Connecticut schools are getting $30 million in additional funding for special education this year. But once it’s split up, it’s not nearly as much. Is the state doing enough?
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Sasha Allen to discuss her article, “Funding for special ed in CT got a bump this year, but is it enough?” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Sasha’s story here.
WSHU: Hello, Sasha. The underfunding of special education in Connecticut has been a perennial problem. This year, state lawmakers attempted to tackle it and passed a bill that would provide about $70 million in new funding, part of which will go to a special education expansion and Development Grant Program for school districts over the next couple of years. Is that why you decided to look into this issue? And why did you find it important to focus on Bridgeport special education teacher Lisa Balzano?
SA: Yeah, I guess that's kind of how I got interested in it. When I saw that they had passed the bill, which would add additional money, I heard some of the discourse around it. People were calling it, you know, emergency money that was passed last session, and then the new grants seemed like they were important. And so I decided to look more into it. And I got to talking to some teachers. Lisa was one of them, and I thought her story was particularly interesting because she was like a die-hard Bridgeport teacher through and through; she didn't want to leave. I looked into it, and I don't think this was in the article, but I looked into some teacher salaries in different districts throughout the state. And, you know, she could have moved to a district where she would have made a lot more money if she wanted to, but she decided to stay in Bridgeport because she loved the kids and stuff, so that's why I decided to talk to her.
And the issue itself just seemed much more, much more important than it did on the surface. You know, when I saw that they passed the bill to add additional money, I was like, Okay, maybe this money is necessary. But as I kept looking, I saw, you know, more and more complaints from parents and advocates about how their kids were being treated in special education, and a lot of it came down to the fact that there wasn't enough money to give them the support that they were legally entitled to. So yeah, that's why I decided to look into it. I thought it was important.
WSHU: An interesting incident was when Lisa Balzano went to a school in Fairfield, and she opened a storeroom and saw how much material they had. So just tell us a little bit about Lisa's experience being a special ed teacher in Bridgeport, and how it was so different when she went just down the street to a school in Fairfield.
SA: Yeah, so she told me this, this is one of the first things she told me when we started talking, because I was asking her about what her experience was like, and she was like, Well, this is something that's really stuck with me. Two years ago, I went to this school, also in Fairfield County, and opened it. She said it wasn't a supply closet. She said it was a supply room, and she opened the door to a supply room where they had literally anything, pens, paper, pencils, markers, so many school supplies that she is always buying for her students herself out of pocket. She said that teachers get a small stipend every year for money to spend on supplies. And I think that's consistent throughout the state, but she said this school supplied it for their teachers; their teachers didn't have to go out and buy as much stuff as she had to buy. And I thought that that was a really good insight into what it's like to teach in a Bridgeport school versus a school in a more affluent community. And it was a good segue into the fact that, oh, she's also having so many more students on her caseload, because there are fewer teachers, because fewer people want to teach there.
WSHU: Now $70 million seems like a lot of money to put into this. Where exactly will that money go, and how much of a difference will it make?
SA: Yeah, so that's the question that I had when I saw that they were adding the $70 million. I talked to many people, and many people were saying, This is a great start, but I don't think that it's enough. That was kind of the consensus that I got, because there's just so much need throughout the state, and $70 million is a lot of money when you're looking at it, but when you have to distribute it throughout the entire state to each district. Districts aren't getting the amount of money that they need, especially districts like Bridgeport, where, you know, they're trying to build out a new special education program there that would act as a kind of intervention instead of having to send students away. But you know, they're still spending so much more money, or they still need so much more money than they would be getting, and a lot of this money is the money that they're distributing this fiscal year through the seed grant. And I think, I believe it's $30 million.
WSHU: $30 million each year for the next couple of years.
SA: Yes, yeah. So $30 million for this year, and then $30 million next year, and then they're doing $9.9 million for an additional grant. So this year, when you think about it, $30 million was distributed to all of the districts in the state. That's not a ton of money. Some districts are getting $125 for their special education program under the seed grant this year. So when you think about how much money that is, you can't really do a lot with that.
WSHU: And at this same time, we're also seeing an increase in the number of students who qualify for special education. It's gone up quite a bit over the last 15 years.
Yeah, this is a nationwide trend. There are so many more students in special education than there used to be. It's risen, I believe 3% or 4% I can, I can check the number, but it's risen a lot in Connecticut. On top of that, special education costs way more. The costs have risen.
WSHU: What's driving the cost increase?
SA: That's a good question. I talked to a bunch of people about this. They say it's a combination of just rising costs generally throughout the nation. Still, special education is rising at a much higher level than other costs for other educational needs, one of the major costs in special education in Connecticut is transportation, because we out place a lot of our students. Hence, transportation is just generally getting more expensive, and transporting special education students does cost a lot.
WSHU: But part of this grant program is to try to have school districts bring some of those programs that they're taking the kids to other districts back into districts so they have those programs within their districts. Are there any school districts that intend to do something with that money to bring services back into their districts?
SA: Yeah, I haven't seen anything set in stone specifically regarding the seed grant money, but there have been a lot of talks about collaboration with other districts. I'm sure that there's a lot of ideas floating around about that, and that seemed like the general consensus when I was talking to teachers and when I was talking to special education directors throughout the state, they were all saying that they wanted to use this money to create lower level intervention so that they don't have to send every student whose needs exceed the needs that they can offer in their schools out to us, like private, specialized facility. We heard from a few people. I think there was a mayor, I believe it was Shelton, and he said that he wanted to use some of the money to create a system for a lower-level intervention. So we've heard some stuff about this money. Specifically, I don't think right now there's anything set in stone to build a lower-level intervention. I will say that in Bridgeport, they have a bunch of money, and they are building a new school to which they're going to add intervention. It should hold a ton of students, and it would really help their outplacement numbers.
WSHU: So basically, the bottom line is, there's more money, but it might not be enough.
SA: Yeah, and when I was talking to everyone, they all said this, but their hope is that this is going to kick-start the state sending in more money when they see that this money is working. And there are, I believe, plans to increase the grant after fiscal year 27. I think that's what they were hoping to do. But yeah, everyone is just hopeful that this is the beginning of more money for special education.
