There isn't enough money, then why didn't you spend what you had?

 There is not enough money, then why didn’t you spend what you had?

 

We regularly hear from school districts that there is not enough money to provide the wide range of services that both state and federal law requires for children with special needs.   We have also heard repeatedly that during pandemic and required distance learning students with special needs might have been shortchanged in the delivery of a free and appropriate public education.

 

Now we are learning about a whole new result of the pandemic.   Schools have NOT spent the amount of money they were required to spend by those same federal and state laws. There is a requirement called “maintenance of effort”.  It means that a school district must spend at LEAST as much money this year as it spent last year providing for the education of children with disabilities.  As the school year comes to an end, it seems that many districts have not met this effort.  Some schools have asked if they could use the federal money from IDEA to charge against the state required expenses.  They can't.  Black letter law.

 

Here is how they have saved money.  One savings is pretty obvious.   Schools are able to charge the cost of transportation for kids with special needs against the expense requirement.  Since students weren’t being transported, that money wasn’t spent.   The same is true regarding the classroom aides.  In many districts these aides are hourly and schools just decided to furlough these people during virtual instruction.  Could these people have been kept on and provided individual follow-up to the students who were struggling with virtual education.  Absolutely, but they weren’t kept on and the kids didn’t get the help.  More money not spent.  Some districts are being advised to count money spent on personal protection equipment for students in special education towards meeting the spending requirement.   How spending money on PPE for special ed kids is different and unique from what is spent on plain kids is an interesting question.

 

Districts have approached the U.S. Office of Education asking for a waiver for the 20-21 school year for maintenance of effort.  So far the USOE has refused.

 

Here is a very interesting question.  When just about everyone agrees that children with special needs have suffered more loss during this pandemic, why is it so difficult to spend the money that has been allocated to meet those needs to be spent?  Districts always complain they can’t meet kids’ needs because there is not enough money- now they complain they can’t spend what they have!  As Lucy would have said, they have some “splainin’ “ to do.