By Jacqueline Rabe Thomas
A state panel is considering recommending wealthy school districts and high-income parents with special needs children to pay more to cover the skyrocketing price of special education.
One in eight Connecticut students—more than 60,000—receives special education services, and nearly $1 of every $4 spent on education goes to special education. In the past decade, while general education costs increased 40 percent, spending for special education increased by 65 percent, nearly a $700 million jump.
The panel—the Education Cost-Sharing Task Force—which includes the governor’s budget director and the co-chairwomen of the legislature’s Education and Appropriations committees, will likely recommend who should pay for special education as it’s now structured.
Panel members at a meeting last week, however, hesitated to support changes that many local school leaders say would cut their special education costs; the members leaned, instead, toward studying those changes.
Click here for more of story
