Evers goes big on special ed funding, showing another way Walker screwed K-12 public schools

As the new school year approaches in Wisconsin, I wanted to revisit a campaign statement by Tony Evers and give a bit of budgetary context for it, as it showcases a significant area of neglect by Scott Walker and the GOPs that have run the Legislature since 2011.

You may recall that Evers said last month that planned to ask for an additional $600 million to K-12 special education funding in his first budget as governor. The $600 million in special education aid seems like a lot, but much of it serves as a way to “catch up” from it being underfunded by Scott Walker and WisGOP since they came to power.

Because despite a projected 15% increase in the Consumer Price Index over the course of 8 years, Walker and WisGOP have only made a minor addition to special education aids between the amount of funding schools got in 2010-11 and the end of the next school year. And that's only in categorical (i.e., more specific) types of special education aid, as general aids haven't changed at all.

Special education aids, 2011-2019
General Special Education aid to K-12 schools
2010-11 $368.9 million
2018-19 $368.9 million

High-cost special education aids
2010-11 $3.5 million
2018-19 $9.35 million

Supplemental special education aid for smaller schools
2010-11 $1.75 million
2018-19 $1.75 million

This means that school districts increasingly have had to pay for special education out of their “regular” school budget, putting even more strain on school districts that are already strapped.

However, the Walker Administration has added two new programs for special education during the Age of Fitzwalkerstan, both of which seems to benefit Walker donors. One deals with “transitional aids”, which help students with special needs prepare for adulthood, either through employment training or life skills (and allows businesses to use these students as a low-cost source of labor). That has $5.1 million set aside for it next year.

The other is the Special Needs Scholarship Program, which is slated to give a $12,424 voucher to students with disabilities in private schools in the coming school year. That has a total price tag estimated at $9.3 million - nearly as much as we spend for high-cost special education in public schools throughout the state.

The Special Needs Scholarship program started in the 2016-17 school at the behest of the Betsy DeVos/Scott Jensen crew, and was the subject of a recent legislative audit. Parents generally reported positive results from the Special Needs Scholarship, but it’s also worth noting that ¾ of the students who received scholarships in the program’s first 2 years didn’t attend public school in the district the year before they got the scholarship.

Even though those students never attended public school, that didn’t stop public school districts from losing state aid from the Special Needs Scholarship program, as the program is funded just like the voucher programs that are outside of Milwaukee and Racine- by taking the amount of the voucher OUT of the amount of General Aid those districts would have received.

I haven’t seen what Evers plans to do with the Special Needs Scholarship Program, whether he plans to keep it at all (HINT- DON'T) or how much he wants to fund it at. I’d also like to know if the $600 million in “additional special ed” funding is in the “regular” special education aid program, and then possibly the other programs would be folded into that? Or are those "special", special ed programs part of the additional $600 million Evers wants? That seems a bit unclear to me.

But one thing that is certain is that special education has been neglected in Fitzwalkerstan since 2011. And by going big on funding in his budget proposal, Evers puts Walker and WisGOP on the defensive, as they should answer why they have felt the need to leave it up to the local school districts to find the scarce resources required in taking care of our most vulnerable students.