Utterly Meaningless

Sounds like the McKay scholarship program here in FL.

Since NC is not alone in providing crappy service to special ed families, McKay has proven to be a popular program.

Nance

P.S. Sending this comment again, Daryl, as the first time I was told I was spam and sent to the moderator. Because I included the Snook url??

On the third hand, the public system is of two minds too! Which makes it a deliciously meaty issue —

The federal responsibility to cover all costs for every kid is unlimited. We had a few whose “free, appropriate” education topped $50,000 each, per year, and that was 20 years ago. Also it isn’t just “the exception” anymore. Exceptional education participation is exploding and blowing up school budgets along with it.

So — as a practical administrative decision, supporting these vouchers is a no-brainer, an obvious savings to the schools. That’s more money left per child for all the kids still in the system who don’t qualify for any kind of greener pasture support.

OTOH, support these vouchers and it undercuts public school protectionist rhetoric all the way around. 😉

But the clearly good news I see in voucher stories is an individual family able to make up their own mind, choosing whatever they decide fits their own child’s needs best never MIND budgets, politics, special interest groups, ideology or geography.

JJ Ross said:

The federal responsibility to cover all costs for every kid is unlimited. We had a few whose “free, appropriate” education topped $50,000 each, per year, and that was 20 years ago. Also it isn’t just “the exception” anymore. Exceptional education participation is exploding and blowing up school budgets along with it.

The federal mandate to serve all special needs kids has never been fully funded. For every one of these rumored “Cadillac” IEP’s, ten or twenty or thirty other kids are under-served, usually for lack of funds.

“Greener pastures” my backside.

From a parent’s pov, of course this would be the reaction.
From the school administrator’s pov though, on this specific issue (which is the context of what you quoted) what’s spent on one child isn’t available for other children, or for any of the other not-fully funded mandates, which helps explain all the underserving!

So despite their general fear of voouchers, a proposal that sends only a basic FTE amount of say, $6,000 out the door looks like a trade-off worth making, compared to the much higher and much less reliably anticipated costs of each special needs kid who otherwise would be enrolled in that school and share claim to that school’s limited funds.

And just to clarify, I was speaking from experience, not rumors.

JJ, I am looking at this from the POV of a parent and as a former advocate for special needs kids (retired).

I *never* once saw a kid get more than was required to fund an adequate education. Yes, this is often costly. Costs soar when a kid is out-placed to a special ed school, such as a boarding school for the deaf, or for a kid who needs other accomidations that the local school can’t or won’t provide. Transportation costs alone are often as much as, and sometimes more, than tuition.

$6,000 just isn’t going to do it for these kids. It isn’t going to reduce the need for special education accomidations, and it isn’t going to fully fund the FAPE mandate.

So what looks like a great alternative is just going to be an additional burden on the district budget.

Nancy, yes, from the parent’s POV the schools often didn’t cover what was neededed and $6,000 certainly won’t, in or out of public school services.

I can’t see why most parents would choose this then, except there already are some few who leave the public system even without that credit, so they can homeschool or at least not have to deal with the system. For them a tax credit would help in the same way the adoption tax credit helps, perhaps? (definitely not fully funded though.)

So I was with you right up to that last sentence. What’s the additional burden on the district budget? Looks to me like some few leave or maybe none do but either way, how would it cost the schools MORE?