District officials say they’re projected to spend nearly $600,000 more than budgeted this fiscal year on out-of-district tuition—a line item that can refer, in part, to when public schools pay for the education elsewhere of kids with disabilities.
New Canaan Public Schools regularly sees 14 to 18 students “out-placed” each year, Assistant Superintendent of Pupil and Family Services Darlene Pianka said at Monday night’s Board of Education meeting. This year, four additional students around whom the district “had issues of concern around safety” have been “placed in therapeutic settings,” Pianka said.
The Board of Education at its Nov. 17, 2014 meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. Credit: Michael Dinan
“And in addition to those four students, there have been a number of students in the late summer and in the early fall that the district has been in mediation with over unilateral placements that students’ parents have made—some for other than educational purposes, and others just in their requests for placement that the district disagreed with,” Pianka said at the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School.
According to data supplied by the district at the meeting, $2.7 million had been budgeted for out-of-district tuition this year, and that’s about $579,851 short of what the schools now are expecting to spend.
Pianka described those that make decisions about moving forward with an out-of-district placement—presumably including Special Education officials—“very well-trained” and said that such decisions “do not come lightly.”
“The administration in the building is deeply involved and embedded in the process and the decision, both when it is made and prior to when it is being made,” Pianka said. “And I can reassure you that this is not taken lightly and it is certainly the last preference that we would have, for a student to leave us. And so I am very confident in the decisions that are being made. I am in the continual loop around those decisions with the administrators and typically the clinical teams, and it is very unfortunate and I don’t sleep at night as a result of not only the financial expenditure associated with this but the students who are in crisis. The hope would be that they would have the opportunity to return to us and that it would not be a long-term placement. I can never predict that, and I will tell you that in some of the situations, these are students who are in serious need. And so I would not suspect that they would be returning soon.”
Nancy Harris, the district’s interim director of finance and operations, said New Canaan’s CFO, Dawn Norton, already is aware of the “ever-increasing deficit” in out-of-district tuition and that the process of notifying the town is underway.
“The issue is that as we document these expenditures that are over the budgeted amounts, we are required to notify the town and provide documentation for same,” Harris said.
Pianka said comparably sized districts in the area see out-placements in the high-teens to 20s range, so the figure New Canaan now is approaching isn’t unusual in that sense.
“I think that we have done well with this in the past, but we have had a difficult time this fall,” she said.
It isn’t clear where students who are receiving out-of-district tuition are going or just what disabilities they have, though Pianka did say some have been in hospitals “or they have been in crisis in our schools.”
Parents may ask a district to pay for their child to attend school somewhere other than the public schools if they feel they’re not getting an appropriate education. State law says that if there’s disagreement on that question, the burden of proof lies with the district.
Though the state does provide what’s called an “Education Cost Grant,” whereby a school district may be reimbursed for some special education costs, the trigger-point for those funds often is prohibitively high, and it isn’t clear just now how much of the projected deficit for out-of-district tuition this year would be offset.
Board of Ed member Penny Rashin said she has “incredible faith” in the educators and district officials that make decisions in these cases.
“I know you guys work incredibly well as a team to make the right decision for the district and for the student,” Rashin said.
Harris said finding money to address the projected deficit will be “a team effort” involving all managers.
Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi said the district is constantly looking at “cost containment opportunities.”
Board of Education Chair Hazel Hobbs raised the work of the Special Education Department in working with kids to the point where they can go into a regular classroom, telling Pianka, “You all do a terrific job with this. It is not lightly done for many reasons, and I am sure that you are working on ways to get budgets in line.”