Lesson on special education fund irks lawmakers

Tuesday, April 08, 2008
BY JOHN MOONEY
Star-Ledger Staff

When passage of Gov. Jon Cor zine's school funding plan hung in the balance last December, a key bargaining chip thrown to wavering lawmakers was extra state aid to help local districts pay for high special education costs.

Now, questions about how the money is being distributed have left the bill's sponsor wondering whether legislators were duped.

Yesterday, state Sen. Barbara Buono (D-Middlesex) said she was uncertain whether the landmark funding bill would have passed had key legislators known that the extra special education money wasn't going to be included in the 2008-09 budget, but rather the year after that.

"Without that (additional aid), the bill wouldn't have passed," Buono said. "I would have voted for it, but it wouldn't have passed. The increased reimbursement was critical in the end."

The topic arose as the Senate budget committee held its first hearing on the education piece of Corzine's proposed $33 billion state budget.

Buono, the committee's new chairwoman, opened the questioning by grilling state Education Commissioner Lucille Davy about the discrepancy with the special education pot. Buono said lawmakers as sumed the money would be included in Corzine's current budget proposal and felt blindsided when it wasn't.

At issue is a pool of money that reimburses districts for up to 75 percent of their costs exceeding $40,000 for a single special education student, typically those with more significant disabilities and schooled outside of their home districts.

An independent budget analysis by the Office of Legislative Services put the cost of the new law at $92 million. But Corzine's proposed budget allocated only $53 million to the fund next year, according to the OLS study, introducing the possibility of cuts in aid to certain districts.

Davy and her staff yesterday moved quickly to assuage concerns, saying there was confusion about how the fund works. Since the fund works as a reimburse ment, they said, districts can budget for the additional revenue even if they weren't receiving it until the following year.

"It's a reimbursement system and not providing districts with X amount up front," Davy said. "I think it would be difficult to do it any different way."

But Buono was unswayed.

"We are not going to agree on this, but it was certainly misleading," she said.