[P]ublic and private school officials are asking the Vermont Agency of Education to go back to the drawing board on guidance it issued earlier this summer warning that the state would no longer reimburse certain special education costs.
In two memos sent out June 6 and 7, the agency told school districts it had “been scrutinizing costs which have previously been allowed, but are not consistent with State law and regulation.” Those included contracted services provided outside the school that were taking place at “non-approved entities” like private businesses.
In a letter sent to Education Secretary Dan French on July 29, five organizations representing Vermont’s public and private school sectors expressed strong reservations about the agency’s interpretation of state regulations. The guidance could be in conflict with federal law, they said, and was also ill-timed given that the new fiscal year began July 1.
Signatories included the leaders of the state’s special education, school boards, principals, superintendents, and independent school associations.
“The timing and presentation of these communications has left school districts in a cloud of uncertainty with varying interpretations about the context for the communications, the specific and general operational and fiscal effects, and the intentions behind the Agency of Education’s actions,” the letter says.
School officials complain the memos would likely require dramatic changes to long-standing practice and hundreds of thousands of dollars in unexpected costs, since budgets were set in March during Town Meeting season.
A key concern is that the new guidance would require school districts to parse special education costs from regular education costs when requesting reimbursements for the tuition they pay to private schools that specialize in disabilities that require more intensive services.
Mill Moore, the executive director of the Vermont Independent Schools Association, says that’s just not practically possible.
“The reason that students are referred to those schools is that they need special education for everything. The idea of making that distinction is illogical,” he said.
Several district administrators cited potential unreimbursed costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, although they emphasized those figures were tentative. Windham Southeast Supervisory Union superintendent Lyle Holiday said administrators in her district worried about needing to spend over $400,000 from the district’s general fund budget. Erin Maguire, a special education director in the Essex-Westford district, speculated the cost to schools could be anywhere between $500,000 and $800,000.
“But my range has a ton of assumptions within it,” Maguire said.
Chief among the complaints from schools, however, have simply been the message’s late arrival. School officials are often out of the office during the summer, and the memo arrived just weeks before the new fiscal year was set to begin.
“Sending me a memorandum in mid-June announcing a significant change that takes effect on July 1 is problematic, unless the intent is to implement change without first considering feedback from the field,” said Mark Tucker, Caledonia Central Supervisory Union superintendent.
Holiday, in the Windham Southeast district, noted her communities had recently concluded a divisive consolidation effort. The last thing she wanted was to bring an unexpected budget problem to her boards.
“If a change like that is going to take place, we need more lead time,” she said. “That’s going to be a huge burden on a newly merged district.”
The letter sent to the agency also references a recent report – commissioned by several of the letter’s signatories – which argues Vermont defines special education too narrowly, potentially in conflict with federal law.
“Under federal law, special education refers to any adaptation to what and/or how a student with disabilities is taught so that the student can access the general curriculum,” the letter argues. The agency’s interpretation of state regulations, meanwhile, appear to “view special education as more limited ‘add-on’ services.”
In a statement, French said the agency intended to send “additional information to all districts answering the most common questions that have resulted” from the memos. As for timing of the messages, French said they “were intended as reminders of long-standing State Board rules.”
“The Agency will frequently send this type of memo if we note a lack of understanding or compliance with the law through our normal monitoring processes. These two memos seem to have come as a surprise to a number of SUs, which was not our intention,” he wrote.
