By NANCY HILER
"The governor did not rescind any proposals," said Matt Anderson, spokesman for the Division of the Budget at Governor Paterson's office. This includes the governor's proposal to require school districts to pay 15 percent of the preschool special-education bill, said Barbara Wortman, assistant to the superintendent for pupil personnel services and special education for the North Merrick Elementary School District.
Funding restored
The governor recently announced that the federal stimulus package provides sufficient monies to the state to alleviate proposed school aid cuts.
"Reductions in school aid proposed were $700 million year to year, which were necessary to make up for the budget shortfall," said Anderson. "Circumstances have changed now that we're in line to obtain stimulus funding. The $1.2 billion that must be spent on education is more than sufficient to restore school funding."
School aid for Long Island will be funded at its current level in 2009-2010. That's a total of $150 million -- - $60 million for Nassau County and $96 million for Suffolk County.
What the governor did not say, however, is whether the federal bailout money for education would go beyond the state's maintaining level funding. School district officials have said they hope that at least some of the extra education dollars will go to help alleviate rising costs, including contractual salary increases and unfunded federal mandates, long sources of school budgeting frustration.
School officials said, in particular, that they hope the infusion of federal funding would stop the state's proposal to require districts to pay for preschool special education.
The governor has not recommended how any excess monies from the stimulus package should be spent, Anderson said. "Ultimate allocation will be determined in the process of negotiating the final budget with the [state] legislature," he commented.
Rising costs
In New York, children ages 3 to 5 who are suspected to have learning disabilities are entitled to no-cost evaluations to determine if they need special-education services before they enroll in elementary school.
In each district, a Committee on Preschool Special Education conducts the evaluations. Children's assessments cover about a dozen special needs, including deafness and blindness, autism, speech and language impairment, learning disabilities and emotional disturbances.
Currently, the state and county pay for preschool special education. School budgets cover the costs of in-district special-education services to students ages 5 to 21.
"Special education accounts for 27.1 percent of the total instructional cost of education, even though it involves only 12.4 percent of the students," according to a recent state Department of Education report. It "has been a key element in the past decade's accelerated growth in overall school expense."
Why the shift?
The reasoning behind having school districts pay part of the cost of preschool special education is accountability, Anderson said.
"School districts oversee and operate preschool special-education programs, but are not responsible for funding them," Anderson contended. "The state seeks to align the oversight with the funding as an incentive for them to be fiscally responsible."
Arnold Goldstein, superintendent of the North Bellmore School District, said, "That's just rationale for their having a budget crisis, and having to cut costs or increase revenues. It's a big expense, and we end up paying for it, or we have to reduce services."
Wortman, of the North Merrick district, said, "We want to ensure that these kids have the appropriate services provided so they are ready to transition to district" in kindergarten. "There is a county representative at all CPSE meetings, so the decision on spending is not made by school district personnel alone. Also, we are heavily audited by the state."
Despite the federal bailout plan for schools, the governor still advocates finding efficiencies, said Anderson. "All levels of government will have to be more efficient," he said. "We still need to take action to address overspending."
Budgeting for uncertainty
"From a special-education perspective, no one knows what else might come down from the state," cautioned Carol Eskew, deputy superintendent of the North Bellmore School District in charge of special-education services. She said North Bellmore has put the additional preschool special-education costs in its 2009-2010 spending plan. That added $360,000 to the budget, she said. Based on last year's costs, the district estimated $2 million in services plus $400,000 for busing, 15 percent of which is $360,000.
"In North Merrick, that would be about $150,000," Wortman said, who also said the amount was included in the district's proposed budget.
State officials "know we're in the budget process now, that we have to plan," Eskew said, "but we won't know if this will come to pass until the state budget is passed in April. We're sure most school districts have taken steps to allocate for this in their budgets."
Officials of the Merrick and Bellmore school districts could not be reached for comment.
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