Education officials want resolution on special ed costs

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Worried that a recent court decision could lead to a massive bill, education officials want lawmakers to limit the state's obligation to pay for the education of Missouri's most severely disabled students.

Students with severe disabilities are a state responsibility, but determining who qualifies for educational assistance and how much the state must pay has turned into a legal dispute.

Last year, a federal appeals court ruled the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education must cover nearly the entire cost of educating a blind and deaf student from Springfield. The state is paying more than $150,000 a year to send the student to a school for the blind in Massachusetts.

Now, Missouri is reviewing the cases of hundreds of other disabled students to determine whether it must pick up those costs as well. State Education Commissioner Kent King wants legislation to resolve the issue, but nothing has been filed yet.

Without a change in the law, Missouri could be forced to pay as much as $23 million a year to educate 1,200 special education students now sent to private institutions by their public school districts, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Monday. Those children generally are so disabled that districts determined they could not educate them.

Melodie Friedebach, assistant state commissioner for special education, said districts have sought state reimbursement for costs to educate about 700 of those students. Under the current "severely handicapped" definition, the state approved payments for about 70 students.

Friedebach worries the policy will invite another lawsuit, with districts claiming the state does not meet its obligation to serve the severely handicapped.

Friedebach and others say the system is unfair to most school districts because just 31 of the state's 524 districts send special education students to private institutions. Many of the rest have no private institutions in their area.

King said the law must change, or many districts will see an incentive to send students to private institutions, figuring the state will bear the cost.

State education officials want to narrow the definition of severely handicapped to just the severely mentally retarded, Friedebach said, rather than severe handicaps of all kinds. Then, that $23 million could be spread across all districts to defray costs of educating the most disabled students.

Under the plan, districts would pay up to three times the average per-pupil expense to educate a special education child, and the state would cover additional costs.

"We think the approach we've outlined is a better approach," King said.