Dept. of Education eradicates special ed office in layoffs
The DOE has reportedly dismissed nearly all employees in its Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.
unbranded – Newsworthy
- The newly-proposed special education funding formula, a weighted formula based on student need, would cost the state an estimated additional $1.28 billion to fully adopt.
- The framework is called the “MI Blueprint” and attempts to address chronic underfunding of special education in Michigan.
- The current model incentivizes districts to deny services based on cost, a special education advocate claims.
Lawmakers now have a strategy in front of them to improve the way special education services are funded in Michigan, created by a group of advocates, educators, administrators and families who spent a year building the proposed framework under a directive from the Michigan Legislature.
Whether they’ll adopt that strategy is yet to be seen. The newly proposed funding system would cost an estimated additional $1.28 billion in special education funding per year, according to the plan.
The framework unveiled Thursday, Oct. 30, is called the “MI Blueprint” and reimagines Michigan’s system to fund special education as a formula that distributes funding based on student needs, where certain categories of needs would come with more funding than others. For example, services for Autism Spectrum Disorders may be more costly than the funding needed for services for speech and language impairments.
Heather Eckner, a lead on the MI Blueprint project and director of statewide education with the Autism Alliance of Michigan, said that while special education funding has seen big increases in recent years in Michigan, the current formula is broken, meaning students aren’t getting the services they need.
“We actually haven’t solved for the huge gap of underfunding and under-resourcing for special education that is a root cause of so many issues in our system today,” she said.
A flawed system for special education
Under federal law, public schools must meet the needs of students with disabilities, which can include assistive devices for students with visual or auditory disabilities, special education aides to work with students and extra support, like tutoring. The federal government sends schools some money for special education costs, but the funding is vastly lower than actual costs.
School leaders have long complained that special education services for schools are underfunded, forcing them to draw from their general education budgets, taking away from other school programs and services. Experts estimate the shortfall is somewhere in the hundreds of millions of dollars, though lawmakers have made adjustments in recent years to truly cover schools’ costs.
According to the report released Thursday, the special education funding shortfalls are worse in districts in areas with fewer resources, where voter-approved property taxes aren’t able to cover budget needs for schools.
Max Marchitello, who led the technical development for the blueprint, compared two districts: Kent Intermediate School District and Charlevoix-Emmet Intermediate School District. Because Charlevoix-Emmet’s tax base is wealthier, the district was able to spend $3,500 more per student with disabilities in 2024 than Kent, Marchitello said during a news conference.
“The students are similar, the needs are similar, yet the difference is rooted in property wealth, not that need,” he said. “And to be clear, this is not about fault or blame. Every community and every district is working hard to serve its students with the resources it has.”
A blueprint to address long-standing inequity
The Michigan Legislature directed the group to create a road map for funding special education in the 2024 school aid budget. The blueprint unveiled Oct. 30 has now been formally submitted to the state Legislature, according to a news release, which calls the effort “the first coordinated, statewide effort to modernize special education finance in Michigan.”
Eckner said the current reimbursement model incentivizes districts to think about budget constraints rather than opportunities for students with individualized education programs (IEPs), or the individual documents that outline the services a student is entitled to under special education laws.
“Districts are going into those IEP planning meetings thinking in their head about all these budget constraints on the front end,” she said. “That’s not supposed to be a factor or consideration under the intent of the law. It’s supposed to be, ‘OK, this child has a disability … what do they need and what can we provide?’ “
Eckner said that as a parent of a student with disabilities and as an advocate in meetings, that approach is rare: Districts routinely deny services, likely, she believes, because they can’t afford them.
The MI Blueprint introduces a weighted approach, where state disability eligibility categories would differ in funding per student, split into four tiers. The blueprint estimates a $31,380 cost per student in the hearing impairment category, for example, and $39,221 for a student in the Autism Spectrum Disorder category. The lowest-cost tier, which is estimated to cost $10,996 per student, encompasses 53% of Michigan’s students with disabilities, while the highest cost tier — at roughly $39,221 per student — encompasses 21% of students with disabilities.
The proposed model would cost the state more to fully implement: 2024’s state budget spent about $3.27 billion on special education, compared with the $4.55 billion needed for the weighted model, a $1.28 billion difference. The MI Blueprint recommends implementing the new plan gradually, starting with $213 million in additional funding in the first year, and increasing the amount for five more years.
But special education advocates Thursday said the price is worth it: Alexandra Stamm, an education policy analyst for the Michigan League for Public Policy, is a former teacher.
“When I think of what all this money could do … I think of more supports for kids in terms of more paraprofessionals, more special education teachers, more speech and language pathologists,” she said. “More staff to provide those resources to the kids.”
(This story has been updated to reflect the correct teaching specialization for Alexandra Stamm.)
Contact Lily Altavena: laltavena@freepress.com.