Kenosha News. August 31, 2022.
Editorial: Special ed costs trigger debate
Wisconsin is not keeping pace with special education funding needs.
That seemed to be the bottom line on a Lee Newspapers report this month that chronicled how costs for special education have grown significantly over the past 40 years, but state reimbursement rates to school districts have lagged considerably.
But it’s complicated.
According to the Lee report, the cost of special education climbed to more than $1.5 billion in Wisconsin in the 2020-2021 school year, but state reimbursements remained below $500 million. That left a gap of more than $1 billion, which falls in the lap of school districts across the state.
In the 1970s, state support for special education stood at around 70 percent, according to a 2019 Wisconsin Policy Forum report. Today the state support stands at less than half that. The Lee report said, “Democrat Gov. Tony Evers proposed increasing special education reimbursement to 50% in his draft 2021-23 biennial budget, but the proposal was scrapped by Republicans, although they did bump reimbursements by 2 percentage points to its current rate of roughly 30%.”
Republicans in the Legislature have defended the lack of an increase saying state schools will be getting $2.3 billion in federal COVID relief aid, but school officials note that is a one-time proposition that will not support ongoing expenses like hiring more staff or increasing wages.
The COVID relief money, Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER), aimed at mitigating pandemic-related learning loss, may give schools some breathing room, but it’s not a long-term solution.
Federal and state mandates require that public school districts in Wisconsin provide all of the special education services a student needs and make reasonable accommodations for those special needs—although that does not mean a district can accommodate all requests.
About 14 percent of students in the state are classified as having special needs which can include physical, intellectual, cognitive, emotional and learning disabilities. For Special Ed teachers it’s a high-stress job that has twice the turnover rate compared to other teachers. And polling by disability rights groups show many parents of children with disabilities are dissatisfied with the way their children are educated. It’s a stressful situation all-around.
Simply increasing the state’s budget support for special education might seem like an easy solution – even if it is a politically difficult one – but that may not be the answer. It’s more complicated than that.
Last year State Rep. Joel Kitchens, R- Sturgeon Bay, noted that by law, districts are required to spend whatever is needed to provide services call for in a special ed student’s IEP (individual education plan).
Kitchens, who co-chaired the Blue Ribbon Commission on School Funding in 2019, said, “So when we increase the special ed aid, if we were to put it up to 50 percent, that money wouldn’t go to special ed kids, because they are going to get the same amount (based on their EIPs).”
“That is a sort of fallacy of opinion – “You are not putting enough into special education, that is hurting the special ed kids.’ It’s really not. It’s hurting the overall bottom line (of the district).”
That’s what happened in Green Bay last year where the district transferred more than $30 million from its general fund into the special ed fund to pay for services they are legally obligated to provide.
The student services director for the Green Bay District said, “That is $30 million that didn’t go to the general education students that lowers your class sizes, gives them even more resources, things of that nature.”
That, it seems to us, relates more to the state’s levy limits than it does to whether the governor and the Legislature earmark state aids for special education or just puts the responsibilities on school districts to cover the costs. That’s just finger-pointing.
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Eau Claire Leader Telegram. August 30, 2022.
Editorial: A new beginning arrives
Summer flies by, doesn’t it? Wisconsin’s few warm months are treasured for good reason, with residents making the most of them. And, aside from a few hot days, this hasn’t been a bad summer to enjoy.
No one values summer quite like students, though. It’s an opportunity to get some relief from the grind of the school year. Summer represents a few months of freedom in which they can more or less live for the enjoyment of life with fewer restrictions.
It’s easy as an adult to look at school and think it’s easy compared to the jobs we do. There’s some truth to that. But that’s a comparison students can’t yet make. Their frame of reference is one grade to another, the building responsibilities that come each year.
As the years pass we lose sight of how important the daily dramas were at the time. It’s a gap that inevitably grows through the simple passage of time. Homework and peer pressure become easy to brush off as we age and the distance from those days increases. For students, they’re very real sources of stress.
Think of it this way: a stubbed toe is far less serious than a broken arm from a medical standpoint. But, for the person hopping around after stubbing a toe, it still hurts.
Many of the school activities for the fall are well underway. Teams have begun competition and we’re already beginning to get a picture of the ones who might just be able to mount a challenge for state titles. Bands are tuned up and ready to go. The classrooms are just about ready, too, regardless of whether the teachers or students are.
Every year brings challenges. That’s part of education. Intentional learning is rarely easy. Overcoming the challenges, growing to be able to surmount issues that would have stumped you just a few short weeks earlier is the entire point of education. The regularity with which students and their teachers successfully achieve those goals doesn’t render them any less remarkable.
And, while we’re on that subject, we’re fortunate to be in an area in which the teachers do their jobs pretty well. While complaints may always be part of the background noise, we can assure folks there are parts of this nation with far less competent educators. The vast majority genuinely want to see their students excel and will go to considerable lengths to ensure they have the opportunity to do so.
As the new academic year arrives, we ask that people remember that success means far more than just having students in their seats every day. In the vast majority of cases it’s the result of several working relationships.
The most obvious is, of course, that between students and their teachers. It’s natural that some students and teachers will connect better than others, but learning how to interact when the other person isn’t one you would choose to engage with is an important lesson of its own. Genuinely insurmountable difficulties are, fortunately, rare.
Overlooking the relationship between parents and teachers would be a mistake. There needs to be the opportunity for frank, effective communication. The common ground of offering the student the best chance at success should be a solid foundation to build upon. Differences of opinion may happen, but they’re far less likely to become a problem if both sides remember the primary interest is in seeing the students grow.
The beginning of the school year always brings excitement. The novelty inevitably wears off, though, yielding to routine. A couple months in and it truly feels like a daily slog and merely going through the motions becomes tempting indeed.
We’re not at that moment yet. For now there’s still the excitement of the unknown, a genuine sense of anticipation. It’s worth savoring.
We hope everyone gets off to a good start this year. We hope students, teachers and parents create the bonds and trust that help ensure a successful year. While the year will become a grind at some point for just about everyone, we hope it never gets too bad.
Even the best preparation needs a little luck as the year goes on. So good luck to everyone. A new beginning is here, and we can’t wait to see what it brings.
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Wisconsin State Journal. August 28, 2022.
Editorial: How to beat burnout and keep the best teachers in class
It’s going to take more than money to keep Wisconsin’s best teachers in the classroom.
They need respect as professionals. They need control over their classrooms. They need students to put their cellphones away.
More cooperation and engagement from parents would sure help, too.
With school starting across much of Wisconsin this week, we all have a role to play at improving public education — especially with so many teacher positions unfilled. Madison still had around 120 teacher vacancies, the district reported Friday. The worker shortage across most of the economy has hit public education hard.
And no wonder. This isn’t an easy job, especially after the pandemic kept so many students away from in-person classes for too long, especially in Madison. That has exacerbated mental health and behavior issues, child psychologists say, while limiting learning. Many students fell behind and spent too much time on digital devices at home, developing bad habits.
Teachers face enormous challenges and distractions as classes begin. COVID still looms, with fear of new strains emerging. Worst of all, draining political debates have targeted public education, including wild accusations of indoctrination and demands to ban books. It needs to end.
Public workers in Wisconsin, including many teachers, are leaving their jobs at the highest rates in decades, according to a report by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum last week. More public employees have left in the last two years than following the passage a decade ago of Act 10, former Gov. Scott Walker’s strict and divisive limits on unions.
Significantly, more teachers are bailing not because they’re getting old and retiring but because of burnout, the report suggests.
Money, of course, is a factor. Many districts have approved 4.7% wage increases, the maximum allowed under Act 10’s inflationary caps on wage negotiations. (The Madison School Board approved a 3% base pay increase in July. Yet Madison is one of the few districts in the state that still gives teachers additional raises for longevity and advanced degrees. Those hikes average about 2%, putting a lot of Madison teachers on par if not ahead of their peers.)
Yet the vast majority of teachers didn’t get into their profession to make lots of money or have their summers off. They teach because they want to inspire young people to succeed. That’s their passion.
COVID badly disrupted their face-to-face interactions with students, many of whom are restless and harder to reach.
Providing more stability for everyone in school buildings will surely help. Wisconsin should keep its schools open and let teachers choose to teach without masks, which can be uncomfortable and make it hard to communicate.
Pulling a single police officer from each of Madison’s four main high schools hasn’t improved student behavior or school safety. Instead, outside officers who don’t know the students have had to respond to almost daily calls for help, creating more potential for conflict and misunderstanding. Madison should reconsider that decision.
School districts can do their teachers a huge favor this fall by adopting clear and effective bans on students using cellphones during class. The devices have become a chronic barrier to learning. Madison appears to be moving in the right direction.
Too many teachers are being disrespected by a vocal minority. Some parents and politicians have scoured teachers’ lesson plans for offense. Teachers have unfairly been criticized at times for policies they didn’t adopt and might not even agree with. Local school boards and administrators make the big decisions.
Moreover, the teachers who remain don’t have as much help because support staff are in short supply. That makes it harder to provide individual attention to the young people who need it most.
School districts need to be more creative in attracting young educators while keeping existing staff excited and improving. A lot of effort is already going into that.
Lowering the standards for teaching is definitely not the answer. Wisconsin should avoid Florida’s folly of filling classrooms with current and past military personnel who haven’t been trained to effectively engage and teach students.
Here’s a final suggestion, something we all can do: Tell a teacher how much you appreciate them. Be specific, especially if that teacher is educating your student and you’re happy with the job they’re doing. More respect and support for their hard work is key to keeping talented people in front of our children.
