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In
choosing between protecting turf or doing what’s
best for children, the House Appropriations
Committee has chosen … turf.
Since
last year, Sen. Walter Stosch, R-Henrico, has
battled for legislation providing a very small
Tuition Assistance Grant that students with
disabilities could use to attend a non-religious
private school licensed to teach students with
disabilities. Although most parents – including
the parents of children with disabilities – are
relatively satisfied with the special education
services their public school provides, for some
kids a public school setting just doesn’t work.
Students
with disabilities are among the most fragile in
our society. They did not choose the hard path in
life they have been handed, and they sometimes
have specialized needs that a school “system”
by definition finds extraordinarily difficult, if
not impossible, to meet.
For
the parents of these students, Stosch’s bill
would have provided a pathway to educational options that could mean
the difference between a
productive life for the children or one of dependency.
Stosch
was bitterly attacked by the education
establishment for trying to help these children.
The Virginia School Boards Association (VSBA)
wrote school board members around the state,
comparing him and the bill to Dracula, and calling
his bill “dastardly.” The Virginia teachers
union rhetorically asked “how low can he go?”
And the VSBA attorney accused him of “running
away” when the bill was referred to another
committee – even though the VSBA has refused to
openly debate the issue with other groups.
Pretty
strong language – especially when directed
towards a Senate Majority Leader who has probably
sent as much money into public education as any
member of the General Assembly.
So
the question is: Why?
After
all, a small tuition assistance grant wouldn’t
exactly drain the public schools. In fact, such a
grant used by a student leaving their school
system would have been a good thing for local
school divisions and local taxpayers.
Here
are the numbers: The average cost for educating a
special education student is about $16,000. While
the public school system would have lost its state
funding (average: $4,700), it would have kept all
of its local funding (average of $4,500 per
pupil), sales tax distributions (average: $850 per
pupil), and 85 percent of its federal funding
(average: $560 per pupil).
Since
the school system would have lost most (although
not all) of the cost of educating an expensive
special education student, local school divisions
would have gained a fiscal benefit of more than
$5,000 for each student departed for a private
school.
In
addition, because most of the cost of educating a
special education student is borne by local school
divisions, local local taxpayers would save
upwards of $6,000.
Even
if one calculated that one third of the $16,000
cost was a fixed cost (transportation, heat,
etc.), local school divisions still would do well.
No,
the issue wasn’t money. In fact, when the bill
was amended to cap any grant at only $3,400, the
education bureaucracy still opposed the bill.
It
sounds almost paranoid and conspiratorial to
suggest it, but could the issue have been about
… control?
For
example, during the Virginia School Boards
Association convention last November, VSBA
attorneys so ridiculed the idea that parents might
know what’s best for their children that several
members walked out of the session.
During
the House Appropriations Committee meeting,
educators and certain legislators were aghast at
the idea that parents might make the decision
about what was best for their own children. Even
when the standard for removal was narrowed to
specify only occasions when the student failed to
meet the academic goals decided upon by the school
system in the first place (in other words, when
schools failed to do what they said they would
do), Democratic legislators demanded to know why
school systems couldn’t stop parents from using
a grant to find a more effective educational
setting.
Del.
Clarence Phillips, D-Norton, even got worked up
over the prospect that, if the state
superintendent refused to give a grant to a
parent, parents might be able to “apply to the
Courts of the Commonwealth of Virginia to compel
that official to comply with the laws of the
state.”
Heaven
forbid. We certainly wouldn’t want officials to
be forced to comply with the law.
The
VSBA, of course, doesn’t always have such
confidence in local school boards: That same week
the association lobbied against legislation that
would have given local boards the right to
contract their bus services to private schools.
In
other words, the VSBA believes local school boards
can never be trusted about something as simple as
contracting bus services … but will never make a
mistake in something as complicated as educating
fragile special education students.
It
makes no sense. But, then again, the issue was
never about children in the first place.
While
Walter Stosch and advocates for the bill focused
their attention on the positive effects that such
opportunities could offer for students with
disabilities, opponents chose another path.
In
all of the testimony at three hearings, opponents
of the bill talked about the effects of a tuition
assistance grant on school systems, on teachers,
on principals and on lawyers. They never once
talked about the effect of the grant on children.
I wonder why?
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February 20, 2007
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