Committee reviews IDEA funding, contractor use for special-education services and charter-school staffing plans

The Finance and Operations Committee on an unspecified June meeting reviewed how federal IDEA funding is used to pay personnel, benefits and high-cost contractors that support more than 3,000 students with disabilities and discussed both short-term contracting and a plan to send district special-education teachers to charter schools.

"Primarily, we utilize this particular grant for the over 3,000 students that we have, personnel benefits, and, some high cost contractors for both nursing and behavioral services," Special-Education Director Miss Jackson said while presenting the IDEA abstracts.

Committee members pressed for detail on meeting mandated services while holding down costs. Jackson said IDEA money is used for staffing and for contracting where the district lacks in-house professionals, and noted the district also uses general-fund dollars to pay for some speech and language pathology contracts.

Board member Doctor Yarbrough asked for outcome and performance measures; Jackson replied she can provide end-of-year reports and targets to the committee. The committee also noted a correction to one contract line item: a speech-and-language contract entry listed as $90,000 in a materials summary was corrected in backup documents to $433,000.

The discussion also covered the districts approach to special-education services in charter schools. Jackson said the district has sent its own teachers to Booker T. Washington and is phasing in district-provided special-education teachers at Highville and Common Ground, with the stated objective of avoiding some outside contracts where feasible. "For the upcoming school year, we are working with Teach for America to secure our own teachers," she said.

Jackson told the committee that Achievement First had not signed a contract by the end of the fiscal year despite repeated attempts and that the districts attorney had been engaged to close out the year. She said Achievement First would be the most difficult charter to cover with district staff because of the number of teachers that would be required to meet mandated services.

The committee voted to forward the package of abstracts, agreements and related items discussed across the meeting to the full board for approval; the motion passed with recorded support from Doctor Yarbrough and others.

Discussion only: committee members and staff requested additional data (end-of-year outcomes and spending breakdowns) and asked staff to provide clearer year-by-year fiscal impacts. Direction: staff agreed to supply the requested end-of-year reports and to work with labor/finance to identify which contract costs can be shifted to IDEA where allowable without violating maintenance-of-effort rules. Formal action: the committee recommended the abstracts and agreements be sent to the full board for approval.