New Hanover County Schools urges state to fix special‑education funding, asks to lift 13% cap
Summary
District staff told the board that per‑child state funding of $5,593.34 and a 13% funding cap leave roughly 101 students unfunded this year (an estimated $564,927 gap); the board agreed to press the General Assembly for a weighted Exceptional Children funding model and to ask the county to join advocacy.
Julie Barnum, a district Exceptional Children (EC) staff member, told the New Hanover County Schools board that the district’s current funding formula leaves students underfunded and stressed the limits of the state’s flat per‑pupil allotment.
Barnum said state EC funding provides $5,593.34 per eligible student but that state rules cap funding at 13% of average daily membership. “We’re serving 13.9 percent of our population as students with disabilities requiring IEPs … meaning, almost 1 percent we’re not being funded for,” she said, and gave the district’s current unfunded total as $564,927.34 for the school year.
She described the district’s intensity-of-need case load — 3,293 students receiving EC services — and pointed to large costs for high‑needs students. “The cost to serve our 30 most fragile students, all of their related services … exceeds $1,400,000 this year,” Barnum said, and detailed contracts including $964,000 for one‑on‑one nursing and $255,000 for CNA support.
Barnum urged the board to support two changes in the state funding approach: adoption of the Department of Public Instruction’s proposed EC weighted funding model (which generates funding by service intensity, environment and staffing ratios) and removal of the 13% statewide funding cap. She said the weighted model has been piloted and that prior estimates suggested New Hanover County could receive roughly $2 million more under such a methodology, though staff said they would recalculate current projections.
Board members across the political spectrum praised the presentation and called for rapid advocacy to Raleigh. “If we can just get the cap popped or raised, if it just went up 1 point, we’d have another $570,000 which would make a huge difference in our staffing at the EC level,” Pat Bradford said.
Superintendent Barnes and other board members urged the public to pressure state legislators and the board discussed taking the message to the New Hanover County Commission. No formal board action to change district policy was taken at the meeting; members directed staff to provide updated calculations and to include EC funding changes on the district’s legislative outreach.
The board’s next procedural steps, as discussed at the meeting, were to request updated dollar estimates under the weighted model and to advance the topic in the district’s legislative agenda to the General Assembly and local elected officials.
