LASD and BCS Special Education - Email to SCCOE Board
TO: SCCOE Board and Staff
RE: Are the Special Education Public Service Goals of LASD and BCS Aligned?
THANK YOU for your continued commitment to achieving diversity in our public schools. In your May 21, 2021 letter to the Bullis Charter School (BCS) board, the SCCOE staff and Board expressed concerns regarding the under-enrollment at BCS of four different groups including students who are English learners, Hispanic, socioeconomically disadvantaged and students with disabilities.
In my previous May and July emails I focused on socioeconomically disadvantaged, English learners and Hispanic enrollments at LASD and BCS. This email focuses on the fourth area you noted in your May letter, serving students with disabilities.
Please see our research into how BCS under enrolls students with disabilities
The attachment to this email was developed over time to respond to a series of questions raised by members of our community. I encourage you to invest the time to review the attachment with particular attention to the first pages, Key Observations and the Summary. The next 50 pages of the attachment display the data and the supporting analysis.
I welcome members your team, the BCS staff, or BCS board members, to review and correct any substantial conceptual misunderstanding and/or specific data. I am sure there is an opportunity to improve the analysis. Refinements will improve our shared understanding of the current situation.
There are five primary observations related to the BCS special education student population not reflecting the LASD special education student population.
Over the last four years:
Compared to its proportional enrollment with LASD, BCS has under enrolled an average of 22 special education students each year.
Due to the manner SpEd is funded (as a percent of the total enrollment, not the number of SpEd students served), this under enrollment has allowed BCS to avoid, each year, ~$300K of general fund encroachment, which was absorbed by LASD.
Of the students at BCS who qualify for special education services, approximately 90% have lower-cost-to-serve, “relatively mild” disabilities primarily served in “mainstream classes”. The 90%/10% proportion at BCS does not mirror other local districts – LASD, MVSD, PAUSD – which serve a proportion of students closer to 70% “mild” conditions and 30% “moderate” and “severe” conditions. On average, the more severe the condition, the more it costs to effectively serve the student.
The mix of disabilities of the special education students BCS serves, does not reflect the distribution of the special education disabilities in the LASD population. The lower number served, and the type of disability served, has allowed BCS to avoid, and required LASD to absorb, $1.5M annually of general fund encroachment.
~$300K from under enrollment and
~$1.2M from skew toward milder, lower-cost-to-serve disabilities.
The goals and budget set by the BCS Board in a recent meeting suggests there is not a plan to remedy these disparities, but rather maintain status quo.
As you all know, the four districts in our local SELPA (PAUSD, LASD, MVWSD and MVLA) have embraced similar mandated public service goals to serve students with special education needs. The LASD goal is “As required by federal and state law we provide services to students with special educational needs. Federal law requires public schools to provide appropriate services for these children as early as age three and up until age twenty‐one. We have some preschool programs that serve children who have not yet entered our school system.”
This is a goal focused on service to ALL students.
The Special Education Enrollment in Local Area (SELPA) serving our four local school districts, and BCS, provides coordination and acts as a pass-through between various sources of special education funding sources and each of the districts/charter. SELPA allocates funds to districts/charter, primarily using total enrollment, not the number of special education enrollment. This works well if all the publicly funded districts/charter are enrolling an equal proportion of special education students with similar distributions of disabilities (13 disabilities defined by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)). It does not work as well if one entity in the SELPA is underserving the number of special education students or underserving higher-cost-to-serve students with severe disabilities.
Additionally, the reimbursement rate per student is often not sufficient to fully serve the needs of the student, especially for students with more “moderate” and “severe” conditions. To serve ALL students, districts/charter are required to provide any additional funds needed beyond the SELPA disbursed funds to meet the needs of their students, which important for equity and encroaches on their general fund.
During the last four years (2017-18 to 2020-21), LASD incurred encroachment per enrolled student, increasing from $1,400 in 2017-18 to $2,500 last year (similar to adjacent districts).
The enclosed analysis suggests BCS enrollment has been shaped to both limit the number of special education students and skew enrollments to students with lower-cost-to-serve disabilities. For example, the data indicates SELPA funds were sufficient to fund services to BCS special needs students (no encroachment) in both 2017-18 and 2018-19. During the next two years, 2019-20 and 2020-21, BCS has incurred estimated encroachment of $300 to $400 per enrolled student.
From a board governance perspective, how does such a large inequitable difference occur? From 2017-18 to 2020-21:
LASD encroachment increasing from $1,400 to $2,500 per enrolled student
BCS encroachment increasing from $0 to ~$300 per enrolled student.
The BCS public service goal to serve students with special education needs seems to be different than the goal of the adjacent districts. BCS:
BCS serves relatively fewer students with special education needs
BCS has a skewed enrollment toward students with milder, lower-cost-to-serve disabilities
BCS seems to have set a financial encroachment goal that seems to limit encroachment, and therefore services, far below the average needed to serve all students – supporting potential plans to continue with the status quo
The California Charter Act indicates that a charter school will achieve a balance of special education pupils that is reflective of the general population residing within the territorial jurisdiction of the school district to which the charter is submitted.
As a publicly funded school, is BCS subject to the same public service mandate to serve all students?
From the data available, it appears that without significant direction from the SCCOE staff and board, the BCS Board may be exploring:
a minor shift in governance (serving a higher proportion of mild severity, lower-cost-to-serve special education students to limit encroachment), while
correcting the diversity situation calls for serving both more special education students and a mix of disabilities proportionate to LASD.
Thank you once again for embracing public school diversity in our community and ensuring equitable treatment for all students and families.
Steve Brown