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<p>EXETER &#8212; They may not be studying advanced calculus or conducting experiments in chem lab, but their aspirations post-high school are the same when compared to students in other classrooms: striking out on their own, finding a job they can enjoy, and being happy.</p><p>But a recent report contends the state increasingly leaves them in the lurch, and leaves local taxpayers paying the price.</p><p>When Life Skills teacher Anita McKeown asks her students to choose among hypothetical community college courses, they smile at the prospects. Jesse Sherlinski picks metal welding &#8220;so I can make a suit of armor.&#8221; Ashley Tietjen shyly says she would make a rose with skills learned in the same class. Victoria Young is more adventurous, raising her hand for almost every suggested course, and raising <em>both</em> hands for the one that would teach paper making.</p><p>McKeown teaches basics of independent life to 10 special education students from four area school districts &#8212; and that&#8217;s a few flakes on the tip of an iceberg. In 2017-18, Luzerne County&#8217;s 11 school districts had total special education enrollment of 7,371, each with an Individual Education Plan (IEP), and each with a federal and state legal right to a &#8220;Free Appropriate Public Education.&#8221;</p><p>The catch: &#8220;Free&#8221; costs, and the price can be steep. According to state data, Luzerne County&#8217;s 11 districts spent $98.5 million for special education in 2016-17. And the price has climbed rapidly. A comparison of data from 2008-09 to 2016-17 by the Education Law Center (ELC) found that among Luzerne County&#8217;s districts, special education cost increases ranged from 22 percent at Lake-Lehman to 114 percent in Wilkes-Barre Area.</p><p>The overwhelming bulk of those increased costs have been borne by local taxpayers. The poster child for this fact locally is Wilkes-Barre Area. From 2008 to 2017, total special education spending increased by $11 million, yet state funding to offset that increase was $640,808.</p><p>Put another way, the state paid less than 6 percent of the total increase. There is a small fraction of federal money involved, but here&#8217;s the bottom line: Of that $11 million increase, local taxpayers covered almost $10.3 million.</p><p>The pattern is the same in every local district: Special education spending rose faster than the state&#8217;s contribution to the cost. And the ELC data shows it is a statewide trend. From 2008 to 2016, the state increased special education money by $72 million &#8212; which sounds like a lot &#8212; but total special education spending soared by $1.54 <em>billion</em>.</p><p>The ELC contends this is proof the state is &#8220;shortchanging children with disabilities,&#8221; and is pushing for an increase this year of $100 million in state money. But Gov. Tom Wolf&#8217;s budget proposal released earlier this month added only half that.</p><p><strong>Factors and consequences</strong></p><p>McKeown doesn&#8217;t seem to dwell on this. She smiles freely and praises her charges as &#8220;a wonderful class.&#8221; When she <em>does </em>touch on state funding, it is either a cheerful acceptance of the lack of space for one-on-one sessions with visiting therapists, or a wistful recollection of four students from Wyoming Valley West who left her class to return to their home district. After spending every day for years with some students, she concedes, &#8220;I miss them.&#8221;</p><p>But the departure of those students is a consequence of the funding debate.</p><p>McKeown works for the Luzerne Intermediate Unit, an agency providing services to area schools, primarily special education. When a district has only a student or two in need of a Life Skills class, it can be cheaper to send them to her in the Wyoming Area Secondary Center than to hire a teacher and find the space. In recent years, area districts &#8212; particularly the largest ones like WVW &#8212; have found enrollment of IEP students has grown enough to justify bringing the service in house.</p><p>Yet the savings, if they come, may not be enough. Even the increase in the governor&#8217;s proposed budget may not be enough. The Wyoming Valley West School Board recently voted to exceed a state limit on tax increases known as the annual Act 1 Index. The district will to seek an exemption from the limit to cover soaring special education costs. From 2008 to 2016, WVW special ed spending rose by $6.9 million; state aid rose by $426,133.</p><p>Greater Nanticoke Area Superintendent Ronald Grevera epitomizes the argument. &#8220;Our special education population is increasing to the point whereby 25 percent of our students have an IEP,&#8221; he said via email. Special education services have &#8220;increased based on need, but the state appears to turn a blind eye to our most vulnerable students with IEPs.</p><p>&#8220;The irony of the situation is that we are getting significantly less money in special education, but our legal responsibility to our special education students is not absolved.&#8221;</p><p><strong>A different take</strong></p><p>There is a counter argument, one cited by Dallas Business Manager Grant Palfey: When the state legislators crafted the Act 1 restriction, they created the special education exemption precisely to help districts deal with spikes in costs.</p><p>&#8220;I think the state knew at the time they weren&#8217;t giving as much funding as needed, so they created the exemption to go above and beyond the limit.&#8221; Such a release valve makes sense, he added, because special education costs can spike with just one or two students requiring high-price services.</p><p>&#8220;If you get a unique case &#8212; say a family moves into the district and there&#8217;s a residential placement of a student &#8212; one student can cost $30,000 a month. Let&#8217;s say you are Northwest Area (the county&#8217;s smallest district). Your special education budget might be $1 million, and $300,000 is a big hit.&#8221;</p><p>Northwest&#8217;s 2016-17 special education spending was $3.5 million, but the example is apt. District spending rose by nearly 5o percent since 2008-09, when it was $2.4 million. The change in state funding for the same stretch was a scant $58,631.</p><p>Even with the exemption, Palfey said, &#8220;The problem is you&#8217;re cranking out more local taxes. The state says they have a special, high-expense contingency fund to help reimburse you, but it&#8217;s like pulling teeth to get the money. We had only one student qualify over the years.&#8221;</p><p><strong>Tougher ACCESS</strong></p><p>While the Education Law Center is pushing for more money in the state education budget, Grevera and Palfey both point to a funding cut that runs through the Department of Health: Medical Assistance payments for some services provided to special education students, usually referred to as ACCESS, the word on the government-issued cards.</p><p>&#8220;In a hospital setting, a doctor bills for services and they are reimbursed for services whether the patient lives or dies,&#8221; Grevera noted. &#8220;In the current broken ACCESS system, we bill for services and are denied.&#8221;</p><p>Palfey concedes ACCESS payments related to special education services dropped several years ago, so much so that it was no longer worth the cost of keeping a part-time person on staff to do the billing. &#8220;We weren&#8217;t getting paid enough to pay that person, so now we bill through the LIU and they get a 10 percent administration fee.&#8221; But he suggests the change may simply have eliminated excess billing by some districts.</p><p>The ACCESS spigot started drying up when the state changed companies hired to handle the process, from West Hazleton-based Leader Services to nationally active Public Consulting Group, or PCG. LIU Executive Director Tony Grieco said that change was a response to issues found during an audit by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.</p><p>&#8220;It definitely became much more complicated and time-consuming on our end,&#8221; Grieco said. Initially, the amount of reimbursement plummeted, though the amounts increased as the LIU got to know the system better.</p><p>In 2012-13, the year the change was made, the LIU got only $173,461 for services provided to area schools, when it had been getting close to $1 million in reimbursements before that, Grieco said. The number has returned close to where it was &#8212; $840,486 in 2016-17 &#8212; but it&#8217;s still not as high as reimbursements were under Leader Services.</p><p>It&#8217;s a lot of money, but in the overall puzzle of special education funding, &#8220;the Medical ACCESS piece is a part of it,&#8221; Grieco said, &#8220;but it&#8217;s a small part.&#8221;</p><p>For students like Jesse and Victoria, these are abstract and distant debates. They work every day on assignments like &#8220;scavenger hunts&#8221; through newspaper articles, learning basic computer skills, or mulling what they want &#8212; and can &#8212; do post-high school.</p><p>They are dismissed a half-hour ahead of the rest of the school because some may require special transport, and others may react poorly to the noise of a crowd crushing toward the doors. But they smile, say goodbye and proudly head off, another day&#8217;s work done.</p><style>
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<div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/web1_special-ed-spending-2008-9-2016-17.jpg">
<div class="neCaption"></div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/web1_special-ed-spending-2008-9-2016-17.jpg</photo0><caption0></caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/web1_TTL011819Lifeskills2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">&#8216;We have a wonderful class,&#8217; Anita McKeown says of her Life Skills students at Wyoming Area Secondary Center. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/web1_TTL011819Lifeskills2.jpg</photo1><caption1>&#8216;We have a wonderful class,&#8217; Anita McKeown says of her Life Skills students at Wyoming Area Secondary Center. </caption1><photoCredit1>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/web1_TTL011819Lifeskills3.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Anita McKeown&#8217;s Life Skills class is shown during a recent school day at Wyoming Area Secondary Center. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/web1_TTL011819Lifeskills3.jpg</photo2><caption2>Anita McKeown&#8217;s Life Skills class is shown during a recent school day at Wyoming Area Secondary Center. </caption2><photoCredit2>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit2></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/web1_TTL011819Lifeskills1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Jesse Sherlinski does classwork in Anita McKeown&#8217;s Life Skills class at Wyoming Area Secondary Center. Advocacy groups point to data showing increases in state special education funding have lagged far behind actual costs, &#8216;shortchanging&#8217; the students and putting the cost on local taxpayers. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo3>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/web1_TTL011819Lifeskills1.jpg</photo3><caption3>Jesse Sherlinski does classwork in Anita McKeown&#8217;s Life Skills class at Wyoming Area Secondary Center. Advocacy groups point to data showing increases in state special education funding have lagged far behind actual costs, &#8216;shortchanging&#8217; the students and putting the cost on local taxpayers. </caption3><photoCredit3>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit3></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mark Guydish</p><p>mguydish@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Report: Special education students getting shortchanged by state