we have in the state of
18 Wyoming, my son continued to make progress.
19 He has language now. They told me at a given
20 point he would never have language, never read, never
21 write, never do anything. My school district worked hard.
22 I worked hard. Every other agency that could possibly be
23 a part of this worked hard to get my son to where he's at.
24 My son reads now. He works on the computer.
25 He's very good at it. His language is still a little
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1 shaky. He can communicate, barely, but he can
2 communicate, which is a wonderful thing. He's making
3 wonderful progress.
4 Had we not had the services for him at a very
5 young age and the early intervention process, he would not
6 have made that much progress. He's done wonderful things
7 because of what we have done in our school system.
8 I know my son is going to have autism for the
9 rest of his life. Every three years we have a
10 re-evaluation process that we go through. Okay, we don't
11 need to reevaluate him for autism again. We know what
12 he's going to have, but we need to reevaluate him for
13 educational processes.
14 There comes a point where you're just stumped,
15 you have no idea what to do. What do we end up doing
16 then? We need to go to the professionals, the ones in the
17 big cities. It costs money. Were those costs even
18 brought into the fact of this model? I don't know.
19 I also work as a parent advocate for the parent
20 information center. I've got IEPs throughout this state,
21 all of different districts, different areas. I have yet
22 to find a district that I think is abusive. I'm working
23 for the parents here. I'm not working for the districts.
24 I think the districts are doing a great job. They're
25 working very, very, very hard with those kids and I don't
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1 think they're abusive at all. In fact, they're almost
2 trying to do whatever they can for the parent within
3 reason. So I don't think they're being elaborate about
4 this.
5 Having a son with autism, I teach the autism
6 workshops throughout the state of Wyoming so I keep kind
7 of updated on that. The incidences of autism has
8 increased so horrendously in the last ten years it is
9 unbelievable. When my son was diagnosed it was 1 child in
10 15,000 that was diagnosed with autism. In some
11 communities today such as New Jersey 1 in 100 children are
12 diagnosed with autism. Within a 14-year period that's
13 huge. That's absolutely huge.
14 So if we're talking about identifying children,
15 of course we're identifying them, but we're getting a lot
16 more of them as well. It is not just the autism, it is
17 all other disabilities, the learning disabilities and
18 attention deficit. And I know that sometimes people think
19 we're overidentifying attention deficit. There's a close
20 correlation between autism and attention deficit, some of
21 those symptoms.
22 You know, when we're talking about this 100
23 percent reimbursement, I don't believe there's school
24 districts that are doing anything but what they need to do
25 for our kids because of this whole new process of No Child
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1 Left Behind, the reauthorization of IDEA in the spring.
2 What is that going to look like? It is going to be even
3 bigger. We're going to be taking money -- if we don't
4 provide services for our kids, under IDEA those monies are
5 gone. It comes out of the general fund. My other two
6 kids that don't have special needs, they're going to be
7 lacking in services, in teachers, in programs and possibly
8 books.
9 I have a problem with that. I think that we all
10 have a problem with that. I think that's why we're here.
11 So I would really, really encourage the 100 percent
12 reimbursement because it has not been abused. It has been
13 used very nobly with great intelligence. And I think the
14 people here are for that. I offer this committee to ask
15 me any question you would like as a parent. Thank you.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative Simons.
17 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: Madam Chairman,
18 when I first went on Appropriations we didn't have all of
19 special education in our schools, we didn't have all of
20 the facilities available to us now. We spent millions of
21 dollars sending children out of state, millions, and it
22 came out of our general fund, our general fund from
23 Appropriations.
24 I've been looking for the figures and maybe I
25 will have them by this afternoon, but it was horrendous
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1 the amount of money for out-of-state placements that we
2 were doing which we're not doing as much of now unless it
3 is a court out-of-state placement.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: I think due to the hour
5 and our time, we're going to need to come back to these
6 bills after lunch. Thank you, Dr. Parrish. I know you do
7 need to leave. Hopefully, everyone has asked their
8 questions they need to of Dr. Parrish before we again work
9 on it. I hoped it might move faster but we knew in
10 tackling this we've got a very complex issue that was not
11 easily resolved the first two go-arounds and obviously it
12 is not easily resolved now. We're still struggling with
13 it.
14 Thank you for your work and the information. I
15 think it is probably more light than we've had shed on it
16 in terms of knowing what we're doing in a long time. I
17 know you need to catch your plane.
18 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Madam Chairman, am I
19 correct in thinking that if we fail to take any action on
20 these matters that the 100 percent system will stay
21 intact?
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: With the current minimal
23 monitoring that is there. And as has been agreed by all
24 parties, including the task force that was out there
25 works, the monitoring is extremely minimal and probably
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1 not serving our purposes well, so that's one of the pieces
2 you do need to keep in mind by no action.
3 Superintendent Catchpole.
4 MS. CATCHPOLE: Madam Chairman, I wanted
5 to take this opportunity to express my deep appreciation
6 for the work that the House and Senate Education Committee
7 have done separately and then as the joint committee. We
8 have had emotional issues like the one today to deal with
9 in the last eight years. I'm in the process of archiving
10 lots of things and how things have changed in eight years
11 from cell phones -- we were looking at everybody has a
12 cell phone. Eight years ago you wouldn't find people in
13 meetings with cell phones. It has been interesting as
14 we're archiving things.
15 But one of the things that has always been
16 present is that this Education Committee has always had
17 the best interests of children in mind, and for that I'm
18 deeply appreciative.
19 We've had wars, we've had battles. We've won
20 some, we have lost some, but always trying to do what's
21 the best and the right thing for children in Wyoming has
22 been the center focus along with recognizing all of the
23 needs of the state of Wyoming and all of our customers.
24 Sometimes people think that the only customers
25 the Department of Ed has are educators, and we have
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1 learned, certainly, that this is about all of Wyoming and
2 all of our needs and still placing education as the
3 highest priority.
4 As I was looking through the books, I think that
5 Katherine and Mac were on the very first education team
6 that we started with. And some have come and some have
7 gone, and I thank you for your endurance to stay through
8 the process.
9 Wonderful things have really happened, and as
10 I'm out with other national superintendents, I would want
11 everyone to know that the last meetings I was at a week
12 ago, people were leaving the meetings to go home because
13 they're having 3 to 5 percent budget cuts this year with
14 budgets being reduced while they're at the meeting. So
15 national travel is way down, services are being cut to
16 departments, services are being cut to schools. And so it
17 is something when you say your prayers at night, Wyoming
18 is in a very, very good position and we should be grateful
19 and thankful for that.
20 So I would like to take an opportunity to
21 introduce to you -- as you know, No Child Left Behind will
22 change the way we do business in lots of ways. We have
23 been working so that through the transition we have as
24 much done as is possible. Our final AYP report will be in
25 and approved January 31st, so we're bringing the new
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1 superintendent up to date on all of the things that we've
2 been working for since last January 8th when that bill
3 passed.
4 But with us today for the entire day's
5 festivities and hard work is Pat Clobber (phonetic) who is
6 Secretary Page's regional representative -- director I was
7 going to say -- and Pat is here from Denver. Her office
8 is in Denver. She has the job that many of you may recall
9 that Lynn Simons from Wyoming had under the Clinton
10 administration and Pat now has that job and has indeed
11 more responsibilities and is very supportive.
12 So if any of you need any information, we will
13 have Pat's number, e-mail address for you and she can get
14 you whatever you might need.
15 Also coming this afternoon will be Dr. Tim
16 Waters from McREL, and I would want you to know that
17 they're a congressionally funded laboratory doing
18 wonderful things in Wyoming helping us to work through No
19 Child Left Behind, helping us work in AYP. Many school
20 districts have them on contract doing things besides what
21 they can do for us. Those are two names for those of you
22 who will stay here to indeed remember.
23 And what I would like to do at this time is
24 really the entire department would like to thank you for
25 your service and we would like to present you with
123
1 certificates today. I know that your pay is not great and
2 you don't sometimes get many thanks, but we thank you for
3 the relationship we've had in the last eight years.
4 Irene -- the chairmanship of both Irene and Bill
5 in this last round has been extraordinary and so there's a
6 little something to take home, and then we have a
7 certificate that says: The Wyoming Department of
8 Education recognizes Irene Devin for your dedication and
9 determination to provide rich opportunities for all
10 Wyoming children. We present you with this certificate of
11 appreciation. Be it known that good stewardship, high
12 expectations and standards results in opportunities for
13 students.
14 Robert Peck, Charlie Scott, Kathryn Sessions,
15 Bill Stafford, Tom Lockhart, Del...
16 With that, those of you that are staying on, I
17 would wish you the best of luck. And those of you who are
18 finding other things to do, I hope transition goes well.
19 I will tell you that in the department we're doing
20 everything humanly possible to help Trent Blankenship take
21 over -- Trent is back here -- working through transitions
22 of the many responsibilities that the superintendent has
23 and we want that to be smooth and be good for kids.
24 So on behalf of Wyoming children, thank you for
25 what you've done to help us.
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1 COCHAIR DEVIN: Judy.
2 SENATOR SESSIONS: I would like to say
3 something to Superintendent Catchpole. Do you remember
4 when I invited you out to dinner when you were first
5 elected?
6 MS. CATCHPOLE: I just told that story
7 this morning in the office.
8 SENATOR SESSIONS: I said as far as I'm
9 concerned education is not partisan and we will try to
10 work together. I will say that I've seen some tremendous
11 changes and we have not always agreed, but I will tell you
12 I think you have had children -- I think you have had
13 children at the forefront of your thoughts. And I've seen
14 the wonderful people hired by you and I've worked with
15 them and I just want to say I think possibly -- I just
16 commend and thank you because we brought you to our point
17 of view at times and you brought us to your point of view
18 at times, maybe kicking and screaming, but that's what it
19 is about. Thank you for eight years.
20 MS. CATCHPOLE: Thank you.
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: Well, Superintendent
22 Catchpole, we have as a committee really appreciated the
23 accessibility of your office and I would say to a person
24 your staff has been so accommodating when we have needed
25 information and when we have needed support.
125
1 And I know that many of the projects that this
2 committee has asked for, the legislature as a whole has
3 asked for have been able to progress not because you were
4 funded for the kind of support you needed, necessarily,
5 but people would come forward and give two and three
6 months of time to support the collection of data that we
7 needed.
8 And we came from a base where almost no data was
9 collected at the state level for any of the things we have
10 to do to a point where now we are electronically
11 coordinating that data, but we have been launched into a
12 system that demands significant amounts of data to support
13 the actions and the legal process and to support our
14 actions in just basic fairness. We've needed that piece,
15 and your staff and yourself have done a marvelous job. I
16 think your progress in linking every school in Wyoming
17 with technology will serve generations into the future.
18 And the recognition of that leadership
19 development in our superintendents and principals and
20 staff development in our teachers probably makes the most
21 significant difference in education and there could not be
22 a department that has worked harder than that. So thank
23 you.
24 MS. CATCHPOLE: Let me just say that I
25 would just be skipping out the door saying this is over,
126
1 but transition I can tell you really has been very
2 emotional, because it is the people who work in the
3 Department of Ed who will show up at midnight or 5:00 in
4 the morning when somebody needs something. They're
5 recognized nationally. Any one of that team can walk out
6 the door and make more money nationally. They're calling
7 us all the time saying how did you do this in Wyoming,
8 that in Wyoming, can we talk to so-and-so.
9 So we've built a national reputation with the
10 quality of people who have come to work in the Department
11 of Ed and it will be very difficult to say good-bye to
12 them.
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: I think --
14 REPRESENTATIVE MCGRAW: Madam Chairman,
15 I'm leaving also. My residency has changed technically
16 legally and I can't participate as much as I would like
17 to. I also wanted to say good-bye to everyone and it has
18 been a privilege and honor working with this group. For
19 the most part it has been fun. That's what I'm going to
20 take with me.
21 To those of you who are going to continue on in
22 the legislature and with the Department, I wish you my
23 very best and Godspeed to all of you.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: Thank you.
25 We will take one hour for lunch. We will
127
1 reconvene at 1:00 and take up our agenda as it is and
2 hopefully make good progress.
3 (Meeting proceedings recessed
4 12:00 p.m. and reconvened
5 1:10 p.m., December 16, 2002.)
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: I'm going to ask as our
7 first order of business, Dave, will you please hand out
8 the two bills that we have had drafted, and then I'm going
9 to have you walk through them. And they have diligently
10 worked on these through the weekend, so I think we'll take
11 some --
12 MR. NELSON: The first draft you're
13 getting is 314. This incorporates the cost-based special
14 education model into it. We do have another one, and when
15 I'm through going through this one, we will go through the
16 one that's based on 100 percent reimbursement as well as
17 brings forward a standard, the guidelines to monitor
18 provisional district special education.
19 I think the best way is to go through page by
20 page and explain how these react to the model presented
21 this morning by Dr. Parrish at the previous meetings.
22 Again, 313.W4 --
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: People are having trouble
24 hearing. Could you come up here, please.
25 MR. NELSON: You have to look at me now,
128
1 gosh, hold on.
2 We will start with page 2. And this is, as you
3 recall -- part of the recommendations forwarded in the
4 cost-based approach was to provide for supplemental
5 assistance. The key to this assistance would be that it
6 would be available to school districts during the year in
7 which the need exists, so during any one school year they
8 would under this approach be able to apply to the state
9 department, express their needs.
10 The state department would then review it and
11 then if it was approved by the state department, would get
12 their supplemental assistance in the year in which it was
13 requested. So that's an important feature of this. It
14 would be made available during the year of the request,
15 which goes with the recommendations contained in the model
16 that was presented to you.
17 Quickly, there is an amount within the school
18 foundation program account that will be set aside for
19 this. In this bill it is set for $2 million for the first
20 school year. That was as recommended by Dr. Parrish in
21 the AIR report. It would be outside the cost-based model.
22 It would not be considered or included as part of the
23 cost-based amount that's determined under the model, so it
24 would be something set aside that would have to be applied
25 for every year for which that need is experienced by a
129
1 school district. So it is only there upon application and
2 upon a proven need.
3 And one other requirement that exists is at the
4 bottom of page 2, paragraph (i), lines 19 through 23, this
5 again carries forward another recommendation within the
6 report that they must expend at least 1 percent of the
7 total amount computed that year under the special
8 education adjustment. So there is kind of a trigger.
9 In addition to the other consideration, at the
10 top of page 3 is the extraordinary circumstances that
11 would be faced by the district.
12 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, do you
13 want to entertain questions as we go or at the end?
14 COCHAIR DEVIN: If they're clarification,
15 let's do them now. If they tend to get philosophical and
16 so forth, we will do it after we hear the whole concept.
17 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes, please, go ahead.
19 SENATOR SCOTT: Lines 19 through 23, let
20 me see if I understand this one, because if I read it
21 literally it may not be doing what you think. "...incurs
22 costs for special education programs which exceed 1
23 percent of the total amount."
24 To make the math easier, suppose we had a
25 district that was going to get $100,000 under the special
130
1 education adjustment to the block grant part. And if I
2 read this literally, your trigger then is $1,000, they
3 have to have spent at least 1,000 of that 100,000 to
4 achieve this result. Is that what you intended?
5 MR. NELSON: No, Madam Chairman. Thank
6 you, Senator Scott. That is not worded properly. I think
7 it would be 1 percent above.
8 SENATOR SCOTT: So they would have to
9 incur at least 101?
10 MR. NELSON: Exactly.
11 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, we should
12 make a note that if we proceed with this bill we need to
13 amend that.
14 MR. NELSON: Continuing, Madam Chairman,
15 subsection (b), lines 6 through 21, this, again, is the
16 application procedure, pretty much as directed in the
17 report that you received, again requiring -- the burden is
18 on the district to notify the state department for this
19 assistance.
20 Subsection (c) is requirements for the state
21 department to set up a process to review district
22 applications, that they must notify them with the reasons
23 for their action on an application and making it clear
24 that these amounts are from the special amounts set aside
25 by the legislature and that they are to be considered
131
1 outside the block grant model.
2 Subsection (d) is a reporting requirement that
3 the districts would report to the state department on
4 expenditures.
5 And subsection (e) is just rule and regulation
6 authority for the state department to implement the
7 program.
8 Page 5 and top of page 6 enumerate duties --
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
10 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, you know,
11 we haven't seen this before today and we're going pretty
12 fast. Let me ask, where are the criteria for the state
13 department to decide which grants get awarded? You've got
14 two triggers, I understand, when you apply. Where does it
15 say which ones get awarded? What criteria do we use?
16 MR. NELSON: The confusion is whether you
17 need (a), (i), (ii)? I think the way that's worded,
18 they're both to apply to it.
19 SENATOR SCOTT: No, Madam Chairman. As I
20 understand it, these are the criteria where you're
21 eligible to apply, you are 1 percent over the amount.
22 MR. NELSON: Right.
23 SENATOR SCOTT: And you "experience
24 extraordinary experiences impairing your ability,"
25 whatever that means. If you meet those criteria, you're
132
1 eligible to apply. You also automatically get the grant
2 or does the state department apply other criteria and
3 judgment to decide which grants get awarded?
4 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, I have not
5 specified that. That is to come with their process and
6 procedures that they're to set up by rule and regulation.
7 SENATOR SCOTT: So, Madam Chairman, what
8 we've got here is the -- you're eligible to apply but
9 we're leaving to the judgment of the state department
10 without any particular criteria as to which of those are
11 to be awarded?
12 MR. NELSON: Again, I took it from the
13 report. What I provided is an outline of a program, and
14 yes, those are not specifically stated by statute. The
15 committee is encouraged to add and put the criteria that
16 they want in there.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: So the process is here,
18 the amount is here --
19 MR. NELSON: Very similar to the
20 vocational education program. This is pretty similar to
21 what we put together for that program.
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: But not specifics.
23 MR. NELSON: Yes.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: Some of those criteria
25 discussed this morning on contingency which was high
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1 number of justified -- of students that can be justified,
2 that you had an extraordinarily higher-than-average
3 number, that you had an exceptionally high-cost student or
4 an exceptionally high-cost person in a situation were the
5 ones that would indicate -- anytime you establish a
6 process like that, there's a significant amount that will
7 go into rule. And the committee needs to think about what
8 they would like to go into statute versus that rule, but a
9 lot of that process needs spelled out.
10 MR. NELSON: Continuing, Madam Chairman,
11 bottom of page 5 and the top of page 6, again, these are
12 duties that we're imposing upon the state department to
13 implement various programs and activities and duties to
14 carry out the requirements of the cost-based adjustment.
15 1 is to establish guidelines and criteria for
16 the accounting and the computing of the FTE equivalency
17 basis for personnel, staff, so forth that are used in
18 tying ADM to the guidelines. And again, this is similar
19 to what you did in the vocational education proposal, only
20 this is dealing with the special education.
21 Paragraph 24 at the bottom of page 5 and the top
22 of page 6 requires the -- little bit more vigorous duties
23 for the state department in identifying, reviewing and
24 assessing district practices in terms of the provision of
25 special education programs which, again, was a
134
1 recommendation of the report.
2 Paragraph 25 requires them to measure and track
3 student performance that are enrolled in special education
4 programs, and 26 requires them to establish the necessary
5 procedural and monitoring requirements for the
6 supplemental education program, assistance program which
7 you may want to embellish.
8 21-3-314 is a conforming amendment with the
9 charter school law and it simply excludes treatment for
10 special education treated as a 100 percent reimbursement.
11 We put it into the cost-based model so we put it in there
12 to consider the 100 percent reimbursement as a way to
13 consider reimbursement to charter schools.
14 21-3-127 is the statutory provision for the
15 cost-based adjustment, and it continues over to page 14, I
16 believe. So this is really the guts of the computation.
17 First of all, we just deleted the definition that's no
18 longer relevant. It was in terms of looking at the 100
19 percent reimbursement.
20 The top of page 8 is where we begin with the
21 definitions of the formula components that are included in
22 the model. And as I say, they're taken pretty much from
23 the AIR report. The top of page 8 is the definition of
24 FTE, what, in essence, that means.
25 Paragraph (iv) is what we mean when we speak of
135
1 special education personnel in the computation for
2 applying that measure to the guidelines. And the same for
3 special education administrative staff and special
4 education teacher and special education related service
5 provider. These are all referenced within the components
6 of the formula.
7 Subsection (b) is where the adjustment --
8 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman.
9 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative Lockhart.
11 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Question and
12 clarification on that, Madam Chairman. We were visiting
13 at lunch about the special help that's needed for some
14 students in this program. And as I read this it says
15 certified or licensed, and I was thinking about, Jeff, the
16 person that came from, I guess, outside the school system
17 on a one on one. Would they be certified or licensed?
18 That answers my question. I was thinking school
19 certified and licensed and apparently that answers my
20 question.
21 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman.
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes, Senator Sessions.
23 SENATOR SESSIONS: I have a question along
24 those same lines because in the No Child Left Behind
25 there's a real gray area about certified instructional
136
1 assistance if you use federal money.
2 Now, if -- and maybe Jeff can answer this, if we
3 commingle -- we commingle special education monies with
4 federal and state monies, so that means, then, that every
5 special ed assistant in our districts will have to be
6 certified. That's the question that -- and the same way
7 with title schools.
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: Can anyone help us on
9 those sets of rules?
10 MS. MOFIELD: I'm Sara Mofield, a special
11 ed consultant. Right now special education para-educators
12 do not have to have certification. However, with the
13 reauthorization of IDEA, which we're looking at this
14 summer, that is a very likely possibility.
15 REPRESENTATIVE WASSERBERGER: Madam
16 Chairman, if I may add, that most special programs
17 departments in school districts are rushing to get
18 para-educators in this field and they are doing all kind
19 of in-services through the state and through school
20 districts to get that done.
21 So yeah, it was a new area in special programs
22 that came through with the No Child Left Behind act.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: And apparently the new
24 IDEA recertification. Now, then, the Professional
25 Teaching Standards Board would issue that certification,
137
1 will they, or will it be issued by someone else?
2 MS. MOFIELD: Madam Chairman, that
3 determination has not been made yet.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: These are the
5 paraprofessionals.
6 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, just a
7 question. Is there a phase-in of the paraprofessionals of
8 the assistants or is it just wham, the beginning of next
9 school year they will all have to be certified?
10 REPRESENTATIVE WASSERBERGER: Madam
11 Chairman, I think I can answer that. Yeah, there is a
12 phase-in and actually a grandfather clause for those aides
13 in special programs right now, they will be grandfathered
14 in. But most of them in my building are taking the
15 para-educator courses to be certified. So there is a
16 phase-in by the federal government.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: And I had not heard the
18 phase-in piece addressed. I heard the grandfathering
19 piece addressed.
20 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, I think
21 there's a question about the grandfathering, though. You
22 can use a grandfathering thing in with your instructional
23 assistants if you're not a chapter school -- a title
24 school. I mean, there is a problem because if you're
25 using federal money, there's a requirement that they be
138
1 certified.
2 And I got a phone call from an instructional
3 assistant and she said that if you're -- you have to be
4 certified if you use federal money within your school,
5 your title schools and the commingling of special ed
6 funds. There's no grandfathering. You either are
7 certified or you have no job.
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: I'm not sure that's a
9 resolved issue because that is in the IDEA that is to be
10 yet authorized this spring.
11 So probably she needs to be communicating on the
12 federal level at this point in time.
13 MR. NELSON: Continuing, Madam Chairman,
14 page 9 at the bottom and continuing over onto 10 through
15 the top of page 12 is the actual computation where you
16 take the district's average daily membership and apply it
17 to the standards and the guidelines that were contained
18 within the report to arrive at staffing levels. And
19 that's really the core of the recommendation.
20 So instead of the -- the stricken language on
21 page 9, lines 16 through 20, gets rid of the 100 percent
22 reimbursement language and instead of that you compute for
23 each district.
24 Paragraph (a) there on the top of page 10 deals
25 with the special education personnel that guidelines have
139
1 been set for in that model. You would take the average
2 daily membership of that district for the prior school
3 year and apply it to those guidelines to arrive at a
4 staffing level.
5 From that you would subtract any average daily
6 membership that meets the qualifications for a remote
7 school. As you recall, there was special treatment for
8 remote schools in providing special education services,
9 and they were applied to a different set of guidelines.
10 And the qualifications for remoteness were the
11 mileage of 15 miles or more from the location of the
12 district office as well as at least 50 or less within your
13 special education program. So those would be the triggers
14 that would identify remoteness.
15 And that average daily membership for those
16 schools would be applied to a different set of guidelines.
17 And those both deal with special education teachers as
18 well as special education related sorts of providers. So
19 there would be two sets of guidelines applied to those
20 circumstances.
21 Following that computation, there's an amount
22 that's added for the district administrative staffing.
23 Again, that's based upon average daily membership and it
24 is applied to those sets of guidelines impacting that.
25 And the last set of guidelines that are involved
140
1 include the nonpersonnel component as well as the
2 additional special education services component, again,
3 all having special guidelines applied to them to deal with
4 things like transportation and so forth.
5 But you would do that for each district and
6 following application of ADM you would arrive at an amount
7 and then that amount would be tallied and would be divided
8 by the three-year rolling ADM and would be an adjustment
9 to the cost-based model, and it would fit into the
10 existing set of adjustments that are identified in
11 statute.
12 That, in essence, is the adjustment. The other
13 important part of the adjustment appears at page 16,
14 subparagraph (f) or subsection (f) -- oops, not 16 --
15 13 -- no, 14. And that simply is a statement that we do
16 not intend to reduce the maintenance of effort under the
17 federal law. And that is important because it does
18 provide you a base from which you work in the
19 computations.
20 And so those are the prime elements. Subsection
21 (e), that as repealed deals with the old 100 percent
22 reimbursement. It was kind of an incentive to reduce
23 expenditures. It would no longer apply.
24 Getting into the other parts of the bill,
25 section 4, this is the two-year phase-in, as we call it.
141
1 In essence, what you do, in the first year of application
2 of this law you would base 50 percent funding on the 100
3 percent reimbursement basis and the other 50 percent under
4 the cost-based method, and that -- those two added
5 together would comprise the first year funding under this
6 approach.
7 The second year, then it would go to the full
8 100 percent of the cost-based method that we just
9 reviewed.
10 Section 5, this brings in the regionalization
11 concept, and what we require is that the state department
12 would review that, would come back with a plan to this
13 committee on or before November 1 and present a plan on
14 how this may be implemented statewide.
15 Subsection (b), this requires the state
16 department and the Department of Audit, school finance
17 section, to review the data that's used in establishing
18 the statewide guidelines in the model and to make sure and
19 validate the accuracy. Same kind of procedure we did for
20 the voc ed on the information that we used in its
21 cost-based approach. And that essentially is section 5.
22 Section 6 is the money part. Subsection (a)
23 earmarks $2 million within the school foundation program
24 for the supplemental assistance, and subsection (b)
25 provides 908,000 to the state department for the beefed-up
142
1 monitoring programs, the supplemental program, the review
2 of the standards, and the other requirements that's
3 imposed on them under this as well as five additional
4 people. And so that's included.
5 And then section 7 is just the effective dates.
6 I apologize, Madam Chairman, we did not finish
7 this until yesterday so that's why you're getting it
8 today.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott, you had a
10 question.
11 SENATOR SCOTT: Yeah, question on the
12 appropriation. As I understand, these applications will
13 come in over the year, course of the year, as
14 circumstances and needs arise. What happens when the
15 amount of the legitimate applications exceeds the $2
16 million appropriation?
17 MR. NELSON: Under this proposal what we
18 do is prorate it the best we can, trying to keep true to
19 the exact amount, but again, 2 million is based on their
20 recommendation. It could very well be exceeded, but as I
21 said, under this draft -- and that language is page 3 --
22 maybe it is page 4 --
23 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Page 4.
24 MR. NELSON: -- page 4, you're right,
25 lines 11 through 19, which would kick in should that
143
1 circumstance happen.
2 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes.
4 SENATOR SCOTT: Let me see if I understand
5 this. As I say, my understanding the way this would work
6 is that you would get applications in over the course of a
7 year. This isn't the sort of thing where there's an
8 application up front and everybody has the same deadline
9 and the reason for that is you weren't sure what was going
10 to happen to you at the beginning of the year. Additional
11 kids move into the district and additional kids get
12 identified for special education. Your costs then go up.
13 So you said, look, we've got an identified
14 problem. We've got a grant for a hundred thousand to
15 supplement, and we then -- the total number of grants then
16 exceeds the amount available, all of a sudden you get a
17 quarter of the way into the year or halfway through the
18 year, and you find out it wasn't for 100,000 but for
19 90,000 and you were building for that level.
20 It seems to me we're building in a land mine
21 that is going to get us in trouble. I don't have an
22 answer but I can see where trouble is likely to come
23 because of the nature of this piece.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: Well, and Senator Scott,
25 with the infusion of the new federal money at this point
144
1 in time, we may have a bridge where we select some
2 history, knowing we've got about a $2 million fund there
3 coming into districts.
4 Part of this I guess is going to be -- part of
5 it would have to be some collection of some historical
6 what do we need in this fund. Maybe you would use the 2
7 million in the first year and have to come back for
8 supplemental -- is this annual?
9 MR. NELSON: It is annual.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: So you may have to come
11 back for supplemental and increase the amount. I'm not
12 sure other than the professional judgment applied how we
13 would make an appropriation that had a sliding scale.
14 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, obviously
15 the way you do it is the same way as we do the foundation
16 as a whole, and you don't put a specific appropriation in
17 and assume the foundation program would pay, which is
18 basically our current system, is it not?
19 MR. NELSON: Yes.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman,
21 the way I read that on lines 11 through 19, page 4, is
22 that if it exceeds the amount, the $2 million, you would
23 have to go back and prorate that and say to the school
24 districts, "Well, you know, you got a hundred thousand of
25 proration. Why are you only entitled to 85,000?" So
145
1 we're not truly cost funding that grant. Is that the way
2 this reads?
3 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, the
4 supplemental program is outside of the cost-based model.
5 It is to take care of supplemental funding. And what that
6 is is if for some reason you do exceed that due to
7 circumstances beyond your control or for whatever reason,
8 that as Senator Scott points out, that state department
9 will have leverage in determining that, then you get this
10 additional aid.
11 But yes, that is a concern that should you need
12 100,000, we only have 90,000 or whatever. There is that
13 concern.
14 But again, the 2 million was brought forward
15 from the study. They felt that that would be sufficient
16 in their judgment, for what -- if that helps you at all.
17 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman,
18 what I'm concerned about -- and I understand, but the way
19 this reads is that "shall establish a uniform percentage
20 by which the amount requested by each district is so
21 reduced so the amounts distributed under this section for
22 that year are nearly as possible equal to the amounts
23 requested by the district."
24 I thought they were supposed to get this money
25 up front. When they requested it I thought -- they submit
146
1 the voucher and say this is how much it is costing me, we
2 replace that.
3 MR. NELSON: That's correct, Madam
4 Chairman.
5 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: But the way this
6 reads to me, you could go back in -- if we ran out of the
7 $2 million, you could go back in and say we're not going
8 to have the money, we've had more requests coming in, so
9 you're not going to even get this this time.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Biggio, would you shed
11 some light on this? I know that our payments are made,
12 what, on a -- 11 payments a year?
13 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, Larry Biggio
14 from the Department of Education. We currently make
15 foundation payments three times a year: August, October
16 and February. But under this provision if you intend us
17 to do something on -- to meet cash flow needs, and I
18 assume maybe that was part of your concern, we would have
19 a hard time doing any kind of proration if we were trying
20 to meet cash flow needs. You're almost to the point of
21 saying let's roll all of the requests up at one point
22 after the fact and then distribute the money.
23 So I would have a hard time dealing with this
24 until I saw all of the requests on the table and then make
25 a decision about proration.
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1 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Biggio, let me ask you
2 a question. If you have a student and the IEP indicates
3 certain services, they're not all going to be delivered at
4 once.
5 MR. BIGGIO: Correct.
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: You would have that
7 payment over the year. So would you envision you would
8 make it in three payments or maybe in two payments because
9 of the timing of the payments?
10 MR. BIGGIO: I'm back to that issue, Madam
11 Chairman, as we talked about earlier on proration. I'm
12 not clear how I would prorate the payment.
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: If you set the proration
14 apart at this point in time, how would you make the
15 payments?
16 MR. BIGGIO: On a monthly or quarterly
17 basis. My assumption, we wouldn't get to the point of
18 being overexpended until maybe the second half of the
19 year. And we're incurring those costs and I would not
20 want to make a payment until the district had a short-term
21 obligation for that payment, like in the next month or
22 within that next quarter.
23 So I would see probably doing something
24 quarterly or monthly and primarily at the last part of
25 that year of funding, the second half of that year of
148
1 funding. If we had to go back to the pro-rata sort of
2 thing, those adjustments would have to come out of the
3 foundation payments.
4 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, my question
5 is you wouldn't want to make a decision on pro rata until
6 after I'd seen all the requests, after the close of the
7 year. Sometime after June 30th, I take the requests for
8 payment, roll them up and match them to the 2 million and
9 decide if I had to cut, you know, everybody by 15 percent
10 or everybody by 10 percent.
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: Does that sort of give you
12 a picture of the implementation pieces?
13 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Yes.
14 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
15 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, if you
16 follow that procedure and say you're funding on a monthly
17 basis, which I think is something you might have to do,
18 you then come to the end of the year and you've spent not
19 2 million but 2.5 million -- and I'm afraid in this area
20 that sort of thing can happen to you -- and you come back
21 and say, oops, school districts, we put out 25 percent too
22 much, are you then going to try to recapture that from all
23 of the districts?
24 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, Senator
25 Scott, the way I understand the intent of this
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1 legislation -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- if you
2 establish a limit, maximum amount we can pay under this
3 contingency fund, so in order to stay within that limit I
4 would somehow have to get that money back from the
5 districts that I've already paid it to and they've already
6 incurred the expense, it would somehow have to come out of
7 either next year's foundation payment or some sort of
8 billing to those folks, in that fashion.
9 SENATOR SCOTT: That's going to be a
10 difficulty, I think, in the cost-based system. If he
11 tries to do it -- and I think you can tell how much
12 difficulty --
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: We've never seen any come
14 back even when it was inappropriately paid out, have we?
15 SENATOR SCOTT: We couldn't even get an
16 offset on the stuff.
17 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
18 it strikes me this is not unlike what we do with all other
19 departments within government where we have a budgeted
20 amount and for whatever reason we run into trouble. I
21 think this would enforce some discipline on the Department
22 of Education on those that were chosen for these -- this
23 $2 million, to not exceed it if they possibly could.
24 And I think that would be the intent of having
25 the figure in here in that $2 million, that's what we hope
150
1 you work towards, we hope that's the right number. If it
2 is, we change the number as opposed to having a top end.
3 That sounds like what we do with the other departments,
4 including the Department of Education in other areas like
5 staffing and so forth.
6 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, it does,
7 but this one is a bit of different beast. Having written
8 a number of provisions that affect the health area, here
9 you've got money expenditures where there is an
10 enforceable federal entitlement to the services. That is
11 a significant complication.
12 You also have typically in the other areas --
13 I'm thinking of the things we do in the health department,
14 they -- in Medicaid what they do is simply carry the
15 bill -- don't pay the bill and carry it over to the next
16 year and come back to us for more money, which I suspect
17 would happen here. That's the closest parallel.
18 You can't do moratoriums on enrollment. You
19 can't cut down the eligibility to make the funds stretch.
20 That's the other things we do in the health area. I
21 really suspect that what you're seeing is the 2 million
22 appropriation is a fiction and they will simply have to
23 expend the money and come back to us and say, "We've got
24 to have more money because we spent next year's
25 appropriation already." And that is what happens to us in
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1 the Medicaid area.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Sessions.
3 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, just a
4 short -- I have to bring this up before we go on, and I
5 would like some opinion given, which I had asked for
6 earlier but no one spoke to it.
7 I gave -- and it is in reference to what is
8 going on -- we're trying to do as far as the lawsuit goes.
9 I gave you a copy of the tentative plan for the
10 facilitation of the lawsuit earlier in the summer and now
11 what we've done with it is we've taken it to the governor
12 to let him see it to see what he would be willing to do,
13 if he would take charge or if he wants it put through the
14 legislature.
15 I have seen us on the brink of maybe being able
16 to sit down at the same table and discuss issues and maybe
17 come to some terms on what is happening with the lawsuit
18 and the funding formula.
19 What I'm seeing with this, and I'm most
20 uncomfortable with this, is that we're putting something
21 else within that formula. And I think when we put it into
22 the formula, it comes under the scrutiny of the court
23 also, and you have another reason, then, for going back to
24 court. And I don't know about you, I've been at this a
25 long time and I'm tired of it. And I will tell you why,
152
1 because school districts are unable to do any long-term
2 planning for students. They cannot plan on anything long
3 term.
4 And we have got to end it. And we have got to
5 fund it within the resources we have as a state also.
6 But, that said, with our 15 -- we have this --
7 when we're going back to miles again and putting it
8 arbitrarily in the statute are we not bumping up against
9 what was said in our Supreme Court decision about how
10 arbitrary that is and that's why we went to an adjusted
11 formula, so to speak, for small schools?
12 If I'm off base, Dave, tell me. But this is
13 such a concern to me because we're infusing something else
14 in a mix that we have a chance, maybe, of solving. And
15 then keeping this on the outside of it, however we plan to
16 do it, would be my hope, at least for now to see how this
17 comes out before our hold harmless for small districts
18 comes out in another year.
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: Dave, would you answer the
20 part on the philosophical -- the 15-mile piece?
21 Before we get too far into philosophical, it
22 would be good for the committee to review the other bill.
23 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: Madam Chairman,
24 before he answers may I ask a question on that same
25 subject? That section (b) gives me heartburn. Here we
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1 have small schools, small districts and now we have remote
2 schools. Where do remote schools come from? All of my
3 schools are under one district but they're not 15 miles
4 apart and they all have got a lot of kids in them and now
5 they're going to be remote schools?
6 We're -- again, small schools take it in the
7 shorts and I'm really very disturbed with this particular
8 little section, as you might well knew I would be, and so
9 I want an explanation of where remote came from. I know I
10 have been negligent because of illness in my family of
11 attending these meetings and I apologize to the committee
12 for that, but I need to be brought up to speed why we have
13 three different definitions for small districts, small
14 schools.
15 MR. NELSON: I will try, Madam Chairman,
16 Dr. Parrish -- I don't want to put words in his mouth or
17 speak incorrectly, but this came from his report and it is
18 based on a provision of services. Not only do you have it
19 here but also in voc ed. There's another remote
20 feature --
21 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: Figures.
22 MR. NELSON: There's a number of
23 remoteness going around. But essentially, I believe what
24 this is trying to measure is what they felt in their
25 research and their review of the data that the provision
154
1 of services in these locations require additional
2 consideration. And that's just based upon only special ed
3 and not looking beyond, as we do, a big picture, much as
4 the voc ed people do.
5 But again, it is based upon their review of
6 setting standards that they felt there must be an
7 additional consideration for these circumstances and
8 that's how they described them.
9 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: Madam Chairman,
10 the 15 percent or the 15 mile and the 50 percent came
11 directly from Mr. Parrish? Those were the figures he gave
12 you?
13 MR. NELSON: Yes, Madam Chairman, the 15
14 mile as well as the 50 or less students enrolled in a
15 program were his recommendations as to a threshold to
16 activate this adjustment -- this special guideline.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: So this is additional
18 money that would be given?
19 MR. NELSON: It is an additional amount.
20 What you do, instead of applying to the overall statewide
21 guideline, which is what your guidelines for special
22 education personnel are on the district basis, you apply
23 your student numbers to that. This says in remote areas
24 there are special guidelines put together to provide the
25 required special education effort.
155
1 And so he doesn't call them the special
2 education personnel. He divides it up into special
3 education teachers as well as contractors, providers,
4 people you contract services out to. So there are two
5 special sets of circumstances. But again, it is another
6 remoteness feature built into this.
7 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: Madam Chairman,
8 may I ask one more question?
9 MR. NELSON: I hope I can answer it.
10 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: What's the
11 provision?
12 MR. NELSON: 15 or less and 50 or less.
13 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: This is
14 ridiculous. In my district Moorcroft is 35 miles from
15 Sundance, Hulett is 40, and now they've then become
16 remote --
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: Well, I think he --
18 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: -- but they're
19 within the district? That's ridiculous.
20 COCHAIR DEVIN: His purpose, as I
21 understood, he believes there were additional costs to
22 districts like Marlene's to provide the special education,
23 more administrative costs and more personnel costs, so it
24 would get additional money to that type of a district
25 because it can't do it as efficiently as an urban
156
1 district.
2 Senator Scott.
3 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, another
4 question of how this would work. This formula generates
5 an amount they're needing for special education. The
6 district implements a series of programs working with the
7 preschools and whatnot, significantly reduces the demand.
8 And I think that's something there's a real probability
9 for.
10 There's nothing in here that ties that special
11 ed money to actually being used on special ed as opposed
12 to the preventative things, is there, other than you got
13 to keep square with the feds if you want the federal
14 money?
15 So that would be a real major advantage of this
16 system. The districts would have the flexibility to spend
17 the money on the preventative aspects if they thought it
18 could work.
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: Would you walk us through
20 the other option, the other bill?
21 MR. NELSON: Yes, Madam Chairman. We will
22 get a copy passed out. This one is 314.W3, and Mary is
23 getting a copy to you as we speak.
24 What Mary is handing out, this is the 100
25 percent reimbursement approach with statewide standards
157
1 which are the guidelines that are used in the cost-based
2 approach, but they're considered statewide standards that
3 would be there for monitoring and assessment purposes by
4 the state department. And that really in essence is the
5 purpose of this bill as opposed to the other bill.
6 Briefly going through the bill, on page 2 are
7 the additional duties that we would assign to the state
8 department. And under this approach, they would be
9 charged with the duty to establish these statewide
10 guidelines and would be using that to assess the programs
11 and services provided in schools to address the concern,
12 as we heard this summer, in the AIR reporting about the
13 level that was being provided statewide in that there were
14 some districts they did not feel were providing programs
15 to the extent they should.
16 So that's trying to deal with that part of it.
17 Again, they're to monitor practices done by the districts,
18 to assess the variations, that sort of thing; again,
19 building on what I just told you as well as to measure and
20 track student performance. So those are the kind of areas
21 that we add to their duties.
22 And then we speak about in subsection (f) on
23 page 3 about their assessment and how they will report
24 that to the committee and to keep the legislature in the
25 loop as to the job students are doing in special education
158
1 programs.
2 What we do is we keep that language that exists
3 in current law on the 100 percent reimbursement. What we
4 do here at the top of page 3, which is a thing you should
5 be aware of, is that we repeal -- every year we generally
6 go in and reauthorize the 100 percent reimbursement. If
7 you recall, for those of you that were back in the
8 Education Committee when we were looking at the first
9 cost-based models, the legislature always -- always
10 anticipated reviewing the 100 percent reimbursement at
11 some point in time, so every year we just keep
12 reauthorizing the 100 percent reimbursement approach.
13 We repeal that completely and it would go on
14 forever unless we did something else. It would not
15 require us to come back in and reauthorize it every year.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: I think, then, Mr. Nelson,
17 that changes my answer to Senator Goodenough this morning
18 when he asked if the system would go on if we didn't take
19 action as it currently is and I said yes, without the
20 guideline monitors that are suggested. And you remind me,
21 we actually have to reauthorize. So my error.
22 MR. NELSON: The provisions on page 4, is
23 there any question about that sort of change?
24 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
159
1 SENATOR SCOTT: Page 4, lines 1 through 8,
2 I read that as the State Department of Education was going
3 to set rules and regulations that were going to prescribe
4 special education staffing all over the state. Is that a
5 correct reading of that?
6 MR. NELSON: That is it exactly. Putting
7 together in rule and regulation some kind of yardstick to
8 measure provision of special education services based on
9 staffing which are the guidelines that are in the AIR
10 report.
11 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I don't
12 read that as assessment. I mean, it says adopt rules and
13 regulations implementing staffing guidelines. This sounds
14 to me like you're telling Crook County School District
15 thou shalt employ one but not two speech therapists. Is
16 that a correct reading of that language?
17 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, it is
18 probably the fault of my drafting. I don't think it was
19 intended to prescribe. What it is trying to do is put out
20 a standard level of staffing for which we can compare for
21 measuring the districts' programmatic -- program services
22 and anyway, their addressing of the special education
23 needs.
24 This was the option 2 or 3, I believe, that was
25 discussed at the Casper meeting. And that's what it
160
1 recommended.
2 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: So we would look at more
4 the level of staffing by which you would assess their
5 program. They may be able to do the job. If that
6 staffing suggests two speech therapists, they may be
7 getting the job done with one or one and a half, but they
8 would need to substantiate that.
9 MR. NELSON: Exactly.
10 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I don't
11 think it says what he's describing and it may need some
12 work.
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: Go ahead. I will mark
14 this area.
15 MR. NELSON: That is subsection (a) we
16 just got through discussing, and again, that was the
17 intent with some crafting.
18 The other provision that goes along with that is
19 that process that they would establish that would review
20 the guidelines every five years to keep them current.
21 Subsection (c) is the regionalization study to
22 provide some kind of regionalization approach to
23 delivering special education programs. Again, that's
24 similar to what is contained in the other bill with the
25 November 1 reporting date back to the special education
161
1 committee.
2 And section 4 is the money. This is a little
3 bit less primarily due to the absence of the supplemental
4 grant program. It would contain the other elements the
5 department would need to do absent that, so that's why
6 there's a little bit less under this.
7 COCHAIR DEVIN: So that's the one less
8 personnel and the less money as the grant program comes
9 in?
10 MR. NELSON: Right, right.
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: Any questions on that
12 bill, Committee?
13 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chair, by way of
14 perspective, talking about five new people in the one
15 bill and four and a half in the other, are these dealing
16 with the whole scope of special education or just with the
17 $2 million supplemental? And by comparison, how many
18 people does the state department have now specifically
19 dedicated to dealing with special education?
20 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, I know Mary
21 Kay and Larry Biggio put this information together, but I
22 believe it is the whole scope.
23 SENATOR PECK: Whole scope?
24 MS. HILL: Madam Chairman, right now our
25 special education unit is funded exclusively through
162
1 federal funds and the people who are in that unit within
2 the department are specifically tasked with the
3 requirements of the special education act, IDEA, as well
4 as other tasks. They're a limited group and what is
5 particularly important is that their authority is also
6 very limited to those issues revolving around federal
7 issues.
8 When we looked at these tasks as recommended by
9 Dr. Parrish, there is an extensive auditing function that
10 requires knowledge of special education as well as how the
11 staffing guidelines work and how the services would be
12 provided.
13 So the staffing requirements don't really change
14 whether the committee goes with the 100 percent or --
15 reimbursement or the block grant model, but it would
16 require a significant change in the way the department has
17 approached special education to the districts. And right
18 now I think Becca Walk, as you know, has left the
19 department for New Hampshire, so we have, what, three
20 special education staff people right now.
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes.
22 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
23 this is a question on page 4, subsection (e). It says the
24 State Department of Education shall not later than June
25 30th, 2002, based on information from November 2002.
163
1 Isn't that first one '03?
2 MR. NELSON: I think the concern was to
3 get those out as soon as they could to be applicable, so
4 that's why the June 30th before the next year would be
5 July 1. November 2002 is the date of the next AIR report.
6 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Shouldn't that
7 be June 30, 2003?
8 MR. NELSON: You're right. Sorry about
9 that.
10 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: It was the cart
11 before the horse.
12 MR. NELSON: That would be kind of hard to
13 do.
14 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: Isn't that
15 existing language?
16 MR. NELSON: No.
17 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: That's all new
18 language?
19 MR. NELSON: Yes.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman.
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative McOmie.
22 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Thank you, Madam
23 Chairman. Madam Chairman, I'm confused as to -- so what
24 we're saying is that we're going to add a million dollars
25 to the budget for new people at the Department of
164
1 Education to draw guidelines for staffing that are pretty
2 well established by the IEPs, and I'm wondering why we
3 want to do that.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: I think -- and I guess
5 I'll reference you back to the testimony we had in Casper.
6 The majority of the advisory group -- and I will say in
7 fairness to the advisory group, which one of them reminded
8 us that they ended their meetings before the national
9 comparisons to the SEEP studies came out, but then they
10 have individually expressed their preferences and I think
11 more of them that they would agree that they had
12 identified that we have a very loose system that needs
13 considerably more monitoring if we're going to stay at 100
14 percent.
15 And the testimony there, if I recollect it, and
16 from reviewing the minutes was that they would -- that
17 group and the special education community would prefer the
18 greater oversight in -- and not object to that, and that
19 is -- I mean, right now we basically have extremely
20 limited oversight on 100 percent payment. We basically
21 look at is the money spent almost legally -- it is almost
22 that narrow -- or the federal fund piece, but we don't
23 really address the over or underidentification, the
24 staffing or any of those pieces.
25 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Well, Madam
165
1 Chairman, I believe I could support some additional
2 position or something like that to -- somebody would go
3 around to make sure there isn't abuse. As a matter of
4 fact, I think we had some testimony earlier today about
5 that.
6 But establishing these guidelines and how many
7 people you have and given the fact we've talked about how
8 difficult that is in small districts, remote districts,
9 whatever you want to call it, and the cost with that, I
10 was hoping there would be -- we would be looking at a
11 different way to do this. I didn't realize that part
12 would be in this second bill.
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: If I'm not mistaken, that
14 was the recommendation of the advisory group for these
15 staffing pieces, as you met that you have some sort of --
16 that you developed this in a part of your work.
17 MR. KOURIS: Would you like me to answer
18 that?
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: Since Dr. Parrish is not
20 here, since we could pick on you and you're at a
21 disadvantage, but it was my understanding the advisory
22 group professionals worked quite a time on that.
23 MR. KOURIS: Many of the group here, we
24 welcome oversight, if you would feel more comfortable, if
25 the legislature would feel more comfortable having more
166
1 audits, come on down and I think the state department with
2 regional services will need more staff positions. So I
3 think that was our stand on that.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: And Mary Kay and Larry,
5 you were asked to develop this consistent with performing
6 what tasks.
7 MS. HILL: Madam Chairman, that is
8 correct. We did sit down and develop that budget.
9 I would want to make one thing clear for
10 Representative McOmie and that is there's no intention for
11 us to prescribe the IEPs. That's a fairly sacred process.
12 What the report implies, that staffing guidelines are
13 established and those are by and large established so the
14 department would take those from the report and through
15 the rule and reg process implement those, either as
16 guidelines according to 314 or actual staffing ratios
17 according to 313. But the IEP process would not be part
18 of our direct intervention.
19 Then I would want to refer the committee to the
20 regionalization part that we keep hearing over and over
21 again would be very helpful for those districts,
22 particularly in remote locations, to develop expertise and
23 make assistance available in those areas.
24 And the other part of this, which is to monitor
25 student progress, which is also new to us, so that is
167
1 something of a new world.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: Before you sit down, as I
3 understand it, the measurement of that student progress in
4 this subgroup is one of the requirements we will have to
5 meet, is that correct, adequate yearly progress?
6 MS. HILL: Madam Chairman, AIR report
7 requires adequate yearly progress as does No Child Left
8 Behind which was not necessarily incorporated in this but
9 it is certainly hanging out there.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: Does that answer your
11 question? Do you have another question?
12 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, it
13 does, but if this is a requirement as of No Child Left
14 Behind, would there be federal money available for funding
15 these positions, then?
16 MS. HILL: Madam Chairman, there are no
17 funds available for the special education portion of No
18 Child Left Behind. There are some anticipated additional
19 funds which would come through the reauthorization of
20 IDEA, just as we saw some new funds coming through last
21 fall.
22 There are under No Child Left Behind some
23 assessment design funds which help us with that student
24 progress and that must necessarily include all students,
25 special education as well.
168
1 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Sessions.
3 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, along
4 those lines, though, this is not placing permanent
5 positions in the Department of Ed, is it? I mean, this
6 stands alone unless those positions are folded into the
7 regular budget, is that not so?
8 MR. NELSON: I think they would become
9 permanent sometime but they would be within their budget.
10 SENATOR SESSIONS: As of now they aren't.
11 MR. NELSON: Exactly. There's increases
12 in there.
13 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, they
14 could be matched with the funds when it comes down instead
15 of rolled over for state funding.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: Your point is from
17 experience they will come under review again.
18 There was one comment, Committee, and I would
19 like to come back to this.
20 MR. LEAHY: One quick thought, as part of
21 that stakeholders group, Madam Chairman.
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: That's the word I couldn't
23 come up with.
24 MR. LEAHY: Pardon me?
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: That's the word I couldn't
169
1 come up with.
2 MR. LEAHY: One of the concerns that the
3 department had and a number of people had was the
4 underservice of children in many remote areas. In some
5 areas other people might -- I am not saying one area is
6 more attractive than other. Some folks might think that
7 being a speech therapist in Cheyenne might be better than
8 being a therapist in Meeteetse. We might find caseloads
9 where a speech therapist might have 20, 30, 40, 50 kids,
10 simply because the district cannot find additional help
11 for the kind of money they have to offer.
12 So part of this idea of oversight was to get out
13 to some of these districts who are underserving kids and
14 work with them to find a way to bring the services to
15 those children. And that was the other part of it, in
16 addition to what Mike spoke to about, yeah, we're open to
17 any oversight that you would need to have.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: Committee, you've had the
19 explanation of the two bills in front of you. We've had
20 discussion, last time, this time. What is your pleasure
21 on how you would like to proceed?
22 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Madam Chairman.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Cochair.
24 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Madam Chairman, to get
25 the ball rolling and see where everybody stands I would
170
1 move that we accept House Bill 313, school finance special
2 education as a committee bill.
3 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Second.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: There's a motion and
5 second on 313.
6 Is there discussion?
7 Senator Scott.
8 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I don't
9 think this bill in its current form is quite ready for
10 prime time. But let me make some suggestions as to how it
11 could be modified so that we could make it into something
12 we could pass.
13 First thing I'm going to suggest, Madam
14 Chairman, and I think there's considerable uncertainty as
15 to the formula, which is not surprising. We're trying
16 something a bit new and different here. I think a
17 two-year sunset so that we come back and take a look once
18 we've had some experience with it would be a good idea.
19 Second, I think we need to make the funding
20 open-ended because we're dealing with paying for what
21 effectively is a entitlement. And the more I think about
22 it, the Medicaid model is the one that is going to fall
23 and they will have to deal with that and then come back,
24 so we might as well recognize that up front.
25 The third suggestion I'm going to make is in the
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1 business of deciding which applications to fund. I think
2 we need to set a percentage, and they've got -- should be
3 at 101 percent instead of 1 percent there and then maybe
4 it should be a little higher. But I think once you go
5 over that percentage, then the granting of the application
6 ought to be pretty much automatic unless the state
7 department finds you can achieve the result without
8 impinging on the education of the other students, either
9 through utilizing funds from elsewhere, specifically
10 probably federal, or by managing the program a little
11 differently and a little more efficiently. I think we
12 will have to have a look at that.
13 If we do those things, we will then have the
14 advantages that the formula gives us of giving districts
15 the flexibility to use special ed money for preventative
16 purposes. We will have pretty much automatic ability to
17 deal with the cases where either due to increased numbers
18 or increased severity a district's expenses increase
19 significantly, although by using a percentage we will give
20 them some incentive to be economical about that, and I
21 think that will give us the best of both possible worlds.
22 And I don't know how the committee feels about
23 that set of suggestions. I'm prepared to make a series of
24 motions on that subject and unfortunately won't be able to
25 give you detail on the language because we haven't seen it
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1 for long enough. But that's my suggestions in terms of
2 turning this bill into one we could in good conscience
3 pass.
4 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman.
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes, Representative
6 McOmie.
7 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
8 would like to speak against the bill. One of the reasons
9 I would like to speak against the bill is, as Senator
10 Scott just brought up, and that's using special ed funds
11 for other things. It was suggested maybe we should be
12 looking at using some at-risk funds to monitor some of
13 these other things and rather than take away money from
14 special education in a block grant that I don't think we
15 can do. I think we have a federal mandate that these
16 children are to be served the way the IEP says.
17 I also am very concerned with a contingent fund
18 and how that will affect -- and Senator Scott again has
19 already highlighted, how is that going to work. We
20 already limited the districts on how much money they can
21 keep in reserve and now we're saying okay, well, you've
22 got some money out there you can and will lose, make up
23 the differences in case we have this and maybe we'll come
24 back at the next session and give you that money back. In
25 essence, we're 100 percent funding.
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1 Why do we want to pass a bill that's going to
2 put us through all of these hoops when we already have
3 something there but we're talking about some oversight,
4 and that's what makes sense to me.
5 So, Madam Chairman, I would rise, I guess, in
6 opposition.
7 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Goodenough.
8 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Madam Chairman, would
9 you prefer to do all the amendments first before we talk
10 about the philosophy of the bill or should we --
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott, I will
12 leave that to you because I think we do -- you do make
13 some excellent points on improvements. Would you prefer
14 to go ahead and do those so that people can discuss?
15 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I will
16 move that we instruct the staff to put a sunset provision
17 in here that would sunset this special education portion
18 of the formula, sunset it effective July 1 of '05, which
19 would then mean that we would -- the legislature would
20 look at it again in the '05 session with a full year's
21 experience under our belts. So I will move that.
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: Is there a second for
23 that?
24 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Second.
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: There's a motion and a
174
1 second on that amendment for a sunset July '05.
2 All of those in favor, aye.
3 Those opposed.
4 That amendment carries.
5 Your next was the open-ended contingency?
6 SENATOR SCOTT: Yes, Madam Chairman. I
7 will move we instruct the staff to make the funding not a
8 specific appropriation but just the foundation program.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: Is there a second to that?
10 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Second.
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: There's a motion and a
12 second on that amendment.
13 Discussion?
14 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
15 speaking in opposition to this amendment, I think we
16 heard the arguments in two different meetings now that
17 this $2 million is the best judgment of what would cover
18 the exceptions we're going to run into, even though we
19 will run into some of them. And I think one of the
20 expectations of the legislators is to try to manage the
21 funds that come to the State and goes to schools.
22 And I think you know the complexity of this one,
23 but these were judgments by the experts that we hired that
24 2 million would cover it, so I would like to see that stay
25 in there.
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1 COCHAIR DEVIN: Further discussion?
2 SENATOR SCOTT: Unfortunately, Madam
3 Chairman, I think we need to worry about the circumstances
4 where the experts may be wrong and we're dealing here --
5 the feds created an entitlement. Like it or not, they've
6 done it. I think under the Fourteenth Amendment they have
7 the right to do it, unfortunately, and you pretty much
8 have to spend -- the school districts have to spend what
9 you need to do to meet the requirements of the IEP, and
10 they can be compelled to do that.
11 As I understand, your so-called cost-based
12 system, as the Supreme Court has given it to us, if they
13 have to do that by taking money away from regular
14 education, we're asking for legal trouble on that score.
15 And I think if you put the interplay of those two
16 together, you put the State Department of Education in an
17 impossible circumstance if you force them to live within a
18 special appropriation here.
19 I think the model you will follow is in the
20 health area what we've seen with the Medicaid funding
21 where there is an open-ended entitlement, what they do is
22 simply don't take providers at the end of the year when it
23 is running over, comes back, take it out of next year's
24 appropriation, come back to us for supplemental
25 appropriation. And I can't count the number of those I've
176
1 seen over the course of a few years.
2 The other thing they do is cut down
3 reimbursement to providers. I don't think that's an
4 option here. I think you might as well be up front and
5 make it open-ended because I think that's where you're
6 going, like it or not.
7 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Goodenough.
8 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Madam Chairman,
9 agreeing with Senator Scott, it seems like the payment is
10 going to have to be made at some point or another anyways,
11 so why not have it open-ended rather than having a set
12 amount and force the districts to dip into their reserves
13 or prorate it somehow or whatever? That's just another
14 series of hoops to jump through when the results in the
15 end are the same anyway. But seems to me since it is an
16 entitlement that we ought to just go ahead and make that
17 amount of money available.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: Anything further?
19 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
20 would like to support Senator Scott's motion because it is
21 an attempt to make what I consider to be a bad bill
22 better.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: Any further discussion?
24 All of those in favor of the amendment to make
25 the contingency fund open-ended, aye.
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1 Those opposed, no.
2 That amendment does carry.
3 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, my
4 drafting expert has given me advice on page 2, line 5.
5 Thank you very much, Pam.
6 On page 2, line 20, if you strike "of" and
7 insert the word "above," you fix the technical problem
8 there.
9 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Second.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: All of those in favor,
11 aye.
12 I should have asked for discussion. Was there
13 any?
14 Opposed?
15 That change is made on line 20.
16 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, the next
17 amendment we need is more difficult. I think we need to
18 instruct the Department to, if the application meets the
19 criteria -- Madam Chairman, before we do that, on page 3,
20 line 4, after the word "disabilities," I would move that
21 we insert the language "without damaging the district's
22 ability to provide an adequate education for nonspecial
23 education students."
24 REPRESENTATIVE WASSERBERGER: What line?
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: Line 4, page 3.
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1 SENATOR SCOTT: Page 3, line 4,
2 essentially adding that to the end of the sentence there.
3 And, Madam Chairman, that may be a statement of
4 the obvious under our court decision, but I think we'd
5 better make it because the real standard, then, is if
6 you're going to have to spend more on special ed, if the
7 money isn't available from the feds and you can't get it
8 from some economies in the program, you are going to wind
9 up impinging on the regular education students, so I think
10 we need to have that statement in here.
11 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: Madam Chairman,
12 can he say it again?
13 SENATOR SCOTT: Certainly, Madam Chairman.
14 After "disabilities," page 3, line 4, add the words,
15 "without damaging the district's ability to provide an
16 adequate education for nonspecial ed students" --
17 "nonspecial education students."
18 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: Thank you.
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: Is there a second to that?
20 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Second.
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: There's a motion and a
22 second to add actually to that sentence the words "without
23 damaging the district's ability to provide an adequate
24 education for nonspecial education students."
25 Discussion?
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1 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman,
2 although I agree with Senator Scott's concept in that
3 because we all know that's what's going to happen, but I
4 will say this, you're bucking up against federal law here.
5 Your federal law says you will at all costs provide for
6 those special ed students no matter where you get the
7 money, and we have no law that backs our ordinary, regular
8 education students.
9 I'm just saying that what you're doing is you're
10 circumventing -- you don't have any choice. If a special
11 ed student, Madam Chairman, comes into your district and
12 requires a certain level of services, you have no option,
13 you will take it. You will somewhere get the money.
14 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
15 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
16 SENATOR SCOTT: And what we're proposing
17 here is intirely consistent with federal law because what
18 we're saying is these are the circumstances in which you
19 can come to the contingency fund for additional funding.
20 We're recognizing you're going to have to pay for the
21 special ed and the criteria is if you can't do it without
22 damaging your ability to provide for the regular ed, you
23 get to come to the contingency fund because the regular ed
24 student is protected by our constitution and our Supreme
25 Court decision.
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1 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, just as
2 a thought on that, this is still -- the grant is still a
3 decision to be made by the State Department of Education
4 on whether they receive money.
5 SENATOR SCOTT: Question.
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: You understand the
7 amendment?
8 All of those in favor, aye.
9 Those opposed, no.
10 That amendment carries.
11 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, one final
12 amendment. I move we instruct the staff to insert a
13 provision that the State Department of Education shall
14 fund grants that meet the criteria set forth in the (ii)
15 and (i) we've just talked about, provided they find that
16 the district can't meet the need for special education
17 funds through other funds available, or through reasonable
18 management economies in the program.
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: Is there a second to that?
20 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Second.
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: There's a motion and a
22 second that the Department shall fund the criteria set
23 forth -- that we will ask staff to construct the language,
24 so there may be some slight variation, but that they shall
25 fund to the criteria set forth in (ii) -- romanette (i)
181
1 and (ii) if there are not other funds.
2 SENATOR SCOTT: Yeah, if there are not
3 other funds or reasonable management economies to the
4 program.
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: It has been moved and
6 seconded.
7 Is there discussion on it?
8 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Question.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: All of those in favor,
10 aye.
11 Opposed.
12 Any other amendments?
13 Then we will entertain discussion on the bill.
14 Senator Goodenough.
15 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Madam Chairwoman, I
16 think it is important to keep in mind, there's been no
17 evidence of any abuse under the 100 percent reimbursement
18 system. And prior to this meeting we were kind of given
19 information that some districts had extremely high
20 percentages of handicapped students, but then we find out
21 it really wasn't that way and a couple of phone calls
22 would have cleared that all up to begin with. And I don't
23 know why the high-powered consultant couldn't call up and
24 say why are your numbers so high and then we wouldn't have
25 been laboring under that erroneous conception.
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1 To me this is a group of kids that has special
2 protection under the law and we have a legal obligation to
3 provide those services to them. And under the education
4 reform efforts some parts of our system have deteriorated,
5 it seems to me, the voc ed part, from what I've heard,
6 part, I think has deteriorated and the special ed part has
7 improved because of the 100 percent reimbursement system.
8 And we have, from what I've heard, seems to be a
9 good system, is probably getting better and it should be.
10 If we need more oversight we can do that in the other
11 bill.
12 I think what we're also going to do -- ADM is
13 decreasing and if districts are forced to make decisions
14 with this block grant approach, that they're going to do
15 things like start to underidentify special ed students and
16 put them in the classroom so that the rest of the students
17 are impacted by this identification game. If you have
18 three or four or five special ed students in a regular
19 classroom, then that detracts from the education of the
20 rest of the students.
21 And then under the federal No Child Left Behind
22 system we have all of these standards we have to meet, and
23 if we don't meet them then we're going to be punished, the
24 classroom teacher is impaired in their ability to teach to
25 the regular student by the presence of special ed students
183
1 that should be in a different class, to me it all leads to
2 a bad result.
3 I also think that if we do have an exceptional
4 special ed system, that gives districts the ability to
5 hire -- gives them a better competitive edge to hire
6 special ed teachers and classroom personnel because most
7 people that work in special ed probably do it because they
8 love the work and they want to help the kids. If you have
9 a good system, I think that improves your ability to
10 compete.
11 And we hear about we can't get this, we can't
12 get that, but if we had an excellent system compared to
13 other states, that would give us an ability to compete
14 when they need personnel.
15 And perhaps there is a Medicaid or Medicare
16 connection that would help with some of the costs.
17 Senator Scott mentioned a little bit about that. Maybe
18 that's something that should be looked into. But I think
19 we would be much better off to vote this bill down and go
20 with 100 percent with additional oversight.
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
22 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I think it
23 is a fair question to say what does this bill do that
24 improves our current circumstance?
25 The bill as amended does provide funding for the
184
1 circumstance where districts have more special education
2 needs than the formula provides, and I think that is, the
3 way we amended it, adequately taken care of now.
4 The bill also, however, provides an incentive,
5 financial incentive, for the districts to get into the
6 programs that reduce the need for special education, both
7 because you have this 101 percent provision and because
8 you've got the ability if you can stay within the formula
9 to take block grant monies and use them elsewhere.
10 Whereas, I agree with you, we haven't seen abuse
11 in the special education area, we are seeing an escalation
12 in costs. And I think, Madam Chairman, that the
13 incentives are very important in terms of being able to
14 deal effectively with that escalation of costs and to
15 provide a system that will work better for the kids
16 involved.
17 So I think with the original bill I think I
18 would have agreed with much of what you said. I think the
19 way we've modified it it will work just fine in practice.
20 Further discussion?
21 Representative McOmie.
22 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: First of all, I
23 apologize for using the term "bad bill." I usually don't
24 do things like that. I'm sorry.
25 I was going to raise some of the issues that
185
1 Senator Goodenough raised and he did a good job so I will
2 let that go.
3 I still have a problem, and I'll ask the
4 committee to consider this, we're saying here that we
5 think the school districts can do better with less with
6 special education and we can actually take some of this
7 money away and they might be able to use it to determine
8 if some of these children really need special education or
9 if they can be helped another way.
10 I don't think that was the purpose of special
11 education. Unless I've misunderstood what has been being
12 said here, what we've been talking about is special
13 education, that's children with special needs, and they're
14 identified and there are contracts written and there are
15 costs that go with those contracts.
16 And grant you, if we had a one-size-fits-all
17 school system we could probably do something like what is
18 in this bill the way Senator Scott amended it and not have
19 to worry about these other things.
20 But I worry about special needs. They're
21 something different. And Senator Anderson talked about an
22 attempt to bring the children into maybe a smaller class,
23 maybe something like that, some of these children can help
24 with the teacher that's trying to do other things. That's
25 one of the things that schools have tried to do. But I'm
186
1 concerned then about the other children.
2 And I like what Senator Scott added to (ii) to
3 try and deal with that, but I still feel and I think we're
4 trying to put something into a bill here that I don't know
5 as we're real sure what it is we're trying to do, at least
6 I'm not comfortable with it. And I would urge a no vote
7 on the bill.
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: Further discussion?
9 Senator Goodenough -- Senator Peck -- Senator
10 Goodenough, go ahead and then Senator Peck.
11 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Madam Chairman, one
12 issue we haven't heard about is whether the level of legal
13 activity declined when the 100 percent provision was
14 instated because if each IEP is an individual contract and
15 each parent is monitoring the district to make sure the
16 services are at an appropriate level, then it seems that
17 each contract is a potential lawsuit waiting to happen,
18 and I wonder if when the 100 percent reimbursement system
19 started whether the amount of legal activity decreased and
20 whether or not if we do away with it if it will increase
21 again because each parent, I'm sure, is watching very
22 closely to make sure their student gets the appropriate
23 level of services or what they perceive it to be.
24 And so -- and I guess it will be the district's
25 general fund that takes the legal hit if they have to
187
1 defend against a lawsuit on these individuals.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Peck.
3 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chairman, in the
4 grant scope of things one of the concerns that people have
5 is the increasing complexity of the funding of our whole
6 educational system. And I think we ought to ask ourselves
7 a question whether the adoption of this bill as amended is
8 going to simplify and clarify the responsibility or is it
9 going to further complicate it?
10 And we've heard a number of people say that the
11 100 percent reimbursement is only for allowable expenses.
12 And I wonder if by adding five more people to the
13 Department of Education who are going to be looking with
14 intense scrutiny on what is an allowable expense if we
15 won't possibly engender more controversy and questions
16 about they say this is allowed and this isn't.
17 I would appreciate the comment on whether this
18 is going to further complicate our grossly complicated
19 system or not.
20 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative Samuelson.
21 REPRESENTATIVE SAMUELSON: Madam Chairman,
22 I remember in the last couple years we've been talking
23 about the special education needs and last year when we
24 took it on as interim work. I guess what we have now
25 isn't anything like what I thought we were going to get.
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1 First, I thought we would come up with what the
2 cost of special education is, and I'm absolutely not
3 convinced we know that from our last meeting and I didn't
4 hear that now. I wish our consultant would have stayed
5 with us after lunch. He did that last time. I don't
6 think this bill is anywhere near ready.
7 As Senator Peck said, we're just muddying the
8 waters with something that is not anywhere near ready. I
9 think this needs a lot more work, like another summer of
10 study. I think our consultants have to be given more
11 direction. We have to know what the cost of special
12 education is and I know we don't know that now. We had
13 had some questions that I was hoping we would get answered
14 from the last meeting and we didn't get those numbers, so
15 I think we just need to pass this on and let the next
16 legislature work on it later. I'm not going to support it
17 at this time.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Sessions, you had
19 a comment.
20 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, just a
21 thought. And maybe we've gotten up here to where we're
22 having a philosophical debate about dollars and I would
23 like to bring it back to what actually happens and this
24 involves children. And when I look at the numbers here on
25 the spreadsheets and I'm thinking about children entering
189
1 school and things, do you know how carefully you look at a
2 child before you qualify him for special ed, how very
3 carefully you consider things and what care goes into that
4 with the building meetings that you sit in and with the
5 parents that you have to get to sign off on things?
6 Identifying a special ed child is very, very
7 different than when you go in and you perceive some little
8 people who have problems, that you think if I can go to
9 those children I can stop them from becoming maybe special
10 ed students. There's a very distinct difference in
11 children that you think may need a little help as far as
12 Senator Scott thinks that this may work and a special ed
13 student.
14 Special ed students are a very distinct part of
15 our population and I think we should be very proud of
16 serving them and very proud of what we do with them. And
17 instead of trying to find ways that when they're coming --
18 find ways to cut several million dollars from a budget so
19 that maybe we don't have to serve those ones we identify.
20 I will tell you, I am really tired of the
21 catchword "overidentification" of special ed students.
22 Never -- I have watched that process for 31 years and I
23 will tell you the care that goes into that identification
24 of special ed child. And you may find one once in a while
25 that you think as you work with that child and they come
190
1 out of special ed, yes, they come out of it. You can
2 bring them out and you put them in a regular classroom,
3 but -- but the care that goes into that, I think that's an
4 overworked political whatever to say overidentification of
5 special ed children.
6 And I'm really tired of it because -- I can't
7 speak for other states, but I will tell you what, from
8 what I've seen, we don't have that. We don't have that.
9 And I agree with the oversight and I agree that we need to
10 talk about standards and guidelines and saying if someone
11 is doing too much or too little. And I agree with that
12 part of it because I think that can only strengthen the
13 process.
14 But I tell you what, I cannot in all conscience
15 support something that will limit the ability to identify
16 new children coming into a system or to keep children in
17 that system that need to stay in and not leave early.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: Are there any other
19 burning new comments before we --
20 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Question.
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Nelson, would you call
22 the roll?
23 MR. NELSON: Senator Goodenough.
24 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: No.
25 MR. NELSON: Senator Peck.
191
1 SENATOR PECK: No.
2 Mr. NELSON: Senator Scott.
3 SENATOR SCOTT: Aye.
4 MR. NELSON: Senator Sessions.
5 SENATOR SESSIONS: No.
6 MR. NELSON: Representative Lockhart.
7 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: No.
8 MR. NELSON: Representative McOmie.
9 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: No.
10 MR. NELSON: Representative Miller.
11 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: No.
12 MR. NELSON: Representative Robinson.
13 REPRESENTATIVE ROBINSON: No.
14 MR. NELSON: Representative Samuelson.
15 REPRESENTATIVE SAMUELSON: No.
16 MR. NELSON: Representative Shivler.
17 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: No.
18 MR. NELSON: Representative Simons.
19 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: No.
20 MR. NELSON: Chairman Devin.
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: Aye.
22 MR. NELSON: Representative Stafford.
23 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Aye.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: Are there other comments
25 on these bills?
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1 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, is
2 this the time to try the second one?
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: It would be.
4 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
5 would move adoption of LSO 15.W3.
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: Is there a second?
7 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Second.
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: There is a motion and a
9 second that we move -- Representative McOmie.
10 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Can I offer an
11 amendment?
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: You may.
13 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
14 would like to offer Senator Scott's amendment that this
15 have a sunset. I would like a two-year or three-year --
16 two-year sunset. So that would make it, what, '05?
17 MR. NELSON: July 1, '05.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: Would you care to explain
19 your reason for sunsetting?
20 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman,
21 this bill -- unless somebody else is smart enough to amend
22 some of these other things out of there, this bill has a
23 lot of oversight in it by the Department of Education, and
24 I would like to see just what that oversight brings us.
25 And if it can be done with less oversight, I'm not real
193
1 sure we need to do it a lot different than what we're
2 doing now.
3 Agree that we need somebody that can go out and
4 maybe work with the districts and go around and check the
5 program and say, "Yes, you're doing it right. Maybe you
6 could do it a little different but this is how you're
7 doing it," but I'm not too sure that we need three
8 people -- four people and one temporary to do that. So
9 that's why I would like to have the ability to review that
10 unless somebody else is sitting here that can figure out
11 how to word that differently. I'm not good at that.
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: This bill, in fact, does
13 not -- it does just contain the four because it does not
14 contain the contingency fund, to clear that matter up.
15 Is there a second to that amendment?
16 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Second.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: There is a motion and a
18 second to sunset this provision.
19 Any further discussion?
20 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Madam Chairman,
21 another possibility would probably be to delete section 3
22 which would be the rules and regulations implementing the
23 staffing guidelines. It would delete the 888,000, it
24 would delete all of that new language and then you would
25 be left with the new language on page 2 which gives
194
1 additional duties to the state superintendent and then
2 also on page 3.
3 And there wouldn't be any new money but we could
4 always add -- if we took another look at it and all we
5 wanted was a little bit of additional oversight, then we
6 could add that in as the regular legislative process began
7 because to me 888,000 bucks is a lot of money just based
8 on what we've heard that there's already a process by
9 which appropriate expenses have to go through the state
10 department, so on and so forth. And if there is the need
11 for additional oversight, I can't believe it is going to
12 cost 888,000.
13 Plus it would also take out the part about the
14 rules and regulations emanating from the state department,
15 which I think I agree with Senator Scott that that's
16 unnecessary.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: The motion before us would
18 get the guidelines in place. It would provide the
19 monitoring. It provides a two-year sunset. I think that
20 we need to deal with that first because the piece you're
21 recommending or supporting actually essentially just
22 leaves us in the current system for a large part and so I
23 would like to address the amendment on the table.
24 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Question.
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: All of those in favor of
195
1 placing a sunset, aye.
2 Those opposed, no.
3 Could I see a show of hands? All of those in
4 favor.
5 That amendment does carry.
6 Are there any additional amendments?
7 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, a slightly
8 milder version than the one talked about a minute ago. I
9 would move we delete on page 4, lines 2 through 8, and on
10 line 10 delete everything after "the" so that then (b)
11 would read, "The state department shall establish a
12 process to review the adequacy staffing guidelines." This
13 would take out the piece that would suggest that they
14 could dictate to the individual school districts their
15 staffing pattern and you would still have the guidelines
16 that they're going to establish on the provision that's on
17 the previous page.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: Okay. Senator Scott, on
19 the top of page 4 you would delete what portions?
20 SENATOR SCOTT: Lines 2 through 8.
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: All of section (a)?
22 SENATOR SCOTT: Yes. Of course then you
23 would have to renumber. Then on line 10, delete that
24 first clause.
25 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Delete what?
196
1 SENATOR SCOTT: The whole language there,
2 in addition to subsection (a) as a section. That's no
3 longer needed.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: So your perception of that
5 would be that it would delete the concept of using the
6 staffing patterns as a portion of the guidelines, but it
7 would still allow the development of guidelines?
8 SENATOR SCOTT: Yeah. The development of
9 guidelines is called for if you look on page 2, lines 5
10 through 8, where there's established guidelines for
11 adequate special education staffing levels to be used in
12 assessing special education programs and services.
13 That was, as Mr. Nelson described, I think, what
14 the intent was. What I'm trying to do is remove the piece
15 that could enable them to dictate that districts will
16 follow those guidelines.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: Is there a second to this
18 motion?
19 SENATOR PECK: Second.
20 COCHAIR DEVIN: There's a motion and
21 second. Is there further discussion? This is a bit of a
22 change. I am not begging for discussion that's
23 unnecessary because we are far behind on our agenda, but
24 if there are pertinent comments that some of you feel
25 impact it, we need to know that.
197
1 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman, I
2 would like you to restate that amendment. I'm not clear
3 what it is.
4 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, page 4,
5 lines 2 through 8, delete. Page 4, line 10, delete
6 everything after (b).
7 COCHAIR DEVIN: On just line 10?
8 SENATOR SCOTT: On just line 10.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: With technical changes.
10 There is motion and a second, I believe.
11 Any further discussion?
12 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Question.
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: All of those in favor of
14 that amendment, aye.
15 Those opposed, no.
16 That amendment is adopted.
17 Is there further discussion on this bill?
18 Senator Scott.
19 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, page 4,
20 lines 18 and following, subsection (c), the study on the
21 regionalized approaches, Madam Chairman, I hope that as
22 they do these regionalized approaches, what I'm afraid is
23 the only option that might get considered is one where the
24 regional structure was all State Department of Education
25 and State Department of Education employees.
198
1 What I think the sensible way to do is some kind
2 of building on the BOCES, Boards of Cooperative Education
3 Services, or some kind of a joint powers board among the
4 several districts so you have a system where districts
5 could band together and would control their special
6 education. And it would seem to me that would make a good
7 deal of sense in these districts. And they're doing a
8 fair amount of it already and that's probably what we need
9 to expand on.
10 Do we need to amend this to make sure those
11 options are considered or is the state department going
12 to --
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
14 SENATOR SCOTT: That is the only option I
15 have heard discussed among and that was at the time Becca
16 was here and Mrs. Hill and so forth was the approach
17 you're talking about. And I believe that's the approach
18 contained within -- did I also read that in the report --
19 they're beginning to run together now. But I believe
20 that's the approach described in the report.
21 Are we ready for a vote on this bill?
22 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: Question on the
23 bill.
24 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
25 would like to hear the state department's comment on the
199
1 number of people required now to -- otherwise on section
2 4, if they believe that money is adequate, we could go
3 ahead with the bill now but I would like them to work up
4 and bring to us before we go, bring it to the committee
5 before it is introduced so maybe we can review the money
6 amounts. Would that be appropriate, Madam Chairman?
7 COCHAIR DEVIN: It would be. It is
8 certainly -- I think any committee -- each committee will
9 have to look at this and I certainly think that's
10 something to look at. And I think the department does
11 need to substantiate that. I'm not sure if you have
12 comments you would like to make at this point how you
13 develop that.
14 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, I'm Larry
15 Biggio from the Department. It was a fairly quick
16 turnaround on this one. We got our heads together and
17 looked at the scope, especially the items on page 2 of the
18 bill, and said this is a fairly significant departure for
19 us from what we've done in the past. And you're asking us
20 to do a lot of things here, so we kind of asked at the
21 staff levels and putting systems together to do, for
22 example, tracking of services for a long term for
23 students, tracking of students over a long term; given the
24 scope of what we've covered in the past year under special
25 studies, what would it cost to do special studies. It was
200
1 a fairly quick process, I will grant you that.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: Would it be safe to say
3 that the committee that hears it -- the two committees
4 that hear it could expect more substantiation?
5 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, we will
6 certainly bring that back to you or to the new committee.
7 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Thank you, Madam
8 Chairman.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: Could we have a vote?
10 MR. NELSON: Senator Goodenough.
11 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Aye.
12 MR. NELSON: Senator Peck.
13 SENATOR PECK: Aye.
14 MR. NELSON: Senator Scott.
15 SENATOR SCOTT: Aye.
16 MR. NELSON: Senator Sessions.
17 SENATOR SESSIONS: Aye.
18 MR. NELSON: Representative Lockhart.
19 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Aye.
20 MR. NELSON: Representative McOmie.
21 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Aye.
22 MR. NELSON: Representative Miller.
23 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Aye.
24 MR. NELSON: Representative Robinson.
25 REPRESENTATIVE ROBINSON: Aye.
201
1 MR. NELSON: Representative Samuelson.
2 REPRESENTATIVE SAMUELSON: Aye.
3 MR. NELSON: Representative Shivler.
4 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Aye.
5 MR. NELSON: Representative Simons.
6 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: Aye.
7 MR. NELSON: Cochair Devin.
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: Aye.
9 MR. NELSON: Cochair Stafford.
10 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Aye.
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: My cochair is most anxious
12 to earn his pay today and our court reporter is most
13 anxious to get her two-hour break, but we have -- we are
14 behind on our agenda and we are going to still try to
15 break at 4:00. So I'm going to ask you to really confine
16 this break to ten minutes so that we can get something
17 accomplished.
18 (Recess taken 3:05 p.m. until 3:15 p.m.)
19 COCHAIR STAFFORD: We are going to start
20 this session discussing cost of living index refinements
21 that we had done for us by Dr. Godby. We're going to
22 start with 316, Wyoming Cost of Living Index refinements.
23 Dr. Godby.
24 DR. GODBY: All right, Mr. Chair. There's
25 a handout that you will have received that should be
202
1 titled Regional Cost Adjustment, Summary of Findings,
2 December 2002. It includes four or five pages.
3 First page is the presentation I'll quickly make
4 to you. Some of the tables behind it I've included just
5 for interest and demonstration. These are the starting
6 salary schedules on page 2 of all of the districts and the
7 county as gathered by the LSO and WEA.
8 Table 2 is the base funding under the old
9 regional cost adjustment for comparison.
10 Table 3 is what the parabolic index would do.
11 Figure 1 is a new picture to show you what the
12 reestimated parabolic index looks like and finally on
13 Table 4 is the changes by district from Table 2 to
14 Table 3. Those are all just included for your interest,
15 but I know you have a standing appointment at 4:00 so we
16 will be quick.
17 COCHAIR STAFFORD: We wanted to start with
18 316, the Wyoming Cost of Living Index.
19 DR. GODBY: I guess I'll hand it over to
20 Buck, though.
21 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Thanks for the
22 information on the other one.
23 DR. GODBY: We will get to it again.
24 MR. MCVEIGH: Mr. Chairman, we've come
25 up -- as proposed in Bill 316, there were four components
203
1 of that bill. The first one was to add Afton as a survey
2 site. We don't see that being a major problem
3 programmatically for our division. I think the original
4 estimate -- and I don't have the previous cost estimates,
5 but we are able to -- we think to bring this cost down --
6 I don't think it is going to be anything major.
7 What we will need to do basically would involve
8 hiring a competent and reliable enumerator in that area
9 and making the changes within our division.
10 That's no problem. We estimate that price or
11 cost at around $1,000. The next procedure was the
12 development of a consumer expenditure survey which, as we
13 discussed in previous meetings, would be used to more
14 adequately weight the components and categories within the
15 cost of living to be more related to or to be specifically
16 related to Wyoming instead of using the U.S. CPI's
17 weighting scheme.
18 That particular cost, because we will be
19 utilizing the University Survey Research Center which --
20 Dr. Godby had contacted them for some estimates -- we have
21 revised this upwards to a cost estimate of $73,200. And
22 that is basically for the cost of the design of the survey
23 and to run a pilot survey.
24 And for those not understanding what we're
25 talking about with a survey, it would be a diary approach
204
1 and it would be fairly extensive, because of its
2 extensiveness would probably require some type of
3 compensation for the respondents.
4 And rolled into this cost is also an estimate
5 of, I think, $50 per respondent compensation for their
6 participation. So that's where we are with that.
7 Third component is the additional sampling of
8 the automobile pricing. That's adding the automobiles to
9 the actual survey as opposed to holding them uniform as we
10 have. We had originally had probably a higher -- well,
11 no, this is the original cost, 5600. We contacted the
12 county treasurer's office here in Laramie County to see if
13 they kept any type of a database that would be readily
14 available for us to track a specific automobile and the
15 answer was no to that, so we went to option number two and
16 that was we think we can do it by what we call a survey
17 pricing letter from our office, similar to the way we
18 price hospitals, doctors' offices and some of the others.
19 By doing that, I mean, it is just the cost of
20 mailing and basically securing the cooperation of the
21 automobile dealers around the state. There we should be
22 able to go through the Wyoming Automobile Dealers
23 Association and hopefully maybe secure some of the
24 endorsements from you folks for cooperation. But we will
25 go there later.
205
1 The fourth component is to institute housing
2 rental price sampling. This gets a little bit more
3 complicated for us, but we evaluated whether we wanted to
4 utilize our existing enumerator staff in the different
5 localities and we really didn't think we wanted to go
6 there with that because of the complexity of the problem
7 and the differing qualities of the enumeration around the
8 state.
9 So this price or cost here of 8400 actually
10 represents inclusion of a summer intern from the
11 University of Wyoming, student intern, and we could do
12 that under the guidance of Dr. Godby as well, and
13 hopefully this person could run the -- that survey
14 properly themselves.
15 With that, the total cost estimate for the 316
16 refinements is $88,200.
17 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Devin.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes. Mr. Cochair, we have
19 several committee members here that are going to be new to
20 education and then we have some education members that
21 were not here when we had the discussion on the fact that
22 the -- that these kinds of improvements and refinements
23 need to happen to the Wyoming Cost of Living Index,
24 period, to improve its quality, but they really need to
25 happen for us to use it.
206
1 Could you give us the three-minute to
2 five-minute version of why these things would be worth our
3 investment, why they would make that Wyoming Cost of
4 Living Index meaningful? Because we usually as a
5 legislature deal with the raw piece but we don't -- aren't
6 all that familiar with the components.
7 MR. MCVEIGH: You care to take it?
8 DR. GODBY: I can take it.
9 I'll try to keep it to three minutes. Basically
10 the Wyoming Cost of Living Index, the first problem and
11 the reason that you need to -- that we are suggesting, I
12 suppose, that you use an expenditure survey is the way it
13 works in Wyoming is a set of enumerators in each county go
14 out and price a certain set of goods, and then they
15 factor -- they take the total cost of those and using a
16 federal estimate of what the typical urban consumer in the
17 United States spends on different areas of expenditure,
18 they calculate the total cost of the priced items to a
19 typical consumer.
20 The problem with using that approach isn't the
21 pricing except in a couple areas. The problem is that
22 we're using federal weights taken in urban centers, the
23 smallest one being, at least in this part of the country,
24 50,000 people and up. Most of the centers where they do
25 the federal survey are places in excess of a million
207
1 people.
2 So the survey, the weights that you use on the
3 different areas of expenditure, for example, housing,
4 transportation, personal care, reflect costs in urban
5 areas and are unlikely to reflect Wyoming expenditure
6 patterns.
7 In particular, the housing costs in that survey
8 are probably much higher than what we expect, but it is
9 probably higher than in Wyoming. So a typical consumer in
10 Wyoming probably spends less of their household budget on
11 housing than the average urban consumer in the United
12 States.
13 For school finance, that's important because, as
14 you all know, the cost of housing in the regional cost
15 adjustment has been the real problem, and with the last
16 court ruling it needs to be included in the WCLI that's
17 used for finance, for school finance, and so it is really
18 important that, A, we weight housing properly, and we
19 weight the other areas properly, and that's going to
20 require a survey like this.
21 Additionally, a survey like that would provide a
22 lot of information for regional development in terms of
23 expenditure patterns of citizens of Wyoming.
24 With respect to the actual pricing of goods in
25 the index, there's two problems. One is the housing and
208
1 the other is automobiles. Those are the large areas.
2 Automobiles, the way they're currently priced, they take
3 the prices in Cheyenne so it is as if everybody in Wyoming
4 shops in Cheyenne for their car.
5 For housing we're not certain that the houses
6 compared in, say, Jackson are similar to the houses
7 compared in, say, Lusk, and so it is not clear that we're
8 comparing apples to apples here, which is what you need to
9 do in an index like this.
10 So to clean up the index, to make it more
11 accurate, we're suggesting that this survey be implemented
12 which would be done every five years to update the state's
13 information base on what the expenditure patterns are in
14 Wyoming and then use those for this homegrown number.
15 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Thank you.
16 Further questions?
17 Senator Scott.
18 SENATOR SCOTT: In the bill, page 2, lines
19 2 through 4, you're talking about having a survey site in
20 the community of Afton. Will the result of that be a
21 separate cost of living for Afton as opposed to Kemmerer,
22 or will you do one for Lincoln County that's an average of
23 the two?
24 MR. MCVEIGH: Mr. Chairman, Senator Scott,
25 what we plan to do is it would have a stand-alone index
209
1 figure as well, and then we would be talking about in
2 terms of the region perhaps looking at Lincoln County as a
3 north and a south region.
4 DR. GODBY: For school finance only. For
5 school finance you would use Afton using the Afton number,
6 Kemmerer using the Kemmerer number, but for the WCLI for
7 other purposes, you would -- there's a formula for
8 counties that have two survey sites and there's more than
9 just Lincoln.
10 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further questions,
11 Committee?
12 What's your pleasure?
13 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman.
14 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Scott.
15 SENATOR SCOTT: Move we introduce the bill
16 as a committee bill.
17 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Second.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: Moved and seconded to
19 introduce 316 as a committee bill.
20 Further discussion?
21 Buck, if I get this right, then, the four things
22 we're going to do is hire my son at the university for
23 8400 this summer, buy him a 5600 car and give everybody in
24 the state tickets to the football game, is that how it
25 works?
210
1 Mr. Nelson, would you call the roll?
2 MR. NELSON: Senator Goodenough.
3 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Aye.
4 MR. NELSON: Senator Peck.
5 SENATOR PECK: Aye.
6 MR. NELSON: Senator Scott.
7 SENATOR SCOTT: Aye.
8 MR. NELSON: Senator Sessions.
9 SENATOR SESSIONS: Aye.
10 MR. NELSON: Representative Lockhart.
11 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Aye.
12 MR. NELSON: Representative McOmie.
13 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Aye.
14 MR. NELSON: Representative Miller.
15 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Aye.
16 MR. NELSON: Representative Robinson.
17 REPRESENTATIVE ROBINSON: Aye.
18 MR. NELSON: Representative Samuelson.
19 REPRESENTATIVE SAMUELSON: Aye.
20 MR. NELSON: Representative Simons.
21 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: Aye.
22 MR. NELSON: Cochair Devin.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: Aye.
24 MR. NELSON: Cochair Stafford.
25 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Aye.
211
1 Bill has been adopted as a committee bill.
2 Do we have 317? We will go back to that one.
3 I think we've already got one, so take it away.
4 DR. GODBY: I already introduced the
5 handout for you. In this bill you're looking at using the
6 parabolic cost of living adjustment as it is called here
7 and described on line 22 of the bill on page 2. That cost
8 of living index is based on both salaries -- school year
9 salaries for 2003-2004 and the WCLI index computed for the
10 last six periods going up to the period prior to that
11 school year.
12 So currently our best estimate of what that
13 parabolic index looks like includes only four periods of
14 WCLI estimates because the last two aren't in yet.
15 In your handout there's a number of pages. I
16 won't go through all of them, but since we last met I
17 showed you in the report that it was possible to estimate
18 an index in this way. And there was included with that an
19 example that would show how it is done. We didn't have
20 current salary data. The new salary data came in in the
21 interim, so the index was recomputed.
22 What has happened -- and you can see there if
23 you look at Table 2, I won't bother to look through it,
24 but on Table 2, page 2 of the handout you will see that
25 the base salaries in every -- almost every district for
212
1 the last three years have increased significantly, and
2 there were some significant increases in salaries over the
3 last -- for this coming here in the base salaries.
4 What that's done effectively to the estimated
5 parabolic relationship between cost of living and starting
6 salaries is it has in effect made it more U-shaped. If
7 you're not at the bottom of the parabola, you will
8 actually get more money than you previously did when we
9 looked at it last time, just as a demonstration.
10 Under this, the features of the recomputation
11 are described on the front. On the first page of the
12 handout, what this parabolic implementation would do would
13 be to increase total funding across the state by about 3
14 percent if you were to just use the parabolic index.
15 What it also does, though, is that it reduces
16 the hold harmless paid to smaller districts until the end
17 of this year. Under the old adjustment method by about 75
18 percent, and these are all described, the actual numbers
19 that this is coming out of are in table 3 and the changes
20 in table 4.
21 The last time we met you also introduced a
22 motion that you could hold Teton harmless if we were to
23 use this because the parabolic index doesn't fund Teton at
24 a level 41 percent higher than the personnel base in the
25 model which is what the cost of living suggests. The new
213
1 index funds them to 27.6 percent above.
2 If you were to include Teton in here, that would
3 be another 1.6 million if you were to hold them harmless.
4 The way this bill is written, how it would work is you
5 would take either of the two methods, so you could use the
6 parabolic index or the old cost of living index. This is
7 a one-year interim adjustment which basically means that
8 anybody who lost on the parabolic index, and there are a
9 few, would be held harmless to their old funding level.
10 If you look at that hold harmless, there's very
11 few in the handout that Mary gave you which is more
12 compact than mine, the regional cost of living scenario,
13 if you look at the final column, that shows what that
14 would amount to, this hold harmless method. Teton is the
15 1.6 million figure about three-quarters of the way down
16 the last column on the right. You can see the other
17 amounts are fairly small. The next highest amount
18 relative to the budgets, of course -- the next highest
19 amount is 124,000 loss in Campbell County and then some
20 other numbers in a couple districts in Sublette and in, I
21 believe -- gosh, I got to follow these around -- Laramie
22 and Johnson.
23 So the total increase in funding in this
24 scenario is $21 million. However, the hold harmless from
25 the old hold harmless mechanism which was paid to small
214
1 districts is reduced from 10 million to 2.5 million. So
2 under the parabolic index the -- what this is meant to --
3 what it does is it actually beefs up funding to the
4 smaller districts and the figure, just referring to the
5 figure in the handout, this shows an estimated U-shaped
6 line, that's the parabolic index, and a solid line cutting
7 it upwards at about 45 degrees, that's the old regional
8 adjustment.
9 If you were to the left of that solid -- that
10 straight line that cuts the U-shaped one at about 45
11 degrees, you were being funded at less than your current
12 base salary expense or at least your personnel cost. You
13 can see the U-shaped curve actually starts increasing
14 again, so communities with low WCLI values like Niobrara,
15 Westin, Crook, all of the ones to the left on that
16 picture, the difference between the U-shaped curve and
17 that straight line going through is the increase that
18 those smaller districts predominantly see by going to the
19 parabolic index.
20 Similarly, if you're on the right of either of
21 those curves, it means you're funded above and beyond your
22 current expenses. So, for example, Albany, Sheridan,
23 Laramie Counties would all gain something. That's an
24 average, by the way. These are average county salaries by
25 district. So if there's more than one district in the
215
1 county, I took the average of the two salaries.
2 So that's what the new parabolic index looks
3 like. And this would be very similar to the one used --
4 well, this would be the one used in the coming year and
5 this would be the one-year adjustment until we move to the
6 new adjustment, the full adjustment method that will be
7 developed in the coming year.
8 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Committee, questions?
9 Senator Devin.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Cochair, could we have
11 Dave walk through the bill as to what parts are where?
12 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Certainly.
13 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Mr. Chair.
14 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Representative McOmie.
15 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: I have one
16 question of Dr. Godby -- I never get it right. I have one
17 question before we move on.
18 Basically what's happened here if I'm looking --
19 which one was it? Chart number 3, Table 3, in looking
20 over on the handout on column -- the middle column --
21 column B, we've increased -- we don't have as much hold
22 harmless. We've increased by about 19 million or 18
23 million what we're going to pay out.
24 DR. GODBY: Right.
25 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: We were doing
216
1 what, a $22 million hold harmless?
2 DR. GODBY: Under the current protection,
3 if you look on Table 2, that was the old hold harmless.
4 The number at the bottom was 10.3 million so you've
5 reduced the hold harmless by 8 million, but you've
6 increased total costs by about 17.
7 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Nelson, just walk
8 us through it, please.
9 MR. NELSON: I might explain, the only
10 difference between W1 and W2 was the amounts in the
11 appropriation and we just fine-tuned those from the one
12 that you all received in your packet a couple weeks ago.
13 Those were a bookmark until Buck and Dr. Godby had time to
14 put estimates together.
15 Going through the bill, page 2 is really the
16 essence of the adjustment, and again, it is for one year
17 only.
18 Line 8, we specify it is for school year '03-'04
19 only. We make clear in the language lines 12 through 16
20 of that page that you compute it under both scenarios,
21 paragraph (i) being the WCLI as we do currently and then
22 (ii), we call it the parabolic cost of living adjustment
23 based on two things, the WCLI and the teacher data for
24 '02-'03.
25 You take both of those adjustments and you go
217
1 with the higher of the two.
2 We also keep the language that the WCLI will be
3 as we've always computed it, the average of the six
4 consecutive semiannual indexed reports that we get prior
5 to January 1 of the applicable school year. That's a
6 continuation of old language.
7 Section 2 continues the study of the parabolic
8 cost of living adjustment -- regional cost adjustment that
9 Dr. Godby is presenting you with, and this directs him to
10 continue that study and to provide a report to the
11 committee on or before November 1.
12 Then the committee is to take that information
13 and present recommendations to the 2004 legislature that
14 will implement some kind of revised regional cost
15 adjustment for the '04-'05 school year. The amount
16 appropriated is $24,000. This was up slightly by $4,000
17 from the W1 version that you received in your packet.
18 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Devin.
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Cochair, we discussed
20 this at some length in the Casper meeting and now, Mary,
21 and I guess Dr. Godby, confirm some of the figures I think
22 I understand. But our current hold harmless, if we went
23 forward, is about 10 million a year.
24 DR. GODBY: Right.
25 MS. BYRNES: That's correct.
218
1 COCHAIR DEVIN: This bill, if we went
2 forward, I understand it is going to cost us about 22
3 million.
4 MS. BYRNES: Madam Chairman -- excuse
5 me -- Mr. Chairman, if you look at column H -- the
6 landscape on this form, column H will show you the best
7 cost we can estimate of 21.1 million. And that includes
8 column K that you see over there on the far right.
9 So it holds harmless or holds harmless to the
10 current WCLI index value for those districts that
11 Dr. Godby described earlier.
12 You still have a remaining hold harmless of $2.5
13 million. That's also contained in the base figure, but
14 you're not additionally spending on that. That's
15 continued funding you have. So the cost right now that we
16 understand of this interim index would be 21.1 million.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Cochair, then as a
18 follow-up to that we have basically a number of things
19 going on. We've got a system where another year of hold
20 harmless to small districts primarily would cost us about
21 10 million while we had time to do, as I see it, two
22 things: One would be your study to get back at some of
23 their pieces of real cost on the regional cost piece, and
24 then Dr. Smith's recommendation that we go in and develop
25 prototypes specifically for small schools to try to
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1 actually determine their costs.
2 And for $10 million we do another year, take
3 another year to do those two studies and bring them in
4 because, as you pointed out and some of my committee
5 members, they interact with each other, the two of them,
6 and to treat them singly as though they don't interact
7 isn't appropriate.
8 Now, I guess I feel like in this bill that piece
9 needs to go forward, but some other pieces are giving me
10 real heartburn because when you say that we help small
11 districts, well, we do, but it is costing us $21.1 million
12 and we are helping a considerable number other than small
13 districts, too.
14 And the problem is, we can only put this out
15 there for one year because it is a system that can be
16 gamed by just changing your starting teacher salary.
17 So we know we can't leave it out there. I guess
18 it is the experience that I've had before in that
19 politically it is impossible to put anything out there and
20 ever say it is temporary or for one year. You never take
21 it -- it never comes back, ever, to where it was. And we
22 haven't fixed the problem. So we may put way too much out
23 to one district and then want it back but not have a way
24 to get it easily -- political way to get it back and we
25 have to put yet more out to another system when the
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1 studies are done.
2 So I guess, Mr. Cochair, I am definitely -- as
3 I've thought about this, I'm in favor of moving these two
4 studies forward because I think we've got to get to the
5 basic cost on these two areas, but I have a lot of
6 misgivings about putting $21.1 million into the system for
7 one year that doesn't fix the problem that we're going to
8 have to somehow try to take back in varying proportions.
9 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further comments,
10 Committee.
11 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman.
12 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Scott.
13 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman, trying to
14 understand the cost numbers here, let me see if I've got
15 them right. If you look on this regional cost of living
16 scenario in column H, it shows 21,161,000. Now, looking
17 at the bottom of column B, there's a hold harmless amount
18 of 10.3 million.
19 Am I right in thinking that looking at the net
20 new cost of this bill, you subtract that 10 million from
21 the 21 which gives you 10.8 million and then you've got to
22 add back the 2.5 million of remaining hold harmless, so
23 you get a net cost of the sum of those? Is that right?
24 MS. BYRNES: Mr. Chairman.
25 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mary.
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1 MS. BYRNES: I'm not certain I follow the
2 math on that, but to explain the 21 million, instead of 10
3 million being hold harmless, 8 million becomes a regional
4 cost of living adjustment. So you're still paying that
5 amount of money and the remaining amount is 2.5 million.
6 It is still considered hold harmless payments in column E
7 which shows the distribution back.
8 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: Continue.
10 SENATOR SCOTT: So the math comes out the
11 same. The 8 some million of the 10 million hold harmless
12 is included in this 21 million, so the net new cost is 21
13 million less 8 whatever million it costs?
14 DR. GODBY: No.
15 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Dr. Godby.
16 DR. GODBY: No, Senator Scott, if you look
17 at the total in the bottom of column B, 17.7 million hold
18 harmless, the column H, that's 21 million -- sorry, bottom
19 of column E -- 738.9 million, the bottom of column H is
20 that difference. Those are total payments, including hold
21 harmless to the system.
22 It is true that hold harmless is being reduced
23 by 8 million. The reason for that is that hold harmless
24 no longer applies to many, if not most of the small
25 districts because the regional cost adjustment under the
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1 parabolic index increases their personnel funding.
2 So through the formula, that's where -- so
3 that -- it is true you're saving 8 million on the hold
4 harmless, that's the safety net, the reason being you
5 don't need the safety net anymore. And that's what I
6 think -- Senator Devin, that's what concerns you.
7 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Devin.
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Chairman, I would like
9 to move the bill and if it is successful in a second, I
10 would like to then offer some amendments.
11 COCHAIR STRAFFORD: It has been moved.
12 Is there a second?
13 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Second.
14 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Moved and seconded
15 committee-sponsored Bill 317.
16 Senator Devin.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: I would like to amend out
18 the part that would add in the one-year adjustment and
19 basically move the bill forward probably as section 2.
20 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Is there a second to
21 that?
22 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Second.
23 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Moved and seconded to
24 pretty much delete section 1 and go with section 2.
25 Senator Devin, would you explain?
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1 COCHAIR DEVIN: Well, Mr. Chairman, I
2 think that we need to get to a place here -- we have come
3 a long way in this study of this committee learning about
4 regional cost of living and parabolic charts and starting
5 salaries and all of these kinds of things, and amenities
6 that are there and disincentives and so forth.
7 But what we've identified mostly, I think, is
8 the pieces left that we don't know. And we need to have
9 Dr. Godby proceed to study that piece, what does it really
10 cost in terms of incentive to get adequate personnel into
11 some of these small districts. They have a special
12 problem. What are these pieces when we get the proper
13 cost of living indexes adjusted?
14 And then we need to meld that with the small
15 schools study which actually looks at the real costs of
16 small schools in prototypes that fit them rather than the
17 350 scaled backwards. But the two are going to interact
18 with each other. And if we proceed forward with infusing
19 this much more new money into the system and say well, as
20 I said earlier, it is for one year and it can't be for
21 more than one year -- because you can fix the system to do
22 anything you want when you know the rules of the game --
23 and that becomes unfair to everyone who either makes the
24 adjustment or doesn't make the adjustment.
25 And, as I said, I think it just becomes
224
1 politically impossible to put that much out there and then
2 come back in a year and say, "Oops, you got 3 million too
3 much and you didn't get a million enough." That just
4 doesn't work. And I'm willing to say the data needs to be
5 done right to get it cost-based to be fair.
6 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further discussion on
7 the proposed amendment?
8 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Mr. Chair.
9 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Representative McOmie.
10 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Mr. Chairman, I
11 can't remember, did we fund -- don't we have to adjust the
12 cost of living every year?
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Cochair, that's the
14 external cost adjustment and this would actually provide
15 like a 3 percent external cost adjustment, almost
16 equivalent, and there is an external cost adjustment which
17 when I sat in the Appropriations Committee that is
18 recommended for the coming year, so that will be discussed
19 because it is in the budget.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Mr. Chairman,
21 follow-up, I would like to ask Madam Chairman, the salary
22 adjustment and adjusting the whole plan, those are one and
23 the same or are they different? Because if we have to
24 adjust salaries every year, this parabolic adjustment,
25 while it seems like it is a lot of money, we would have to
225
1 do the salary adjustment anyway, wouldn't we? Don't we
2 have to do a cost of living adjustment every year
3 according to the court decision?
4 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Devin.
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Cochair, we do an
6 external cost adjustment every year which we hope will be
7 used significantly in salaries since they're 80 percent of
8 the cost statistics. But that is an external cost
9 adjustment.
10 The way the salary piece comes into this, as I
11 understand it, is that where you sit on this curve depends
12 on where you put your starting teacher salary.
13 And so as a district I can simply alter where I
14 sit on this curve by adjusting my starting teacher salary
15 at the board level locally. And that's why Dr. Godby
16 cautioned us before you dare not use it for more than one
17 year and you need to go back and use a previous year,
18 because anytime you don't, you completely control where
19 you sit on here.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: One more follow-up
21 question, then. The Court said that we would make
22 adjustments based upon the CPI or the W -- whatever this
23 is -- I never get it right -- and yet appropriations are
24 saying well, we're just going to do a 1.7 without any
25 figures or without any studies. Is that right? Is that
226
1 what I'm hearing?
2 MS. BYRNES: Mr. Chairman, if I can tell
3 you, what the Joint Appropriations did in the external
4 cost adjustment is they based it upon the national CPI and
5 it was a 1.7 percent and that is what they're floating on
6 in their budget.
7 That doesn't necessarily need to be studied each
8 year because those data are available between the CPI
9 index or the WCLI index. As using this for inflation
10 rate, I believe that might be a separate subject.
11 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further discussion on
12 the amendment?
13 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman.
14 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Scott.
15 SENATOR SCOTT: Speaking against the
16 amendment, I hear the argument for but it also seems to me
17 we're dealing with a deeply flawed system. We know it is
18 deeply flawed. We did a study this time. This is the
19 best we've come up with. Clearly it needs further study,
20 but I think it makes a good deal of sense to have an
21 interim fix to get us through the next year, otherwise
22 you're continuing an unjust system for most of the
23 districts.
24 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Sessions.
25 SENATOR SESSIONS: Mr. Chairman, I have a
227
1 question. What difference -- do you have any idea at
2 all what difference the additional studies will show? Do
3 you think it will reduce the current funding
4 recommendation or the current funding that's in this bill
5 or increase it, or do you have any idea what the
6 additional studies may show or is it just kind of just
7 supporting information for what you already know?
8 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Dr. Godby.
9 DR. GODBY: You're asking for prediction
10 of what the next research might show? Well, if you look
11 at the figure, you will see that that straight line going
12 through the data, the solid line, the diagonal that goes
13 through, you will see that it lies under a number of
14 district -- a number of counties, all of the ones to the
15 left of that line. You can see just the sheer number of
16 them. Those reflect current starting salary costs.
17 So my guess would be, having not done the study
18 yet, that we're likely to find -- there's two things
19 affecting those costs. One is the fact that you're in a
20 small school district probably and the other is the fact
21 it costs more to hire teachers in those districts than the
22 current model funds for.
23 With so many districts on that side of the line
24 and so few districts on the right side, I would guess that
25 it is going to increase. My guess would be that you're
228
1 not going to see any decrease in funds, you're going to
2 see an increase over the base case. Whether it amounts to
3 21 million or not is not clear, but, you know, if this
4 parabola that goes through the data explains about 43
5 percent of the relationship just between those two
6 numbers, it is probably not likely going to be much
7 different. And then when you include a small school
8 adjustment on top of that, I would imagine that you're
9 probably going to see another increase as well.
10 So if I were betting and I only had to bet
11 high/low, I would bet high, but I wouldn't guarantee it.
12 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further discussion on
13 the proposed amendment?
14 SENATOR SESSIONS: Mr. Chair.
15 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Sessions.
16 SENATOR SESSIONS: Just a thought before
17 we vote. In trying to solve the small school problem and
18 trying to adjust this before we vote on it, this one year
19 thing, actually isn't it a way for a phase-in of the
20 funding that's going to be needed maybe to address this
21 indexing instead of being hit with that all at one time?
22 I guess my contention is, you know, decide what
23 we need and then phase it in. I don't know. That's a
24 decision people have to make. But that's just a thought
25 that maybe it would be considered a phase-in process
229
1 instead of putting it off and then being confronted with
2 the whole package in a year.
3 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further discussion?
4 Senator Devin.
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: I could agree with that if
6 we knew that this money was going where it needed to in
7 the end. But if you notice, $10 million hold harmless
8 takes care of the small districts and schools that lost.
9 Now we're talking $21.1 million, but we don't have any
10 idea whether that money is going in the end to who really
11 can substantiate those are their costs by the time we're
12 done with all of the pieces of the study and then
13 integrate them together.
14 And, you know, then we will be calling -- so if
15 we put money out there to those that in the end are not a
16 small district or their costs do not justify that they
17 should be there, we're going looking to pull 2 or 3
18 million back out of their budget. And that doesn't -- you
19 have watched it. That doesn't happen. And it is painful
20 and then they're called losers, even if it has been out
21 there for one year.
22 And so it is kind of like a roll of the dice
23 whether the people who justifiably need this money are
24 going to get it or whether they're not.
25 And that's my -- and because these two have to
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1 interplay with us, our current model has -- Dr. Smith, is
2 it 350 is the prototypical model and then it moves
3 backwards into small schools, because the small
4 school/small district is the other piece of the study that
5 we probably have to do to get --
6 DR. SMITH: Madam Chairman, it is for
7 elementary schools 264 with half K and then it is 300 for
8 middle school and 600 for high school.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: And so then the contention
10 is, you know, that what they're looking at, I believe, and
11 it is kind of like mixing a future subject, but is they
12 need to study that piece to get it more accurate to the
13 small district and the small school in the size they
14 really are and develop some additional prototypes and then
15 fit the cost of living piece to it and they will interact
16 with each other.
17 So when we took a system when we started out
18 that was all together and now we keep adjusting one piece
19 and one piece without taking the time to put them
20 together, we're going to have difficulty getting where we
21 need to be.
22 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Committee, we need to
23 make a decision on this or we'll adjourn and take it up in
24 the morning. What do you want to do?
25 Senator Anderson.
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1 SENATOR ANDERSON: May I ask a question?
2 Thank you.
3 In light of the fact I've not been involved with
4 a lot of this discussion, some on the appropriations side,
5 from the beginning of time when I first came down here six
6 years ago, there was always a plight on the part of the
7 small schools in regard to equity of funding in comparison
8 to the larger schools.
9 I always used the pie analogy; in other words,
10 all of those monies being spent on all schools would be
11 the pie. A portion or a piece of that pie would be
12 devoted to these, quote, complaining, grieving, I guess
13 would be a better word, grieving small schools and so
14 always as we debated, the larger schools were always
15 willing to expand the size of the pie in order to satisfy
16 those smaller, grieving schools.
17 So as I listen to this debate, the question I
18 have, whether it be 21 million or all the other million,
19 whatever goes into this, will this increase the size of
20 the pie or does it go to the piece of the pie? If that
21 question can't be answered at this time, is there a study
22 out there that can tell me over time that the size of that
23 piece over the six years I've been here that the grieving
24 schools have received? Is there something we can do to
25 equitably increase the size of the piece and still not
232
1 inordinately increase the size of the pie?
2 COCHAIR STAFFORD: The pie will increase
3 by 21 million but the small grieving schools may not get a
4 part of that.
5 DR. GODBY: Actually, Mr. Chair, the last
6 column on the scenario page shows how it would be
7 disbursed and the majority of the money would go to the
8 smaller schools. It is both increasing the size of the
9 pie and the majority of that money is increasing the size
10 of the slice that's going to the grieving schools.
11 SENATOR SESSIONS: Mr. Chairman.
12 COCHAIR STAFFORD: I think it is about
13 time to adjourn.
14 SENATOR SESSIONS: To verify that, look to
15 the index values on that thing. Your big schools have the
16 lowest index values. Your smaller schools have your
17 higher ones. That money is going to small schools.
18 COCHAIR STAFFORD: No, grieving schools.
19 SENATOR SESSIONS: Your big schools aren't
20 getting it.
21 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Question called for on
22 the amendment. The amendment is to delete the payment at
23 this point and go with basically section 2 of the bill
24 315.W2 which is a continuation of the study.
25 Understand that?
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1 All in favor signify by saying aye.
2 Opposed, no.
3 Show of hands, all in favor.
4 Motion carries.
5 Back on the bill, further discussion on the
6 bill?
7 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Question.
8 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Question being called
9 for, do pass committee bill on 315.W2.
10 Mr. Nelson, call the roll.
11 MR. NELSON: Senator Goodenough.
12 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Aye.
13 MR. NELSON: Senator Peck.
14 SENATOR PECK: Aye.
15 MR. NELSON: Senator Scott.
16 SENATOR SCOTT: Aye.
17 MR. NELSON: Senator Sessions.
18 SENATOR SESSIONS: Aye.
19 MR. NELSON: Representative Lockhart.
20 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Aye.
21 MR. NELSON: Representative McOmie.
22 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Aye.
23 MR. NELSON: Representative Miller.
24 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Aye.
25 MR. NELSON: Representative Robinson.
234
1 REPRESENTATIVE ROBINSON: Aye.
2 MR. NELSON: Representative Samuelson.
3 REPRESENTATIVE SAMUELSON: No.
4 MR. NELSON: Representative Shivler.
5 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Aye.
6 MR. NELSON: Representative Simons.
7 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: No.
8 MR. NELSON: Cochair Devin.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: Aye.
10 MR. NELSON: Cochair Stafford.
11 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Aye.
12 It is passed.
13 We will be ready to adjourn for the evening. We
14 will begin at 8:00 in the morning. Your agenda says 8:30,
15 but we will begin at 8:00.
16 (Meeting proceedings recessed
17 4:05 p.m., December 16, 2002.)
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