Schools may benefit by an increase in financial aid for serving a larger number of disabled pupils.
In a simple world where IDEA was fully funded and there was ample qualified staff to go around that might be the case, but it's far from the reality in my state and school district.
]Which is also why every single article in the local paper that touches on special needs children absolutely
needs to include a mention of how much money they take away from general ed students
. They are also the semi-official excuse given for the complete cancellation of the GATE program in the district last year (yes, really, those special needs kids and the English language learners).
We need more funding and more individualized learning plans for *all* our school kids, and when we start thinking of kids from one group taking away from kids in another group, we're losing the big picture and creating barriers in our thoughts that don't need to be there. I have no doubt that there are special needs students with large needs that are getting more of a share of our school district's budget than my children and I have absolutely *NO* problem with that and I don't resent any of the $ spent for them. I trust that the administrators in my school district are making the tough decisions they have to make about program funding in times where budgets are extremely tight. Having experienced parenting children who are both gifted and have special needs, and knowing many families with gifted children and many families with special needs children.. in times of limited budgets.. I'd spend it on the special needs kids first, hands down. The problem isn't that the special needs kids are "taking away" money from the general ed fund, the problem is we aren't funding public education in the US in a sustainable way for *all* of our children.
Sorry for the brief trip onto my soap box... stepping back off
polarbear
