With the recent announcement of a record-breaking education budget for this fiscal year signed by Governor Whitmer, many schools with special education programs are in wait and see mode on where the extra money will go.
WCMU’s Tina Sawyer spoke with C.O.O.R. (core) Intermediate School District Superintendent Shawn Petri (pee-tree) about the funding increase.
(The following is transcribed from interview audio)
Tina: Can you explain what COOR is?
SP: So COOR is a is a Intermediate School District. And what we do is we act as a liaison between the federal state government with local districts. And core represents Crawford County, Oscoda county. Ogemaw County and Roscommon counties, we're an ISD, that’s four counties in size, which is about 2600 square miles. So our job is work with districts and assisting with special ed CareerTech, Ed and anything else that we can do, as far as additional services that schools may not be able to currently provide. We assist them and work with them. And we have professional development and other services that we do for districts.
Tina: So going with what the governor has signed a $19.6 billion education budget. I understand that this is like the largest education budget in Michigan history. Is that true?
SP: That is true? Absolutely. And, you know, definitely been needed for years, because there's a lot of service that school districts ISDS provide, this will assist in growing those services or expanding new services for students and staff.
Tina: Yeah, cuz the investment she announced wasn't a $9150 per student, but also for like the 200,000 special education students in the state $9,150 per pupil plus... plus the 28%. On top of that, can you kind of break that down for us and help explain it in layman's terms.
SP: So to understand that when you think about specialist services, a lot of times the cost factor goes above and beyond the general add on when you look at generalized that is your academic base, your classroom base your education based, but if there's additional services that students might need, like physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, those are additional costs. So that's where the investment in the additional amount because those costs continue to grow. And if you're not continuing to grow with those costs, services start to slow down or be cut back, this will enable more services for students in the special ed realm or needs. And also, the budget overall assists our districts with being able to implement new programming or add additional or increase what they're currently doing.
Tina: And that's going to be phased in over a couple of years, right?
SP: Well, what will happen is that will come in this fiscal year, the 23-24, school year will receive it and our costs are our student aid districts. Well, a ISD, as well. And that that starts basically starts in September and goes through the school year. And what happens with that is we get the funding broken up and payments monthly. And we set that to our budget. So able to now look at the budget that's coming in that will receive when we get our first allocation, make adjustments to how we've already set our budgets. Now this additional amount will allow us to be able to increase say, okay, we can add more hours, this more services to this realizing, and it's an annual amount each year, obviously the budget set by the state, we hope that this will continue to be the case, but it goes year by year as how those ledger stands. It's a good plan to do it over a two year period that allows things to be implemented and continue to be grown. And we could also look at next year and say, ‘Hey, we think we can plan and expand here for the students as well with that funding’.
Tina: And you were mentioning to about there being a cost over the the per pupil rate for general ed, because there is a shortfall that that happens isn't there?
SP: There is and what happens is we're still mandated to provide those services because the students need them. So just because the funding doesn't come in doesn't mean the services aren't being provided. But you can increase in the if you get a certain amount of time to do the services to the students. With more funding, you're able to also bring more people potentially or to increase the services, which means you can get them done in a more timely manner. And those services are always above and beyond what they have in the gen ed because all students in the state of Michigan are general ed students first, this is additional services to help them be successful as well.
Tina: Now imagine that's a very individual thing.
SP: It is yes, each student, what there's a team that needs it can be a part of parents request. It can be a pond, maybe a staff member of realizing that student might need the have some provided extra services and the team meets meets with the parents. They review the test, they check and they then see what those services might be or not. So there's a process that goes through to see what the students do or don't need the services. And that's how the if they do then they come together for what's called an IEP sit down and they go through what needs to be provided. And they make a complete plan for the student as a committee parents included.
Tina: Shawn, thank you so much for taking the time out and answering my questions today.
SP: Awesome. Well, it was my privilege and I appreciate phone call and if you ever have any other questions, please reach out. We'd love to talk!
