A statewide cooperative to stabilize special education costs is being considered

By Wiley Wood

State Representative Maria Horn recently addressed a group of Norfolk residents about education and education funding. The meeting was held at Botelle School on Aug. 1, with about 45 people in attendance.

Horn reported that a task force delegated by the state in 2017 to study the question of stabilizing special education costs had produced its final report. In Connecticut, the school districts pay most of the cost of special education services. The report examined the feasibility of forming a statewide cost cooperative that each school district would pay into in order to smooth out year-to-year cost volatility at the local level. Horn expects the legislature to take up the question in the next session.

The issue is of particular interest to Norfolk and other small towns where special education costs can fluctuate widely from year to year, when even a small number of special education students move into or out of a local district.

First Selectman Matt Riiska said in a recent interview that special education costs to the Norfolk district for the current year were $506,000, up from $483,000 last year. “That’s a big part of a $2.5 million budget,” said Riiska, referring to the Board of Education’s budget for Botelle Elementary School. The services will go to 17 students with learning disabilities, two of whom receive out-of-district schooling, according to Riiska. Aside from predictability, Riiska would like to see the state fund a greater portion of special education costs.

Last year, Norfolk received a total of $25,000 from the state for education. It took the form of an Education Cost Sharing (ECS) grant, from the state’s current ECS spending total of $1.93 billion a year. Horn said that the legislature was holding the line to maintain ECS funding and had restored some cuts.

The formula to determine ECS allocations, Norfolk resident Adam Perlman explained, is intended to separate wealthy from less wealthy towns. To do so, it looks primarily at wealth per capita, using the town’s aggregate property value as assessed for tax purposes and dividing it by the number of residents, as tallied by the U.S. Census on the basis of full-time residency. This, said Perlman, penalizes Norfolk for its high rate of second-home ownership and accounts at least in part for why Norfolk received $25,000 in ECS funds and Colebrook $305,000. Other factors that play into the equation, such as median household income and the respective number of low-income students, actually worked in Norfolk’s favor but were outweighed by the wealth-per-capita figure.

Despite the town’s high rank on the Department of Education’s wealth scale, 30 percent of children in town qualify for free or reduced school lunch, said Julie Scharnberg, a Norfolk resident and the grants director at the Northwest Connecticut Community Foundation. A recent foundation publication notes that 33 percent of Norfolk households live on less than a basic needs income of $45,000 a year.

Horn was asked if enough is being done for students who aren’t on the college track. She responded that the state was not good on providing data about jobs and education. “I am hot on this topic,” said Horn. “We need education for the jobs that are here.” She cited the importance of community colleges being responsive to the needs of businesses and questioned whether vocational and agricultural schools were getting enough funding.

Horn is scheduled to return to Norfolk in October, once the new legislative session is under way.