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5 BEFORE THE WYOMING STATE LEGISLATURE
6 JOINT EDUCATION COMMITTEE
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9 JOINT EDUCATION COMMITTEE PROCEEDINGS
October 23, 2002
10 Volume I
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1 P R O C E E D I N G S
2 (Meeting proceedings commenced
3 9:00 a.m., October 23, 2002.)
4 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Committee, let's call our
5 meeting to order.
6 Our court reporter has joined us from over the
7 hill. Welcome. I believe we now have also a working PA
8 system so that those testifying can be heard by the
9 members of the group. So I apologize for the late start,
10 but those are the two items we needed to get in place.
11 As far as any opening remarks on our agenda, I
12 will share with you what I just shared with Senator Peck.
13 I think it was a real honor to the state of Wyoming.
14 There may be others out there I don't know about.
15 Principal Dave Williams here in Laramie was
16 awarded the national award for this part of the country
17 for Reading Is FUNdamental and his 27 years of work with
18 that program last Thursday, and interestingly enough, they
19 made a point that this reading has been such a priority in
20 this school and his leadership has been so strong.
21 And, as a result, this committee would be
22 interested in knowing that one of the links may be this is
23 a school that scores very high on the WyCAS test also with
24 a number of successful students and they do not
25 particularly have an easy student population. They have
3
1 probably one of the populations that is somewhat
2 challenging in this community.
3 Another highlight of that event was the
4 national -- the people came from the Department of
5 Education nationally and from the RIF program to present
6 this award. Senator Thomas was there, and they have a
7 poster nationally that is their Reading Is FUNdamental
8 poster. And there's a winner, a second place and a few
9 honorable mentions.
10 Two young ladies from Wyoming were named as
11 honorable mention with this poster, which is phenomenal,
12 that Wyoming would have two in this select group.
13 One was actually from Thayer School and the
14 other was from Saint Stephens School in Fremont County.
15 And both of those young ladies, our teachers did bring
16 them, our posters are framed. They hang in Washington,
17 D.C., they will not get them back, but they were shipped
18 here for the event and we got to see them, so it was real
19 special.
20 I thought the committee might be interested in
21 seeing how the practical level of some of what you've been
22 talking about is producing some results, and fortunately
23 this time it had some national recognition. So that was
24 neat.
25 With that I would like to move on to the
4
1 briefing by the LSO staff on school finance and our fiscal
2 briefing, where we're at, any of the pieces that you feel
3 like the committee needs to be brought up to speed on
4 before we go into a pretty heavy agenda in the next two
5 and a half, three days.
6 MR. NELSON: I would turn it over to Mary
7 to give you a rundown.
8 MS. BYRNES: I've handed out to the
9 committee the profile. As you know, CREG released their
10 forecast. I didn't have enough copies to bring over.
11 They should have been in your mail. You will get them
12 today or tomorrow.
13 All of the assumptions are contained within
14 this. I have provided you a review of the profile of the
15 school foundation program, re-estimating guarantees and
16 revenues, so the expenditures and revenues have been
17 aligned with what CREG has put forth today in their
18 report.
19 If I could briefly take you through this, I
20 wanted to have the warning that these numbers will change
21 as more data comes in for school year '03. When we put
22 these together, we were lacking two districts with their
23 funding applications, and so these -- I think we're on
24 target. We probably are on the ball game, but it may
25 change slightly.
5
1 So when you review the base assumptions and the
2 district guarantee assumptions that are behind this
3 profile, if you will keep that in mind, if you will recall
4 all of these in January when we apply the recalculation
5 numbers, the ADM, 60-day recalc numbers, to school year
6 '04, our outlook on that.
7 If you will bear with me and go through the
8 profile, the CREG October 2002 provided more money in
9 assessed valuations for our profile and also for a little
10 bit more in recapture than we were looking at when we
11 left -- when you left the session last March.
12 That far column will describe to you the
13 forecast change that you were familiar with during the
14 session to where we are sitting now for the biennium, the
15 '03-'04 biennium.
16 In a nutshell the bottom line is that we started
17 the fiscal year '03 with a balance in the account of 18.1
18 million, and that truly is carried through. In the end we
19 were estimating we will have 19.5 million in this account
20 when the biennium is over. So we are a little bit
21 overfunded with the general fund appropriation that was
22 allowed in the last session of 102.9 million.
23 And the reasons for this are that recapture, if
24 you will just run down that forecast change column, that
25 might be more telling than anything. The guarantees we
6
1 were estimating to be another 20.8 million and that
2 includes certain things that we didn't account for in the
3 '03 forecast that we provided last year, one being things
4 such as the charter school in Albany County. That derived
5 about .9 million to the guarantee outlook.
6 Also, special education costs went up about $10
7 million year over year, and we had not accounted for that
8 in the forecast prior.
9 So we continue those outlooks, not for the
10 charter school, per se, but that's an example of things
11 that are a little bit different that weren't included in
12 your profile last year.
13 Even though the guarantees have gone up, we see
14 that a -- and entitlements have likewise gone up. If you
15 notice there, the entitlements are up by 6.5 million and
16 that accounts for the reimbursements for special education
17 and the like.
18 We have the TRANS interest went down. We have
19 more favorable interest receipts on that than we were
20 looking for in the forecast, so you will see that that's a
21 7. -- nearly $7.8 million decrease to the profile. So
22 that was a help. That was a good thing.
23 So total expenditures, when you consider both
24 entitlements and the TRANS interest going down, total
25 expenditures decreased by 1.2 million, whereas total
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1 revenues increased by 17.3, and largely that is due, if
2 you look for property taxes and great -- a great help from
3 recapture, that being that local resources, local taxes
4 are going to be much greater than we had anticipated, and
5 the recapture has improved by 21.8 million for the
6 biennium.
7 You will note that in FY '03 it is coming in at
8 56.9, and I don't think we've ever had recapture to that
9 level before. So in the end, you look at the bottom, you
10 have a change here of 19.5 million that you have in the
11 account by the end of the biennium.
12 The pages that follow are the assumptions that
13 we use for guarantees, and again, these are estimates.
14 They will change.
15 I have included school year '01-'02, the actual
16 guarantees in that first column of numbers.
17 The next column will be school year '03, the
18 guarantee plus transitional payments. And if you look at
19 the very bottom, it sort of describes what those
20 transitional payments are. They're the deferrals, the
21 special ed and transportation monies that had been capped
22 in the past are now being fully funded to get us back on
23 target.
24 We don't have any more in the funding model so
25 now we're just making good on anything that was held back
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1 from the districts in the past. So that's kind of a
2 catch-up payment. 4.8 million of that 722.9 million
3 estimated guarantee is related to these deferrals.
4 And just if anyone had curiosities, we estimate
5 the hold harmless of this guarantee to be $9.4 million,
6 $9.5 million. That's the very bottom. You have a note
7 there. That's already contained in the guarantee. You
8 wouldn't want to add that back in.
9 Looking for school year '04, we see a decrease
10 of funding, and that's largely due to what we see the ADM
11 declining still, so we're just -- our typical way of
12 looking ahead, we use the school year '02 ADM count twice
13 and the one prior year once to give us kind of a heads-up
14 on where the trend in the three-year rolling average is
15 going.
16 You don't have transitional payments in that
17 next year's guarantee either. You pay them once. So it
18 might be a little bit difficult to sort out the pieces,
19 but the figure that we're looking for in '04 right now is
20 $713.8 million for guarantees. So they are the premise
21 for this profile chart that you have ahead of you.
22 Lastly, just for historical review, is our
23 estimates and our forecasts sized up with all of the
24 historical guarantee levels before the block grant funding
25 model, we had the CRU funding model to now. There are
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1 many ways to do it. There are questions that are asked.
2 I was trying to prestock you on the data. If you have any
3 questions, please let me know.
4 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Mary, if we go to page 2
5 and we look down there at the decrease of $9.1 million in
6 the forecast of funding, a portion of that decrease that
7 is not attributable to the decline in population would be
8 the 4.8 in transitional payments; is that correct?
9 MS. BYRNES: Madam Chairman, that's
10 exactly correct. I was trying to show the pieces there so
11 you don't think it is just a big dive. The transitional
12 part which is about 5 million comes off. You don't pay
13 that twice, so you're right.
14 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Those are payments that
15 would have gone out anyway, but they were delayed when we
16 removed the caps that weren't working. We just paid that
17 off in one year and saw that form disappear.
18 MS. BYRNES: That's correct. That's
19 right.
20 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: So we're actually seeing
21 about a 4 million increase, 4.2, maybe, attributed to a
22 decline in students.
23 MS. BYRNES: Not as an increase but a
24 decrease.
25 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Decrease, that's correct.
10
1 MS. BYRNES: That would be right. I've
2 also factored in a little bit of growth rate for
3 special ed reimbursements in school year '04 and also for
4 transportation looking at a 4 percent increase for
5 special ed and a 2 and a half percent increase for
6 transportation direct reimbursements.
7 We've never really built those in before, but it
8 is such a significant amount of money that we just wanted
9 to have somewhat of a placeholder in there so those are
10 the assumptions placed in there.
11 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Committee, questions of
12 Mary.
13 Senator Scott.
14 SENATOR SCOTT: Thank you, Madam Chairman.
15 On the first page, there's some things I
16 understand, some things I don't. The entitlement
17 foundation, that's what the State is actually paying out,
18 right?
19 MS. BYRNES: Madam Chairman, Senator
20 Scott, that's correct, to the districts on entitlements.
21 SENATOR SCOTT: This TRANS interest cost,
22 what is that all about? That one I know I don't
23 understand.
24 MS. BYRNES: Madam Chairman, Senator
25 Scott, this is a financing tool that the State uses to
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1 have them cashed to send out to the districts. We make --
2 those first two entitlement payments in August and also in
3 October, so two-thirds of the entitlement each year go out
4 in those two months. The State's revenues don't come in
5 until January when the tax monies start coming in, the
6 significant dollars for property taxes and recapture at
7 the end of the year, so it is a way that we -- it is the
8 least expensive way we try to provide some quick money to
9 the State so we can make the payments.
10 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: It is the TRANS notes
11 that we've authorized the treasurer's office to do, and
12 they leverage -- they borrow money at a lower rate than
13 our invested money can make and they leverage that. And
14 the interest was better than we had anticipated, is that
15 what I understand?
16 MS. BYRNES: Right. It is always a cost
17 of interest to the State. We had anticipated higher rates
18 when we did the forecast last year, and the interest rates
19 were much lower than anticipated.
20 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, so this is
21 State of Wyoming engaging in deficit finance and what
22 happened was the interest rates went down so we didn't pay
23 as much out?
24 MS. BYRNES: Madam Chairman, Senator
25 Scott, that's correct, the interest rates were less than
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1 we had been looking at in our original forecast during the
2 session last year.
3 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: But I think it is also a
4 matter of the timing of those payments since we have --
5 more than a deficit finance. It is a timing of payments
6 issue if we're going to get those larger payments out to
7 the districts earlier. So it is when our money comes in
8 versus when the money goes out to the districts.
9 Questions, additional questions, Committee?
10 Yes, Senator Peck.
11 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chairman, what ADM
12 figure did you utilize in making these calculations and
13 where did it come from? Is that an accumulation of all of
14 the schools estimating, or what?
15 MS. BYRNES: Madam Chairman, Senator Peck,
16 on the top of this sheet I have the ADM, three-year
17 rolling average ADM. They are actual figures of ADM.
18 They take into account for school year -- for school
19 year -- fiscal year '03. They account for school year
20 '02, '01 and '00 as a three-year rolling average.
21 For '04, I take school year '02 twice and use
22 '01 once. And we'll replace that and update it when we
23 get the 60-day ADM count in mid-December and we'll refresh
24 these outlooks for school year '04.
25 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And did I hear you say
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1 this does, then, reflect a projected slight steady
2 decline?
3 MS. BYRNES: That's true. Dave is passing
4 out the trend on ADM counts as best we know them, and
5 these are supplied by the district and processed by the
6 State department. And we have them on this chart for you.
7 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: But you did caution us,
8 Mary, that there are two districts who do not have pieces
9 in that you might have used in some of this?
10 MS. BYRNES: Madam Chairman, that's
11 correct, but we do have the ADM, so we did have that one
12 large piece of information. We didn't have certain things
13 like reimbursements. And the districts at the time when
14 this profile was developed were Natrona, quite a large
15 one, and also Big Horn 4. So those two, I've noted that
16 those are missing on this. And they should be coming in
17 very soon. But I think we're talking to those districts.
18 I think we're on target.
19 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: You did have the ADM
20 piece?
21 MS. BYRNES: Yes, which is a real key
22 ingredient.
23 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you, Madam
24 Chairman.
25 Mary, follow-up on Senator Scott's comments on
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1 the interest charges, what -- this is just the savings
2 from that. What is the total dollars we're spending per
3 year borrowing and those total interest charges? Or do we
4 have that number?
5 MS. BYRNES: Madam Chairman, I have that
6 number here. We're looking for $2 million a year to --
7 for the cost of the interest, and $100,000 for the
8 issuance of -- legal fees and consulting fees on that.
9 Currently right now -- and I don't have the
10 figure in front of me what we're paying on FY -- what we
11 paid on FY '02's TRANS, and I hate to put Larry Biggio on
12 the spot. He probably has a much more clear mind on the
13 TRANS than I do.
14 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, Larry Biggio
15 from the Department of Education and Mary, I don't
16 remember what we paid last year. This year it is about
17 1.9 percent for 160 million of short-term notes for cash
18 flow. It is not deficit funding. We have the cash in the
19 account. It is just that we don't have it timely to make
20 those payments, so we borrow short term to make up for the
21 cash flow needs.
22 If you remember, most of the tax revenues come
23 in in December and then again in June, and those are our
24 two largest sources of revenues. But as Mary said, our
25 payouts occur primarily in August and then in October. So
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1 when we're waiting for that revenue to come in in
2 December, we have to borrow money to make the payments in
3 August and October. And this is that portion of that. We
4 repay those back from the revenues available to the
5 foundation account in June of each year.
6 The dollars that are in here, the $3 million and
7 the $3,040,000, are the estimated actual cost of the
8 issuance -- the interest for those TRANS for the two
9 years. And there's about $100,000 that's associated with
10 the underwriting fees and the attorneys and all of those
11 sorts of things that are needed to issue the TRANS.
12 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Scott.
13 SENATOR SCOTT: So the short summary is
14 that we're engageing in deficit finance and it is costing
15 us $3 million a year.
16 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chair, Senator Scott.
17 Let me back up. I don't think you are engaging in deficit
18 financing. You have the dollars in the fund to make those
19 payments at some point during the year, you just don't
20 have it as you make the payments from the account for the
21 entitlements, but you are whole in the process over the
22 course of a year.
23 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Representative McOmie.
24 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
25 thought -- maybe I misunderstood what you said. I thought
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1 what was happening is that we were borrowing money at less
2 than we were earning. If we took the money out, we
3 wouldn't earn that money at that particular time. We
4 could borrow it cheaper and we're actually saving money by
5 doing that? I thought that's what I heard.
6 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chair -- and I'll go
7 from what the treasurer's office tells me on the earnings.
8 We borrow money at about 1.9 percent on the market and
9 that's because it is tax-free notes, and of course there's
10 lower interest associated with those notes. The
11 treasurer's office I think earns about 4 percent on their
12 money.
13 If we didn't borrow on the market, we would have
14 to pull that money from some other investment, either from
15 the common school fund, and by law we're required to pay 6
16 percent interest if the foundation borrows from the common
17 school fund, or pull it from the general fund, in which
18 case we would lose those potentially 4 percent earnings on
19 the investments. So your point is correct.
20 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: I'm not sure if you got
21 to hear that explanation, about the -- if you pull those
22 funds from elsewhere, you're pulling them from earning a
23 much higher rate.
24 SENATOR SCOTT: And, Madam Chair, you have
25 to see the whole picture on that to understand it, but it
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1 is something we need to look at.
2 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And if you look at the
3 whole picture of the entire management of the treasurer's
4 office, it is different than if you look at the one fund
5 that's paying interest or whatever.
6 Committee, any additional questions on what Mary
7 has presented to us or on any of the questions that have
8 been raised? Because they are complex. We used to make
9 monthly payments to the school districts. That left some
10 school districts in much more precarious positions.
11 This was an attempt to get more money in their
12 hands. If you recall, they do deposit these sums, they do
13 get interest on it and they do get to keep it. So there
14 are some real advantages to the districts over what we do
15 now. It does create for the districts a great deal more
16 management in the Department of Ed and the treasurer's
17 office in order to do those pieces, and like they,
18 particularly the treasurer's office, we have the big
19 picture to look at in terms of that money management.
20 So it is important, I think, that we take enough
21 minutes that you understand what is going on.
22 Senator Peck.
23 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chairman, if we were
24 to calculate the investment per student, we would divide
25 the 84,000 students in the 13.7 million; is that correct,
18
1 Mary?
2 MS. BYRNES: Senator Peck, I'm sorry.
3 Where we going? The ADM --
4 SENATOR PECK: Yeah, on the ADM of --
5 MS. BYRNES: If you want to check, that's
6 the three-year rolling average figure. And if you want to
7 get how many children we suspect are there, you could do
8 that. You might divide that 13.7 million by 83,818 ADM.
9 That's on the last page. That's our most recent ADM count
10 for school year '02. That might be more reflective of the
11 dollars in there.
12 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: The last page.
13 MS. BYRNES: That's how I would approach
14 that.
15 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: So the actual number of
16 students if you don't do the three-year rolling average is
17 83.8.
18 MS. BYRNES: That would be a good proxy.
19 We don't know how many will be there in '04, but that's
20 the last count for school year '02. As a half K, that
21 might be the better figure to divide into that.
22 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chairman, I take it
23 just doing it in my head was something under $9 per
24 student.
25 MS. BYRNES: That would seem correct, yes.
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1 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Nationally that's very
2 high. We are right up there near the top of the -- at
3 $8,000 something we were second in the nation, so
4 nationally we've got to be definitely within the top five.
5 Probably we're one or two projecting out.
6 The question from Senator Peck was where does
7 that rank nationally.
8 Other questions?
9 I guess part of this committee's challenge is
10 quality at a responsible price to the taxpayer, and how do
11 we achieve both. And that's a great deal of what your
12 work is about the next days and months, how we do that
13 best.
14 Mary and Dave, did you have any additional
15 pieces for the report?
16 MS. BYRNES: No.
17 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Then I think Dr. Tom
18 Parrish, we are ready to begin the piece on special
19 education.
20 Thank you for this, Mary. It is helpful. It
21 gets us grounded.
22 Becca. We're hoping that will carry through the
23 room. I don't know what the volume is like.
24 MS. WALK: Good morning, members of the
25 committee, Madam Chairman. I'm Rebecca Walk, state
20
1 director of special education with the Wyoming Department
2 of Education. I'm here to give you an introduction on the
3 cost study for special education.
4 In 1997 the funding formula for educating
5 students with disabilities changed from an 85 percent
6 reimbursement level to 100 percent reimbursement level.
7 During that summer the Department of Education
8 contracted with Spectrum, Inc., a consulting firm out of
9 Utah, to conduct a study on the costs of special education
10 in Wyoming.
11 While the results of that study provided some
12 additional data, the conclusion was that we needed to do a
13 more in-depth study on the costs of special education in
14 order to provide additional information for the
15 recommendations of future funding.
16 Last fall the Department of Education, in
17 partnership with the legislature, contracted with the
18 American Institutes for Research to carry out the much
19 needed in-depth study.
20 The purpose of the study was threefold: One, to
21 determine how much is being spent on special education
22 services; two, to define adequate resource guidelines for
23 special education; and three, to consider how to best fund
24 special education in the context of the first two
25 objectives.
21
1 The American Institutes for Research has over
2 the past year carried out this study. First and foremost,
3 they carried out a statewide survey that was conducted
4 that included input from educators and administrators, and
5 you will see the results from these surveys included in
6 your report.
7 Dr. Parrish and his team also visited numerous
8 districts to get additional onsite information. We also
9 convened a cost study task force made up of numerous
10 stakeholders from across the state, and some of whom are
11 here today, and I would like to take a moment to introduce
12 them.
13 Mike Kouris, special ed director from Fremont
14 County 25; Ed Goetz, business manager from Albany County;
15 Glenna Calmes, local director from Uinta County Number 1;
16 Senator Mike Massie; and Steve Kineg from the Department
17 of Education.
18 We were hoping Ramona Gazewood from Laramie
19 County District 1 would be here, but perhaps the roads
20 detained her this morning.
21 Through committee meetings this group of
22 concerned citizens provided input to this report. As you
23 know, educating students with disabilities provides many
24 rewards and challenges.
25 First and foremost, it is Wyoming's
22
1 responsibility to provide a free, appropriate, public
2 education for students with disabilities. We do this
3 through the implementation of a student's Individual
4 Education Plan. Students with disabilities are identified
5 through diagnostic procedures implemented at the local
6 level through requirements that are outlined in our rules
7 governing services for students with disabilities.
8 We also receive federal money from the
9 Department of Education to assist with the education of
10 students with disabilities.
11 With this being said, I would like to turn the
12 presentation over to Dr. Tom Parrish who is the deputy
13 director of the education program with the American
14 Institutes for Research.
15 DR. PARRISH: Good morning.
16 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Good morning,
17 Dr. Parrish.
18 DR. PARRISH: I would like to direct your
19 attention to the overheads that we have. We will kind of
20 walk through those and I'll present the results of the
21 study and talk a little bit about what we did. Some of
22 this you've seen so there will be a little bit of
23 repetition, but we will move right to the findings and
24 recommendations as well.
25 I'm not sure that I've given you a full overview
23
1 of kind of who we are. This will be very brief, but I
2 think it is important just to know what AIR is. We're an
3 independent not-for-profit corporation. We were founded
4 in 1946, so we've been around a long time. We have about
5 800 employees. I'm based in the Palo Alto office where we
6 have about a hundred employees.
7 One project we do that I think is relevant to
8 this project and is important for you to know about is
9 something called the Center for Special Education Finance
10 and that was established in 1992. It is funded by the
11 U.S. Department of Education and through the Center we
12 engage in a lot of special education policy research as
13 well as fiscal measurement.
14 And so through that one very important study
15 that we're doing is a national study that we've just
16 completed, actually, the largest study that's ever been
17 done to look at expenditures on special education
18 throughout the United States.
19 All 50 states were involved in that study in one
20 way or another. And if you read the paper, you might
21 expect we know what we're spending on special education as
22 a nation, we often see it documented, how much more is
23 being spent, so on and so forth, but the reality is that
24 all of those comments were largely speculative and based
25 on research done over 15 years ago.
24
1 And it is really the first time in a long time
2 that we have had an updated, detailed estimate of what
3 we're spending as a nation on special education. And
4 those findings have just come out and will continue to
5 come out over the next year and a half.
6 At the same time that we were doing that
7 national study, we offered the opportunity to all 50
8 states to engage in their own special education
9 expenditure study to be able to answer questions similar
10 to the federal questions but to provide numbers that would
11 be representative of the state.
12 So as an example, as a part of the national
13 study, Wyoming would have probably had two districts that
14 would have been involved in the national study, so there
15 would have been a Wyoming component in that sense but
16 there wouldn't have been any numbers that would have been
17 from a large enough sample to say anything about what is
18 really going on in Wyoming. And the same offer, as I say,
19 was extended to all 50 states.
20 And actually, in about a six-month period nine
21 states signed up for more detailed evaluation. I mention
22 this because I will show some comparative data from the
23 national study, so we will have national figures. I will
24 show data from those nine states as well as, then, as you
25 know, of course the state of Wyoming came in last year.
25
1 That was one year later than the first phase of nine
2 states. And we also have an ongoing study in Maryland
3 right now.
4 So in total there will be 11 states that will
5 have detailed special education expenditure information
6 using the same methodology that was used across all 11 and
7 at the national level.
8 It is particularly important to stress the
9 importance of the same methodology because not only do we
10 often not know what we're spending on special ed, Wyoming
11 has tended to know that because of your 100 percent
12 reimbursement, but whenever we make comparisons is what we
13 often want to do, using the same approach is very
14 important for comparative purposes.
15 We're also doing one of these studies in
16 Milwaukee Public Schools.
17 The purpose of the current study, as Becca
18 mentioned, there are really three primary focuses: First,
19 to determine how much is spent on special education
20 services. So that's an independent assessment. Just so
21 you know, it was not based primarily on fiscal
22 information, it was based, rather, on survey information.
23 We call it an ingredient approach. It is an approach,
24 again, that we have been using for over 20 years and use
25 it across the nation. We've used it in special ed,
26
1 Title I, general ed. It has been used in a broad variety
2 of programs.
3 The advantage to it is that because it does not
4 rely strictly on fiscal information, it is not locked into
5 accounting convention differences that we see from one
6 jurisdiction to another, so it really allows comparison
7 information. There are other limitations associated with
8 fiscal information generally that we believe this approach
9 overcomes. I won't go into a lot of detail, but one
10 important one is just determining what really is comprised
11 under this broad rubric of programs and services we call
12 special education.
13 So what really is special education? And often
14 people define special education is that which is provided
15 by the money that we give them to provide special
16 education, which leads to a very tautological approach:
17 Whatever we spend is what it is.
18 If, in fact, when we look at a more distant
19 perspective and say what is the integrity of the program,
20 what are the elements provided under that program, who all
21 are distributing and what time and so on, this is the
22 information we get through the survey. And the surveys
23 actually were at the school district and teacher level and
24 teachers then filled out surveys on individual students.
25 So it is a very detailed database in Wyoming
27
1 comparable, again, to what we had in the other states and
2 across the nation.
3 Based on that, then, we're able to cost out and
4 provide an independent assessment of special ed spending.
5 So that's the first purpose of the study.
6 The second purpose in Wyoming, and that's what
7 sets the Wyoming study apart from the national study and
8 the other ten state studies, is the second charge was then
9 to go beyond number one, which is to say what are we
10 spending, to number two to a more normative standard or
11 what should we be spending or what constitutes or could be
12 defined as adequate resources in special education, a very
13 critical and important second step.
14 So I first of all would just like to say that I
15 felt privileged to be able to conduct this study in
16 Wyoming because I think you're really asking the next
17 question that more and more states are starting to
18 confront now and I think will have to continue to confront
19 and that's not just what are we doing but what should we
20 be doing, what is responsible, what makes sense.
21 That discussion is really just beginning,
22 particularly in the area of special education. Just so
23 you know, we're just embarking -- we actually did a study
24 that included special education in the states of Alaska
25 and Illinois 20-some years ago, so it has been done, but
28
1 it sort of has had a hiatus and is coming back.
2 The MAP work and state court case was all about
3 adequacy. The next step is we're engaged with MAP,
4 actually, in a comprehensive study defining adequacy,
5 including special education in the state of New York. I
6 think this will continue.
7 So I think it is just important for you to
8 realize you're a little bit ahead of the nation in some
9 ways, but I think it is an appropriate faction and you're
10 addressing the question that I think others will have to
11 confront, the third question as part of the study, number
12 one, how much are we spending, how many; two, what are
13 guidelines about what we think is adequate or appropriate
14 to spend; and then number three, how does that then get
15 converted into a special education funding formula.
16 And of course one alternative is to continue
17 with the 100 percent reimbursement as well as to consider
18 other alternatives that might be implemented as actually
19 funding guidelines.
20 The purpose of my presentation today is
21 threefold. I will first provide an overview of the final
22 report which I think you've all received. I will
23 provide -- I will review the findings in the report, then
24 I will present and discuss our recommendations.
25 The final report has five chapters. I think the
29
1 three that I want to particularly point out to you because
2 I think it is a little confusing, but I'm not sure it was
3 avoidable, we wanted to look at this from a variety of
4 perspectives which we needed to do.
5 Chapter 2 is -- actually, one of the research
6 questions was to look at what is happening in Wyoming not
7 just in current dollars in terms of your current
8 perspective of this but to look at it over time and to be
9 able to compare what is happening in Wyoming to other
10 places.
11 So in Chapter 2 we present some longitudinal
12 information about trends, about special education spending
13 and enrollment over time.
14 In Chapter 3 we then -- so let me go back to
15 Chapter 2 for a second. Chapter 2 then also reflects
16 spending in Wyoming on special education as reported on
17 your 401 forms and according to Wyoming accounting
18 conventions. So it is the state perspective on special
19 education spending.
20 Chapter 3 will present somewhat different
21 numbers than what you see in Chapter 2, and the reason is
22 that Chapter 3 presents the numbers that were derived from
23 our independent SEEP-based or our independent data
24 collection that I just described of special education
25 spending in Wyoming.
30
1 So Chapter 2 shows what your data show.
2 Chapter 3 shows what an independent assessment shows.
3 Our argument is not that one of these is right
4 and the other one is wrong. Your data actually are quite
5 good because of your 100 percent reimbursement model. You
6 certainly have a very good sense of what you're spending.
7 However, we have included some categories that
8 you haven't necessarily included and also we have a
9 technique that we have used that allows, as I mentioned,
10 comparison with other states that engaged in in-depth
11 studies in the nation. So I will present more information
12 about that.
13 Chapter 4 then defines adequacy in the sense of
14 what we call funding guidelines, and then Chapter 5 shows
15 our -- how we implemented in a funding model as well as
16 other recommendations.
17 I would like to start out with a summary of
18 where I'm going to go with this so that --
19 MS. WALK: It has come to my attention,
20 Madam Chairman, that the committee does not have the
21 specific final report that Dr. Parrish is referring to,
22 that what you have in front of you are copies of the
23 slides, his presentation.
24 A copy of the final report after this meeting
25 today when we do some cleanup of the final report to make
31
1 it a final, final report will be distributed to the
2 committee when that happens which would be shortly after
3 this presentation.
4 So I would like to summarize where I'm going to
5 go and the rest of the presentation, kind of the bottom
6 line in the report. So as you see some of the details,
7 you will see what it is building up to. I'll give you
8 kind of the punch line first and I'll move to then some of
9 the details.
10 The first point I would like to make because I
11 think it is a point of some contention and certainly a
12 point of inquiry in regard to the study is what have been
13 the implications or what appear to be the implications of
14 the 100 percent reimbursement formula that you had over
15 the last three, four, five years.
16 Of course, before that was 85 percent
17 reimbursement, so it wasn't a particularly dramatic
18 change, but still it is quite different than what any
19 other state in the nation is doing.
20 There are other states that have percent
21 reimbursement systems, but the next highest percentage
22 reimbursement would be somewhere around 50 percent and
23 then the drop-off is fairly dramatic below that. So to
24 reimburse at 100 percent really sets Wyoming apart from
25 all of the states.
32
1 What one might expect is that with 100 percent
2 reimbursement there could be runaway identification,
3 runaway spending. The argument might be that there's a
4 huge incentive to place everyone with a problem in special
5 education and then very little incentive to provide
6 resistance in terms of the services that may be requested
7 and so on.
8 I'll show you some data that suggests that the
9 100 percent reimbursement approach has not resulted in a
10 runaway student identification or spending in Wyoming as
11 we might have expected under this model. We can talk
12 about some reasons for that, but I just wanted to start
13 with that observation.
14 At the same point, Wyoming's identification rate
15 for special education, however, is 5 percent higher than
16 the national average, and based on our SEEP analysis or
17 our independent analysis that really allows us to compare
18 with national spending, we find that spending per student
19 per special education student in Wyoming exceeds the
20 average for the nation by over 17 percent.
21 Now, at least based on data that we acquired
22 from the National Center for Education Statistics,
23 national data readily available, looking at total spending
24 for all students, you're higher spending for all students
25 as well. So we probably need to put the higher spending
33
1 for special ed students in that context.
2 However, based on the latest data we found on a
3 national basis, we found that general ed spending exceeds
4 the nation by 5 percent in comparison to special ed
5 spending that exceeds the national average by 17 percent.
6 So we do see more identification and higher
7 spending in Wyoming than in the nation. However, we don't
8 see that this is a dramatic change that's happened as a
9 result of 100 percent reimbursement, but rather the trend
10 lines, I think, will show that it is something -- that
11 these are patterns that have been around for a while.
12 Another point is that under the current 100
13 percent reimbursement system which lacks guidelines in
14 terms of adequate services or program configurations,
15 which I should say also is true in other states as well,
16 it is not as if there are a lot of guidelines nationally,
17 but what we see in Wyoming is rather large variations in
18 spending and service that have occurred under the current
19 funding system.
20 So from the study team's perspective, this was
21 as large a concern as the fact that you might be spending
22 more than the national average is the degree of variance
23 we see throughout the state raising questions about
24 adequacy of services for all students irrespective of
25 their zip code.
34
1 So we see in terms of percent identification in
2 districts throughout the state the percentage of children
3 identified for special education ranges from 8 percent to
4 29 percent in districts throughout the state and that the
5 average spending which is based on the 401 claim and
6 federal revenue, the average spending that we found ranged
7 from 6800 on average per special ed student to over
8 $13,000 per special education student.
9 Another point was that as part of this study we
10 met with a cost study task force, as was mentioned. I
11 would like to extend my appreciation to this task force.
12 I thought it was a very good group to work with. They
13 gave of their time, their energy, their effort. I think
14 they met with us with a lot of goodwill and worked closely
15 with us which we really appreciated. I think they were an
16 absolutely essential component of this study and we really
17 appreciated their input and valued it.
18 And I would like to tell you what they
19 recommended because the consensus of that group, by the
20 way, was not a complete consensus. I'm not sure everyone
21 left with this point of view, but I think the consensus
22 overall of the group was somewhat different than what the
23 study team ultimately is going to recommend. So I want
24 you to know what they recommended.
25 I'm going to present some guidelines to you that
35
1 we worked together to develop. Again, there may not be
2 complete agreement about the guidelines, although I think
3 we worked closely to develop these. But the major point
4 on which we differ, I believe, was that the committee
5 would like to see these guidelines used as a basis for
6 monitoring, a basis for underlying guidance to districts
7 as to what may be reasonable or appropriate but not as a
8 basis for sort of block grant funding.
9 The study team, however, made it clear to the
10 committee from the very beginning that we value their
11 input but that it was also essential that we have
12 independence in making the best recommendation that we
13 felt we could make based on the information that we had
14 and what we believed was most appropriate. And that's
15 what we did.
16 So on point number 4, the next point, our
17 recommendation is that the 100 percent reimbursement
18 approach be replaced and that it be replaced with block
19 grant funding based on the special education staffing
20 guidelines included in this report. Of course, I'll
21 describe those in more detail.
22 Now, a part and component of this I'll talk a
23 little bit more about, but we believe this is important
24 this happen rather gradually. I will talk about some of
25 the reasons for that. But we recommend a 12-year
36
1 phase-in. We know that's longer than what is
2 traditionally done, but there's some reasons for this.
3 And we also believe it is important that the
4 districts be held harmless, and what we mean by that is
5 that the funding that they receive in a base year continue
6 for them and that no one loses money in the subsequent
7 year. We'll talk a little bit about the implementation
8 and why we make these recommendations.
9 Another critical component, however -- and we
10 really see that these three elements go hand in glove. So
11 the first one is block grant funding. The second element
12 is a contingency fund, that was in place, I believe, in
13 the state at one time, but we believe needs to be part and
14 parcel with the block grant funding and that without this
15 contingency fund we would not recommend movement to this
16 kind of a block grant funding approach. I will talk about
17 why that is, but I want to emphasize that I think these
18 elements are critical, that they be linked together.
19 A third component that we would cite as perhaps
20 less critical in the sense that it must be linked in our
21 point of view but we think it is a direction we think the
22 State should look to move over time, and that is enhanced
23 regional services and state support.
24 You will see some trends that show rather large
25 variations in service. We believe that has to be
37
1 considered a State responsibility, and again, that every
2 student with special education needs, as is required by
3 law, by the way, receives the services to which they are
4 required, irrespective of zip code.
5 So we believe that some supplemental positions
6 at the WDE will be needed to provide enhanced support
7 monitoring and also to facilitate increased regionalized
8 services.
9 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Madam Chairman,
10 should we hold questions to the very end? I had a couple.
11 I didn't know how you wanted to handle it.
12 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: I think that it might be
13 easiest, if the committee is agreeable, to get the whole
14 picture first and come back to questions unless -- I guess
15 the one caveat I would make is if there's something
16 unclear in the description that before we go on you think
17 is just not clear to you, we could do clarity, but if you
18 don't mind holding the questions, it might be good to get
19 the whole picture.
20 DR. PARRISH: All right. Let me move to
21 Chapter 2 of the report in which we look at changes over
22 time in Wyoming, its neighbors and the nation. We're
23 going to look at changes in enrollment and changes in
24 expenditure.
25 So the first slide simply shows enrollment
38
1 trends. I think you're aware, the total enrollment in
2 Wyoming has been declining over the last ten years or so.
3 During that same time special education enrollment has
4 held fairly steady.
5 So of course what that suggests is that special
6 education enrollment as a percent of total enrollment has
7 increased over time. So we see it going from about 10
8 percent up to approaching 14 percent over the ten-year
9 period.
10 Now, Wyoming is not alone in that. We will show
11 some national data to show that this is a national
12 phenomenon as well as one that's occurring in Wyoming.
13 When we look at changes in certain categories of
14 disability, again, it is just important, I think, from a
15 context perspective. As we can see, the vast majority of
16 children are in the category specific learning disability
17 with speech or language also being a very large category.
18 We see either those enrollments are holding
19 fairly steady or some decline in terms of learning
20 disabilities, in terms of the so-called more hard
21 disabilities or ones that it is sometimes argued are more
22 clearly definable. I think that those points are
23 debatable, but -- and the literature debates them, but we
24 see a more constant rate of identification or numbers of
25 children identified in categories such as emotional
39
1 disturbance, other health impairment and mental
2 retardation.
3 When we look at spending over time, we see that
4 total spending in Wyoming in constant dollars has actually
5 held fairly steady at about 800 million. Now, again,
6 those are expressed in 2000-2001 dollars, but that's
7 happening, of course, at a time in which the enrollment is
8 declining somewhat. But in terms of total spending we see
9 it has held fairly constant.
10 Special ed spending has risen somewhat, again in
11 constant dollars but not dramatically over that ten-year
12 period.
13 At the next slide we look at state and federal
14 together spending and/or revenues for special education,
15 and you can see that state revenues have risen and that
16 the federal share has also risen. We see a slight drop in
17 2000-2001. I think there's some explanation for that, but
18 I'm not quite sure -- maybe Becca can make a comment --
19 but the federal contribution generally has been increasing
20 over the last few years.
21 MS. WALK: If I may, Madam Chairman,
22 explain the dip in the federal funds during that time
23 period, what happened is that we gave the local districts
24 their flow-through money to try to get the -- to try to
25 get on the same timeline as the other federal grants so we
40
1 were doing a one and a half grant to the local districts
2 for two years and then went back to the regular flow
3 through for that last year which is where you will see the
4 dip.
5 They, in fact, did get more money during those
6 two years, but it was, in fact, a catchup so that they
7 were receiving, they were on the same federal fiscal year
8 for all of their federal dollars then. Previously special
9 education had been a year in arrears and we wanted to get
10 the districts all on the same timeline for all of their
11 federal money. So that's what that dip accounts for.
12 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: So that would account for
13 the increase in '98-99, '99-2000, that it goes up but then
14 2001 is still higher than '97-'98.
15 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, that's correct.
16 Our federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education
17 have dramatically increased over the last five years since
18 I've been with the department. When I first came to the
19 department five years ago, our federal grant for educating
20 students with disabilities was approximately 8 million.
21 This year's grant was a little over 16 million.
22 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Thank you.
23 MS. WALK: Thank you.
24 DR. PARRISH: I think we expect that that
25 trend will continue. Of course nobody knows exactly what
41
1 will happen at the federal level. As you know, there's
2 considerable debate and discussion about the federal
3 initial commitment at 40 percent and I think we'll
4 continue to see increased federal funds coming into the
5 states for special education.
6 We look at the next slide, we see special
7 education expenditures as a percentage of total
8 expenditures over a ten-year period, and we see that these
9 have been increasing from about, you know, somewhere below
10 10 percent to over 12 percent over this ten-year period.
11 Again, this is not unique to Wyoming. We see
12 this is a national trend and it largely equates with
13 increased numbers of kids being identified for special
14 education in Wyoming and across the nation.
15 Now, if we look at total and special ed spending
16 per student over time, what we see is that total spending
17 per student has gone up as has special education spending
18 per student, so again, this, I think, is something that's
19 very important to keep in mind in terms of a context
20 variable, so if we look at rising spending for special
21 education students in constant dollars without looking at
22 what is happening in general ed, I think we lose sight of
23 the fact that as a nation and many of our states,
24 virtually all of them, are spending more on education
25 generally.
42
1 So it is not just that special education is
2 rising, but all spending on education has been rising in
3 real terms. And we see in Wyoming as well that we see
4 some parallel structure between rising special ed spending
5 per student at the same time that total spending per
6 student has been rising.
7 In the next slide we just see, I think, again
8 what we know, which is that while a total enrollment
9 nationally has been going up over the last five years, in
10 Wyoming, of course, it has been going down.
11 Similarly, special education enrollment in the
12 nation has been rising at a faster pace than in Wyoming,
13 but special ed enrollment has gone up while general
14 education has gone down in Wyoming, but in the nation
15 special education enrollment is increasing at the same
16 time the general education is.
17 This shows some comparisons between Wyoming and
18 your neighboring states as well as the nation, so what you
19 can see here is that you do identify at a higher rate than
20 the nation, I should point out that the percentages that
21 you see here look somewhat different than what we saw in
22 an earlier chart because there are a lot of things you can
23 put in the numerator and denominator to create a
24 percentage of children in special ed.
25 For comparison purposes across states and the
43
1 nation it is generally considered in the denominator we
2 like to put all children, in other words, not just
3 children in public schools but all school-aged children.
4 It makes a big difference when comparing with eastern
5 seaboard states or nationally because there are a lot of
6 kids in private schools, and if we pull them out of the
7 base the percentage looks quite a bit different. Trying
8 to take out the variance of kids placed in private
9 schools, not private special ed but say parochial schools
10 across states, what we see is that Wyoming is identified
11 as mentioned at a higher rate than the nation.
12 If you look at the third line down in relation
13 to the second at the top, you're also identifying at a
14 higher rate than most of your neighbors with the sole
15 exception of Wyoming where in the last year of '99-2000
16 for which we have information you're very much close to
17 Wyoming -- I'm sorry -- to Nebraska in terms of percentage
18 of students identified for special ed.
19 If we look at variations in practice in
20 categories of disability, I think the important thing to
21 realize is that it is one more indication of some
22 variation in what these categories really mean. So
23 sometimes there's a temptation to say what if we took the
24 kids from the so-called hard, more clearly defined
25 disabilities and separate them from the ones kind of
44
1 harder to define or the more loosely defined such as
2 specific learning disability, but what you will see is a
3 lot of variation in these so-called hard disabilities.
4 Mental retardation, for example, in Wyoming we
5 identify at about one-third the rate of Nebraska for the
6 category of mental retardation; emotional disturbance,
7 about twice the rate of South Dakota. And I often cite as
8 an example that well, people think everybody is crazy in
9 California. In fact, we have about one-half of the
10 national rate of emotional disturbance according to our
11 definition.
12 So there is a lot of relativity involved in this
13 and subjectivity. Despite the fact that there are pretty
14 clear guidelines, there's still as much gray as black and
15 white, and I think it is important to realize that.
16 Now, I'm going to show you some self-reported
17 expenditure data about spending, and these come from yet
18 another source. These are data that were reported to the
19 Center for Special Education Finance, which as I mentioned
20 is the center I direct, about what states think or they
21 say they're spending on special education.
22 The only reason we really include this data in
23 the report is because it is the only data we have that
24 allows you to compare your expenditures to your
25 neighbors'. The national study does not do that and none
45
1 of the neighboring states elected for more involved SEEP
2 analysis, so the best data we have are the data I'll
3 present in the next slide.
4 I wanted to show you that one of the things we
5 asked was how confident are even the states in the
6 information that they're providing.
7 And while Wyoming was highly confident because
8 of your percent reimbursement system, for example, Idaho
9 said they're somewhat confident and Utah said they're
10 confident, only a few places said they were highly
11 confident. Even if everybody had been highly confident,
12 we're talking somewhat about apples and oranges because of
13 different accounting conventions.
14 So I think what we need to say is that these
15 numbers are subject to considerable question, but again,
16 they're the best we have comparing Wyoming to its
17 neighbors, so it would seem relevant to put it in the
18 report and what we see is just totals and without
19 controlling for population differences probably doesn't
20 help a lot although it does show you the changes for the
21 states in which we have, you know, information for two
22 years.
23 We see Colorado, for example, shows a rather
24 dramatic change in the five-year span that we show here in
25 terms of total special education spending. If we look at
46
1 a per-pupil special education spending, again as reported
2 and expressed in constant dollars, we see that Wyoming
3 appears to be about at a level parallel to the nation.
4 The SEEP information, the independently constructed data I
5 will show that we've just now produced, shows a somewhat
6 different picture than this. But based on self-reported
7 information, Wyoming and the nation look like they're
8 spending about the same. Wyoming looks like it is
9 spending considerably higher than all of its neighbors,
10 but again, how much confidence one can have in these
11 numbers I think is very much open to question.
12 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Dr. Parrish, we have a
13 clarification question.
14 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Madam Chairman,
15 thank you.
16 On page 13 where we're looking at the Wyoming
17 figure for the most recent year, 1999 and the nation,
18 basically that's the same number. And earlier we talked
19 about how Wyoming was 17 percent higher and what's that
20 difference again?
21 DR. PARRISH: Well, first of all, the 17
22 percent difference is the number that's based on our
23 independent national study of what we're actually spending
24 across the nation as developed through our research. It
25 is a number we've just created in looking at Wyoming using
47
1 that same methodology, so that's the number in which we
2 have much more confidence.
3 This number was based on -- we asked all 50
4 states, "What do you think you're spending?" These are
5 data that were selected three or four years ago,
6 self-reported, and we constructed a national average based
7 on self-reported data across all states including states
8 that said, "I'm highly confident," the states that said,
9 "I have no confidence." It was simply the best numbers we
10 could produce at that time, and so that's what that is.
11 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Madam Chairman, so
12 the numbers reported on page 13 are coming from where, the
13 U.S. Department of Education or --
14 DR. PARRISH: They are coming from each of
15 the -- they're accumulated from what was reported to us by
16 each of the 50 states. Some states didn't report, but we
17 estimated. We derived a national estimate, so that was a
18 number created by us, the Center for Education Finance, at
19 a time when there were no national data.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you.
21 DR. PARRISH: Okay. So then the SEEP-
22 derived data -- SEEP stands for Special Education
23 Expenditure Project. We use that acronym because that
24 reflects the national SEEP, again, which was funded by the
25 U.S. Department of Ed, rather very costly effort, a very
48
1 intensive effort and it also represents the independently
2 derived data that we collected and analyzed from nine
3 states in addition to Wyoming.
4 So we will see the kind of breakouts that you
5 see here. I'll go through each of these. I don't know
6 that I need to go through the detail. We will do it page
7 by page. But total spending on students with disabilities
8 who are eligible for special education in Wyoming and see
9 how that sort of breaks out.
10 So we see that, as you know, the majority --
11 virtually all special ed children also receive regular
12 education services. So if we want to look at total
13 spending for a special education child, that's a little
14 different than saying how much are we spending on special
15 education. Those are two questions. How much we spending
16 on special ed, how much for all children who are in the
17 category of special ed.
18 So taking the second definition for a moment, we
19 see that about 65 percent of the expenditures on all
20 children identified as special ed are for special ed
21 services, about 34 percent are for regular ed services --
22 and of course that's going to vary dramatically by
23 individual student, but this is overall -- and about 1
24 percent come from other services that these children might
25 receive such as Title I, English language services for
49
1 bilingual students, and so on, the total -- the components
2 of total expenditure to educate a special education
3 student in Wyoming and in the U.S.
4 So we see two bars here. And again, this is to
5 go back to the prior question, the data that were
6 independently derived by us through our national as well
7 as state analysis. And what we see here is that based on
8 our estimate, Wyoming is spending in 2001-2002 $15,517 per
9 student as compared to a national average of $13,228, and
10 you can see how that breaks out.
11 In Wyoming the regular ed component is somewhat
12 larger, special ed component is somewhat larger and the
13 other program component is pretty much the same. You're
14 sort of proportionate with the nation, but you're overall
15 spending more than what we see across the nation.
16 Comparison of special ed and total education
17 expenditures, we see that if we look at the Wyoming --
18 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
19 I have a question and clarification.
20 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Thank you. Go ahead.
21 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Dr. Parrish, I'm
22 looking at what is called SEEP data and it shows that
23 15,000 per student in Wyoming broken out into two
24 components. The regular education expenditure per student
25 you show as 5,406. I guess it is the chart that's up
50
1 there. That seems significantly lower than the numbers
2 we're used to from this committee.
3 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman,
4 Representative Lockhart, that's a good question. I should
5 clarify that because I probably went through it rather
6 quickly. It is not -- it shouldn't be confused with the
7 large expenditure per pupil which is probably the number
8 that you normally get. This is only the regular ed
9 component of what I'm spending on a special ed student.
10 So, in other words, let's say the average
11 special ed component, a student -- just as an example,
12 this may not be an accurate example, but let's say they
13 spend 50 percent of their time in special education and 50
14 percent of their time in regular ed. We're saying what's
15 the regular ed part of that total.
16 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Thank you.
17 DR. PARRISH: Going to the next slide, if
18 we look at the total education expenditure per pupil which
19 I think is the number actually that you're referring to
20 and may be a number a little closer to what you're
21 familiar with, at least based on data reported through
22 NCES, National Center for Education Statistics, we see
23 Wyoming is spending 5 percent higher than the nation at
24 7410 as opposed to 7,048.
25 And based on our SEEP analysis we see that for
51
1 the average special ed student or at least the special ed
2 expenditure per pupil is 20 percent higher than the
3 nation.
4 Now, the next sheet shows, again, our
5 independently derived, so if you look back at the prior
6 sheet that compared Wyoming to other states. And,
7 remember, I said that was self-reported data, number one.
8 Number two, it had the advantage of you could know what
9 the other states were. And number three, they were the
10 neighboring states which might be the ones you would most
11 like to look to for comparison purposes.
12 Unfortunately on this table the good news is we
13 have data in which we're highly confident and data using
14 the same methodology across ten states in which we can
15 compare Wyoming to other states. While I can tell you
16 what the other ten states are, in the aggregate I can't
17 tell you state by state because we're under state contract
18 with each of those states. Until they agree that that
19 number can be nationally released, we are not at liberty
20 to say what state goes with which number.
21 But I think I can tell you without violating any
22 confidentiality that the ones you see to the right of you
23 are eastern seaboard states to a large extent and it is
24 listed in the report what other states are involved here.
25 But what you see across these states, I will
52
1 tell you that they range from New York in size is the
2 largest to the smallest being Rhode Island, so they range
3 dramatically in size. Kansas and Missouri were involved.
4 They range regionally. Alabama was one of them. So there
5 are regional variations. There's considerable size
6 variation here.
7 But what we see, at least among these ten
8 states, is that Wyoming is sixth in relation to these ten,
9 but you can see a fairly dramatic dropoff between the top
10 five and the bottom five and also again showing that
11 Wyoming is higher than the national average.
12 Looking to the next slide, how are the dollars
13 spent on special education in Wyoming allocated across
14 categories, and based on our estimates, we estimate
15 instructional services to be about 80 percent in terms of
16 within public school services.
17 We estimate administration and support to be at
18 8.5 percent, and then you can see the other categories,
19 transportation about 3.2 percent. We have included some
20 categories in our expenditure that you may not have
21 included. I believe transportation is something that we
22 included in this that you didn't. When we just take it
23 off of your 401s, and also capital. So we also include,
24 for example, what kind of buildings are being used and
25 some amortized estimate of the cost of capital over time.
53
1 So our definition is a little bit more comprehensive.
2 Per-pupil special ed spending in Wyoming, this
3 is how much we're spending per type of service per student
4 receiving that service. So what we see is that for
5 students who receive, for example -- look to the far
6 right -- extended school year programs going into the
7 summer, for example, per student receiving extended school
8 year, Wyoming is spending about $1300 per student, per
9 homebound student, about $3,000, and so on.
10 Now, you can see, perhaps not surprisingly, that
11 instructional programs operated within public schools is
12 much less than programs operated outside public schools.
13 Now that, of course, reflects very different students,
14 too, one would assume that the most severe students are
15 the ones placed outside public schools. But a very big
16 difference in expenditures.
17 Per pupil expenditures in Wyoming by disability
18 category, I believe that's one of the things that
19 spectrum, for example, struggled with and it was something
20 the State was quite interested in. What we see, of
21 course, is considerable variation by disability category.
22 I will tell you, however, that we see almost as much
23 variation within the category as we see across, and I'll
24 show you that in the next slide, but see, for example, for
25 the area of vision impairment which is the highest
54
1 expenditure category and that's what you see in the
2 diamond.
3 But if you look at the top and bottom bounds of
4 what we spend on individual students with vision
5 impairment, it ranges dramatically from about 10,000 to
6 over 50,000. So to simply say that a child with a vision
7 impairment is automatically going to be high cost is not a
8 fair assumption, even though on average that category is
9 much higher -- or is higher, let's say, than some of the
10 other categories. And you see that throughout, as well as
11 nationally. That's something we always see as a great
12 deal of variation in spending.
13 Now, turning to expenditure patterns in Wyoming
14 on special education in terms of what we saw in the
15 2001-2002 year, as mentioned, we saw a rather large
16 variation in the average claim per special education
17 student across districts. Separating by quartiles of
18 expenditure, we see in the fourth quartile, or taking that
19 quartile of districts at the highest level of expenditure
20 from those at the smallest, we see a range of about 12,000
21 to almost 20,000, or at least 19,000, let's say, in claim
22 per special education student.
23 So we see quite a bit of disparity in terms of
24 how much is being claimed under the reimbursement system
25 per student.
55
1 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
2 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Scott.
3 SENATOR SCOTT: I'm confused on this
4 slide. These expenditures by district or by individual
5 pupil? I am confused.
6 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and Senator
7 Scott, they represent an average. So this figure, for
8 example, the 19,000 for the highest quartile of districts,
9 is an average expenditure per special ed student in that
10 quartile of districts.
11 SENATOR SCOTT: It is quartile of
12 districts?
13 DR. PARRISH: Right.
14 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And average expenditure
15 per student within that?
16 DR. PARRISH: Within that quartile, yes.
17 Going to Chapter 4, Defining Adequacy, now,
18 again, I again want to remind you that you're the first
19 state to have taken this on in a long time. Illinois and
20 Alaska took it on 20 years ago, but defining special
21 education adequacy is a huge challenge. I think there's
22 probably a reason why it hasn't been done other places.
23 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Before -- if there is a
24 question, let's take that and then I think we'll take a
25 break before we start this chapter and then move on.
56
1 SENATOR SESSIONS: Did you tell us how you
2 divided the quartiles up? Is there any common denominator
3 amongst those? Did you say size or areas of the state
4 or --
5 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: This is back on the
6 previous slide on quartile -- no, page 18. I'm sorry.
7 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chair and Senator
8 Sessions, these are quartiles defined by sort of the
9 variable that you see featured here. In other words, we
10 simply arrayed districts by average claim per special
11 education student from lowest to highest.
12 SENATOR SESSIONS: There's no --
13 DR. PARRISH: There's no bearing on size.
14 We will analyze and show you can this be explained by
15 size, explained by poverty. We will look at that.
16 SENATOR SESSIONS: That's what I wanted.
17 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Committee, I would like
18 to go ahead and take about a 12-minute break by my watch
19 that means 12-15 minutes, that means we would come back in
20 at 25 after 10:00.
21 (Recess taken 10:13 a.m. until 10:25 a.m.)
22 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Dr. Parrish, I think we
23 were on page 19 of our report, beginning of Chapter 4 when
24 we would start to talk about adequacies.
25 DR. PARRISH: Yes, we were. I would like
57
1 to actually -- just shuffling through my papers here, I
2 realize I think there was a slide out of order, which we
3 should probably return to the prior slide where we saw it
4 broken out by quartiles. And that means all my answers
5 were wrong because that slide was out of order.
6 Let me tell you what this is -- it is a little
7 premature. Since I've shown it to you I want to clarify.
8 This was actually -- if we jump two slides
9 ahead -- can we do that -- and that's the one by spending
10 quartiles as I described to you, we arrayed the districts
11 by spending quartile, simply by spending, divided the
12 districts into quartiles, highest spending to the lowest
13 spending, and we said what's the average expenditure per
14 special ed student across this quartile for special ed
15 services. So that is what you're seeing.
16 If you look at the one we saw before which is
17 two slides back -- and I apologize for this -- this then
18 leads to some of the questions about how does this relate
19 to other characteristics of children we might be
20 interested in. And one of them is something we call the
21 abilities index and the abilities index attempts to rate
22 children according to their severity, or, to put it in a
23 more positive way, their abilities.
24 I can describe the abilities index, but
25 basically to make a long story short, it sort of ranges
58
1 students from, let's say, not very severe to quite severe.
2 And what this slide really shows, the one by abilities
3 index, that as children become more severe we do see
4 increased expenditure. So we do see a correlation as we
5 would expect between severity as we defined it through the
6 abilities index and spending.
7 That's a little out of sequence, though, from
8 kind of the overall discussion. We can come back to that
9 if you want, but since I had shown it to you -- moving two
10 slides ahead, then, again on spending quartiles, I think
11 we've talked about that, so we'll move to the next one.
12 Here we see special education spending in
13 association per student in special education and so-called
14 hard disabilities.
15 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Excuse me. What page of
16 ours are you on, do you know?
17 MS. WALK: Page 20, Madam Chairman, at top
18 slide.
19 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Did we cover page 19?
20 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Yes.
21 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Thank you.
22 DR. PARRISH: Sorry for the scramble, but
23 I think we'll stay in sequence now. And we're on your
24 page 20. And we look at the top slide there and we see --
25 we start to get into some of the expletory factors because
59
1 we would expect to see some range in spending for special
2 education students? Of course we would.
3 Now, we know that some students are much more
4 severe than others and if you look back at the abilities
5 index, we see, as I said, a correlation between severity
6 overall and spending, as we would expect.
7 But when we look at variations across districts,
8 so why is it that one district claims, for example, twice
9 per student than another district does and there's two
10 sorts of explanations that one might have for that and one
11 we might say are things that are kind of within the
12 control of the district and then others are factors that
13 are maybe outside of the control.
14 I would expect if I go into a district that's
15 claiming high amounts of money relatively speaking per
16 student, I might hear explanations, "That's because we're
17 particularly high poverty. Our kids are more needy.
18 That's because we're small and we have high costs related
19 to smallness."
20 So we looked at some of these factors to try to
21 say overall to what extent do various things explain or
22 are related to the variations in expenditure that we see.
23 So one of the factors that we look at that you
24 see in this slide on page 20 is that what percentage of
25 their students that they identify are in so-called hard
60
1 disabilities. So I might expect, for example, that if I
2 would see a district that had a very high percentage of
3 children who were mentally retarded, emotionally
4 disturbed, visual impaired, deaf, blind, that might drive
5 the average cost up in relation to a district where the
6 children were primarily in the category of learning
7 disturbance or learning disabilities.
8 What we see here is we really don't see much of
9 a relationship. If we look at the center set of bars on
10 slide number -- on page 20 that we see up here, we see
11 that as we move from various ranges of percent, we arrange
12 it by highest to lowest spending, so again going back to
13 the highest claimers to the lowest claimers, and the
14 lowest claimers have 19 percent of their students in more
15 severe or so-called hard categories as opposed to the
16 highest claimers who have 16 percent of their students in
17 the so-called hard categories.
18 So we don't see a relationship, at least looking
19 at individual districts, in their claiming practices that
20 can be explained by the amount of students or the
21 percentage of their students in so-called hard disability
22 categories.
23 Now, if you go to the first set of bars -- again
24 I'm jumping around a little. I apologize -- you might
25 also expect that districts that identify very high
61
1 percentages of their students might claim less on average.
2 So if I see a district that's identifying 30 percent of
3 its students in special ed, then I guess I'm thinking that
4 they're casting a rather broader net and I might expect
5 that the average expenditure per student in that category,
6 the average level of severity is going to be less and that
7 spending may be less for districts who are identifying at
8 high levels as opposed to those that are maybe only
9 identifying the most severe students.
10 Again, we don't see a pattern in relation to
11 percentage of special ed.
12 Another factor, in fact it is built into the
13 federal funding, is variation based on poverty and the
14 amount of funding that's given out with the argument that
15 higher poverty districts might face higher incidence of
16 special ed disability and have students with greater
17 needs.
18 Again, at least on average we don't see a
19 relationship between the percentage of poverty in a
20 district and the percentage that's being claimed under
21 special education claims.
22 So it simply is looking at the variation and
23 trying to say to what extent can we attribute it to some
24 of the cost factors that we might expect that would
25 influence this or not.
62
1 And basically, based on these three criteria, we
2 do not see that these variations appear to be cost driven
3 in that sense.
4 If we look, however, at the next slide, we do
5 see another cost factor that does seem to have a
6 relationship to the variations that we see and that is
7 size. So we do see that variation in the smallest
8 districts.
9 So dividing districts into very small, small,
10 medium and large groupings, we see that the average claim
11 per special education student in the very small district
12 or the average expenditure is higher than we see, let's
13 say, in the medium and large, and the small is also
14 somewhat between the medium and large and the very small.
15 This suggests to us that there are perhaps certain
16 diseconomies of scale that do reflect claiming.
17 Now, again, this is what they're claiming, not
18 necessarily an assessment of what they should be spending.
19 But I think it still adds credence to what we might
20 expect, that very small places incur somewhat higher
21 average costs per student. And we will see in the model
22 that we built in terms of defining adequacy that there's
23 some allowance for the diseconomies of scale that we see
24 here.
25 Moving to the next slide, one of the other
63
1 things that we took into account and wanted to look at in
2 attempting to define adequacy for the state or what we
3 should be doing in special ed spending and service
4 provision is to look at variations, so we see a variation
5 in spending. But the question then would be, well, how
6 does that relate to variations in service provision? Does
7 it mean that one district that's claiming a lot more than
8 another is still finding perhaps some way of serving all
9 of its students in an appropriate fashion?
10 And while these data alone perhaps don't tell us
11 what is appropriate and what is not, I still think they're
12 very telling. Now they're based on what we found in the
13 SEEDS database which is a database on every individual
14 special ed student in Wyoming showing what services
15 they're receiving.
16 But analyzing five districts from their SEEDS
17 database, we found it interesting that in one district 68
18 percent of all students in special ed were determined to
19 need speech and language therapy whereas in another
20 district only 1 percent of all students in special ed were
21 determined to need speech and language therapy.
22 Now, exactly to know what percentage of students
23 in an individual district require speech and language
24 would require some independent audit from special ed
25 experts to look, so I can't say that there's an absolute
64
1 answer as to what the numbers should be, but variation in
2 the range of 1 percent to 68 percent strikes me as
3 worrisome.
4 I think some children may be getting speech
5 therapy who don't really need it and there are some
6 students -- I think we know another district at 2
7 percent -- who require speech therapy in the state who are
8 probably not getting it. We know there's a shortage of
9 providers in many areas, so in some ways it is not
10 surprising, but the law requires if students require
11 speech and language they should get it irrespective of zip
12 code.
13 Occupational therapy, we see 8 percent as
14 opposed to 31 in another; counseling, 0 to 45 percent;
15 social work, 0 to 27 percent. We see a considerable range
16 of variation. To what extent is this due to inadequate or
17 incorrect SEEDS information, that people haven't entered
18 the information in the database, as opposed to variation
19 in service.
20 My guess it is some combination, but I think it
21 also points out the potential of SEEDS data to inform the
22 State and future monitoring efforts to start to look to
23 see what is going on in a place in which only 1 percent of
24 the students are receiving speech therapy and then
25 encouraging districts to be sure that they get that data
65
1 accurate because the state is looking at it.
2 But it is one more concern about the current
3 funding system as the variation in service or the evidence
4 that we see.
5 Now, looking at that same data for selected
6 disability categories, so we might say well, 68 percent of
7 the kids getting speech and language, maybe they were
8 speech students and that's why so many. But if we hold
9 category of disability constant, so in the next slide
10 let's say let's just look at what kids who are LD get and
11 the variation in what they're getting, again, one district
12 0 percent gets LD speech, in another 46 percent of LD kids
13 get speech. Common across variation, in counseling, 0 to
14 53 percent.
15 So again I think there's a lot of sort of
16 laissez-faire determination about what services are
17 appropriate. And we don't have as a state perspective a
18 good sense that when children move from district to
19 district there's consistency in the services that they
20 receive.
21 When we look, again holding disability category
22 constant, speech and language, you know, again, this may
23 point to SEEDS data are lacking. When I see in one
24 district 3 percent of the speech students get speech, I'm
25 pretty worried about that. Maybe we need to bolster those
66
1 data, but that's what we're seeing in the database.
2 So the data, you know, could very well be
3 somewhat faulty, but I think we also know there's a lot of
4 variation that's occurring.
5 Kind of moving to something somewhat different
6 in the sense that we're kind of setting the stage for,
7 then, the guidelines, our sense was that the guidelines --
8 I'm sorry. There we are. The guidelines, we believe, are
9 necessary irrespective of how you elect to use them
10 because we were charged as a search question to define
11 adequacy for the state and we felt that that went through
12 a market basket or ingredients approach, a basket of
13 services just like you did for general ed, and so this is
14 what was done for special ed.
15 Then the next question is kind of how we use
16 this. There's a lot more underlying information around
17 this, but basically what we see in this slide is not the
18 guidelines but our best information based on the data in
19 SEEDS right now as well as the 401s and other sources of
20 information about what is currently being done in the
21 state.
22 So we see that, for example, there are 35.7
23 special ed directors. If we say how does that relate to
24 the number of special ed students, one special ed director
25 in the state for about every 330 students. If we go down
67
1 to teachers, as an example, we see 801.6 teachers which
2 would relate to about 1 teacher per 11 special ed
3 students -- students receiving teaching services. Some
4 don't because they may be getting speech therapy only,
5 14.7 in relation to special ed students, and the last
6 column simply says in relation to average daily
7 membership.
8 So all of these are categories of service
9 providers under special ed, and it shows you what is
10 currently happening in the state now in terms of ratios,
11 whether those ratios are expressed in terms of kids
12 receiving service, whether they're expressed in total
13 special ed students, whether they're receiving service or
14 not, or whether they're expressed in terms such as overall
15 students or ADM.
16 I have to say, these are our best estimates. We
17 have pretty good information about how many service
18 providers there are under the 401; however, a lot of
19 service providers are contracted for in the state and
20 trying to convert those contracted people into FTEs was
21 somewhat problematic.
22 We do make recommendations about collecting
23 better information about that in the future, as well as
24 the expenditure of federal funds is somewhat problematic
25 sometimes in terms of tracking exactly how that converts
68
1 into bodies.
2 We tried to look everywhere we could for other
3 information that may be available across the nation,
4 through other research, other states; what the state of
5 the art in terms of trying to define reasonableness,
6 appropriateness, adequacy, setting guidelines in special
7 education, looking everywhere we could think to look.
8 And as I mentioned, you're sort of setting the
9 stage for this so in the future people will look to
10 Wyoming as one more place as guidelines and attempt for
11 guidelines have been made. This is as much an art as
12 science, so we will see a fair amount of variation from
13 what we saw in the places we were able to look, but the
14 first place we looked was other research.
15 Keep in mind, this other research was not
16 necessarily with the goal in mind of defining what should
17 be but rather defining kind of what is. The first column
18 simply again shows you kind of what is in Wyoming in
19 relation to providers in comparison to Wyoming students
20 served, but then we look at, for example, what came out of
21 the national data from SEEP.
22 Again, there are data collection issues. I mean
23 to say that in Wyoming the ratio is 31 and SEEP says it is
24 97. Does that suggest that Wyoming is way out of line or
25 does that suggest the SEEP number was not really collected
69
1 for that purpose and may be somewhat problematic?
2 If you look, for example, at speech
3 pathologists, we see in Wyoming you have a ratio of 28
4 students receiving speech to speech therapist, but SEEP
5 suggested 26. But Spence, another national study, again
6 done for another purpose, developed a number that said 21.
7 We show you the numbers with all of the warts and all of
8 the caveats, but there wasn't a compelling amount of
9 underlying information. We wanted to share with you what
10 there was.
11 Another place we looked was the state of
12 California. We looked at California not just because
13 we're from California but because California does enroll
14 one-eighth of the nation's students and they do have a
15 comprehensive database like SEEDS. Many states do not
16 have a student level database with this level of
17 information. So it is a real wealth of potential
18 information, both your SEEDS in Wyoming -- and we talked a
19 little bit about how you might bolster the use of SEEDS
20 because we think it is a tremendous potential resource for
21 monitoring and understanding what is going on with
22 students. And California has a comparable database.
23 Now, based, again, on is the data in the CSEMIS,
24 or the California database, accurate? It is a little hard
25 to say. But looking at comparable numbers from the
70
1 California database, CSEMIS in relation to SEEDS, we see
2 much higher levels of average service provision in
3 California than we do in Wyoming.
4 Areas that look most pronounced are areas like
5 audiology which I think is rather sometimes difficult to
6 define in a very precise fashion, is that screening, is
7 that direct service, but when we look at things like
8 speech therapy, which I think are a little more definable
9 although perhaps still some vagary, you see perhaps your
10 ratio in Wyoming at least compared to California looks
11 like it is about one-half.
12 Occupational therapist looks comparable.
13 Physical therapist looks at about one-half, APE looks at
14 somewhat less than one-half, but it does seem to suggest
15 that at least compared to looking at those two databases
16 the caseloads in Wyoming are fairly comfortable in
17 comparison to at least what we see in California.
18 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman.
19 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Yes, Representative
20 McOmie.
21 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: I have a
22 clarification I would like to ask.
23 When you're comparing Wyoming and California, is
24 this just K-12? Or in California they have some what we
25 call our developmentally disabled preschools in their
71
1 school system. Would that be reflected in these numbers?
2 DR. PARRISH: Throughout all of this we've
3 tried to hold the K-12 constant because even with spending
4 that was a question also I was asked at the break and
5 spending as well other places does include 3 through 5 and
6 I know Wyoming has not in this study.
7 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Thank you.
8 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Thank you, Madam
9 Chairman.
10 DR. PARRISH: Then moving to -- I think we
11 were defining adequacy in Wyoming --
12 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, I have
13 a question on the comparison with California.
14 Did you -- since over half of our school
15 districts -- well, two-thirds of them are smaller
16 districts, two thirds are smaller, that they don't have
17 any choice in how many students per person they have, did
18 you break these out on what the cost is -- or what the
19 ratio is of like your two or three largest districts in
20 Wyoming?
21 DR. PARRISH: We did know. I think that's
22 a good point. And I think there are a number of reasons
23 why these are not entirely comparable. One could do
24 further analysis and, you know, it could be done. It is a
25 resource that's there. But I think that's a good point
72
1 and there are other reasons as well, of course, why. It
2 is just one more indicator but not a perfect one.
3 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Go ahead.
4 DR. PARRISH: So define adequacy in
5 Wyoming. What we're calling these are the recommended
6 staffing guidelines. These numbers, we present them in
7 three different ways that one might look at them, so let's
8 take, for example, a physical therapist as an example, the
9 fourth line down, because we see a number in each column.
10 I'll immediately move you to the last column
11 because that is what we're going to recommend that the
12 ratios be based on, that they be based on average daily
13 membership, and the reason we're going to recommend that
14 is because -- this is rather a complex, difficult area and
15 I apologize for that, but one might expect that you would
16 want to build these ratios on the number of students
17 identified for special education service and you can do
18 that.
19 We have, however, recommended that the ratios be
20 built on a total enrollment figure or ADM, and the reason
21 that we've done that is because we see so much range in
22 the -- so much variation in the range of students
23 identified for special education. We see that it is a
24 rather gray area of interpretation as to whether a child
25 is special ed or not.
73
1 And that we believe the best approach for the
2 State to take is to allocate resources based upon a total
3 enrollment figure rather than the number of students
4 identified. We believe that will result in a more evening
5 of the percentage of students identified across districts
6 over time.
7 We built a contingency fund when there are
8 legitimate reasons why some districts identify more than
9 others. We might want to talk more about this point, but
10 I want to start the discussion now. Under physical
11 therapist our recommended ratio is that one physical
12 therapist be allocated to a district or the funding for
13 one physical therapist be allocated to a district per 6500
14 students in the total enrollment as measured through ADM.
15 What does that mean, though, in terms of how
16 many physical therapists there would be based on current
17 identification patterns? That means that there would be
18 one physical therapist per 896 special ed students or one
19 physical therapist per 37 students that have currently
20 been identified as requiring physical therapy.
21 So I think what we see at least based on the
22 other evidence that we have, that it is a pretty
23 comfortable caseload and it is a relatively liberal
24 specification.
25 But we believe that's appropriate. It is not a
74
1 dramatic change from what you're doing now, but it would
2 make -- could be a dramatic change for some districts
3 because we see a lot of variation.
4 We can run through this, but for each category a
5 primary resource within special education provision we've
6 developed the kind of ratios as you see off to the far
7 right, and it shows you the implications under current
8 practice for what that would be for special ed students,
9 what it would be per student receiving service.
10 Ratios in the last column that were developed
11 were developed in conjunction with the task force that
12 worked with us. We did, however, make some final
13 adjustments as we felt, in some cases, we needed to think
14 of ways that we may want to distribute more money to very
15 small districts. That's one reason we made some
16 adjustments. There were other reasons we made some slight
17 adjustments. But to a large extent we based this on what
18 we saw and what came out of the committee's
19 specifications.
20 So we will see a little bit more of the
21 implications of this. We may want to come back to this.
22 These are the guidelines. We talk about the funding
23 guidelines. This is what we're referring to, the
24 guidelines that will underpin the funding amounts that we
25 will talk about.
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1 I guess the other thing I would like to say
2 about it is the guidelines are not to suggest that
3 because -- let's just say that a district has 6500
4 students, that we're saying therefore they must hire one
5 full-time physical therapist. We're not saying that.
6 We are rather saying that when we give them a
7 block grant funding for special ed, that's the standard
8 we're setting and they may decide that given their
9 population they need 4.6 physical therapists and need a
10 little more of a speech therapist than under the
11 guidelines. It is not meant to be an exact prescription
12 but rather guidelines, guidelines for funding.
13 To move to the administrative component of our
14 guidelines --
15 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Is this a clarification
16 question?
17 SENATOR SESSIONS: Yes, I just have a
18 question on this.
19 When you did this with your group of people, did
20 you feel -- and I know that we have many small districts
21 that don't have some of these specialists in them. The
22 counselors per student enrollment, you know, the social
23 workers, because that's been a choice they've made, they
24 don't do it -- do you see -- I guess there will be an
25 increase in funding for those districts if they so choose,
76
1 then, to hire these type of people based on this
2 recommendation?
3 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and Senator
4 Sessions, that's exactly right. Allocations -- for
5 example, in some categories of districts we may have seen
6 that we don't see under current practice any, let's say,
7 speech pathologists or very few. We still built in
8 funding for them to have a speech pathologist, and that's
9 part of increased monitoring because, quite frankly, if
10 there are children in that district that require speech
11 therapy, they're in violation of federal law, subject to
12 lawsuit. The state is subject to lawsuit under that. It
13 is a state responsibility. The argument "I can't find
14 somebody" is not, as you know, I believe, a legitimate
15 argument.
16 So that funding is built there along with, then,
17 the recommendation to -- for increased monitoring and
18 oversight to make sure that we find a way to get people in
19 there who are able to provide these services.
20 Moving to the administrative component of this,
21 we also set recommended funding guidelines for the
22 administration component. We basically built it around
23 the general categories of director including assistant
24 director and secretarial support.
25 We'd rather, then, do it on a strict ADM basis.
77
1 We divided districts into categories of large, medium,
2 small, very small, and we allocated to large districts
3 funding for two directors, assistant director and six
4 secretarial support right down to very small of .8
5 director, assistant director, one secretarial support.
6 These ratios tend in the small districts to be
7 higher than what we see right now. We felt, though --
8 again, keep in mind that this is a funding model -- that
9 that was one way to make sure that they had the
10 administrative resources as well as some of this money
11 could perhaps be carried over into other ways to provide
12 support that we believe these very small districts need.
13 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman.
14 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Yes, Representative
15 McOmie.
16 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Then this is a
17 straight ratio-per-student type thing based on broken --
18 broken out on your previous definitions -- well, you've
19 got them here -- average daily membership; is that
20 correct?
21 DR. PARRISH: If we look -- if we go two
22 slides back, then yes, we're looking at ratios per total
23 ADM. If we go one slide back to the administrative
24 component, that's allocated based on not ADM overall in a
25 linear fashion, but really in a more lump fashion. In
78
1 other words, we've categorized districts into four
2 categories so that one is not linearly related to ADM.
3 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman,
4 follow-up.
5 The reason I ask that question is when you were
6 defining adequacy -- small, very small -- there is a
7 significant increase in the cost for very small and small
8 schools that -- in order to provide that same level of
9 service, by what I saw on page 20, was right.
10 DR. PARRISH: That's right. And that's
11 one reason why we -- as I mentioned, we bolstered the
12 administrative component substantially over what we've
13 seen for small and very small to try to allow for that.
14 That's one way of attempting to adjust for that.
15 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And just as
16 clarification, I understand there is the latitude within
17 your recommendation that that can be used for
18 administrative or it can be used for services.
19 DR. PARRISH: Absolutely. These are
20 funding guidelines to develop an amount that would be a
21 block amount.
22 What we see on the next slide -- I just want to
23 point out the word "remote." It is in the title, but we
24 could easily miss it because it looks a lot like what we
25 saw a few slides back.
79
1 But what we are talking about as a committee is
2 that what we believe drives variation in cost to
3 provide -- so that's another response about the question
4 of scale -- what we believe drives variation in cost in
5 small and very small places as well as sometimes in
6 districts that aren't necessarily small, they still can
7 have higher costs. They have one or two remote schools.
8 So it is not we felt so much the size of the school or the
9 size of the district than the remoteness of the situation.
10 So let me give you an example here that I think
11 pertains particularly to special ed that may not to
12 general education programs because I know there is a lot
13 of debate in the state about what is a small school and
14 what is not.
15 You may want to think of this in somewhat of a
16 separate fashion from that debate or you may not, but
17 there's some reason for thinking of special ed somewhat
18 separately because you have many therapists providing
19 service under special ed, as you can see. These
20 specialists are likely to have caseloads that are spread
21 out over more than one school even in the largest of
22 districts.
23 If these schools are clustered such that it is a
24 five-minute drive down the road, the cost implications of
25 that dispersed nature of these services is probably not
80
1 very significant. But if we find a school that's a
2 hundred miles down the road from anybody else, whether it
3 is in a large district or a small, we believe that the
4 cost of that windshield time has to be acknowledged. It
5 certainly is acknowledged when we contract for these
6 services and it is also acknowledged in the fact that an
7 employee cannot see nearly as many kids if they're
8 spending half their day driving to a remote location.
9 So we adjusted the caseloads for these related
10 service providers or therapists down by, I believe, about
11 a quarter or a third -- it was a quarter for what we
12 define as remote schools. And there's a rather long
13 explanation and a clear delineation of who we said were
14 remote settings. Again, we find remote schools in large
15 districts as well as small ones.
16 When we saw small schools that were clustered
17 together, we didn't necessarily call them remote if there
18 was enough of a population there in one place. That's
19 something that would probably need to be reviewed a little
20 bit, but we think the principle of remoteness is important
21 to keep in mind.
22 We also then altered the teacher allocation for
23 remote schools. We felt it was a little different
24 situation than a therapist because it is not as likely
25 that we're going to have the primary teacher that's going
81
1 to be able to drive all over the place. Probably the
2 decision is more like if I'm a remote school I probably am
3 going to hire a teacher or component of a teacher to
4 provide special ed there.
5 So we did a little different allocation based on
6 if you're remote and what your ADM is then you get some
7 allocation of a full-time teacher.
8 Again, it is designed to allow and pump more
9 resources into remote situations.
10 Now, there's also dollar allocations for
11 nonpersonnel expenditure allocations built into the model.
12 I won't go into a lot of detail about this. We did not
13 spend a lot of time in the committee nor do I think it
14 would have been a good use of our time to talk about what
15 is adequate for supplies, what is adequate for materials.
16 We could have had a very long discussion about that.
17 Rather, to a large extent, we based it on extant
18 practice that we see throughout the state, sort of
19 smoothed out across districts throughout the state.
20 We did bolster two areas because we felt there
21 were two areas based on our discussion in the committee
22 that were probably underserving students, possibly, right
23 now, based on the evidence that we had. One was extended
24 school year and the other one was technology.
25 So you will see we adjusted up, assistive
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1 technology, if you look at -- let's see, the one slide
2 that we're looking at, whichever one that would be, the
3 bottom of page 26, we adjusted technology up, we adjusted
4 down tuition with the belief that we are getting to the
5 point where we might be able through the contingency fund
6 and bolstered regional services in other ways to serve
7 more students within the district.
8 And we also adjusted down other because we
9 believe things like extended school year or technology may
10 be in a general category called other right now.
11 You look at the next page on page 27, we also
12 bolstered -- 26, again.
13 MS. WALK: Still on 26.
14 DR. PARRISH: -- extended school year and
15 we took that out to a certain extent of other although
16 really overall the net sum was to pump more money into the
17 categories of extended school year and technology.
18 I know that's a lot to digest and I suspect
19 there will be questions about this, but I would like to
20 move quickly into the recommendations and I'm sure there
21 will be questions about what I presented.
22 What we are proposing is a block grant funding
23 approach that be phased in, as I mentioned at the
24 beginning of the presentation, over a 12-year period. But
25 to give you a little bit of context about this, we're
83
1 looking at total amount based on the latest data we
2 received from the State on the 401s, that in the year
3 2000, 2001, the last year for which we had complete data
4 across all districts, we showed claims of 88 million, we
5 saw federal allocations or revenues coming to the
6 districts of about 8 and a half million so that districts
7 in aggregate for the 2000-2001 school year for special ed
8 received 96.4 million, approximately, based on our
9 calculation for special education.
10 What we produced through the simulation for that
11 same year using salary information provided by MAP, by the
12 way, so it is consonant with the MAP model, regional cost
13 adjustments and so on provided by MAP, we through our
14 simulation actually developed a total block grant estimate
15 of 94.7 million, so it is somewhat less than what we saw
16 was the total being received by districts in the 2000-2001
17 year. So the total simulation produces an amount that is
18 slightly less than what was received in that year.
19 However, I just would say, the other thing you
20 see is that when we cost adjust it, due to the nature of
21 the cost adjustment it does show a slight reduction
22 beyond that.
23 But what we see is total block grant funding
24 recommended of 97 million which is more than what was
25 spent, and the difference between what the simulation
84
1 produces and what we recommend would be allocated is
2 through the provision of the hold harmless.
3 So we are suggesting that even though the
4 model -- the model would suggest that some districts would
5 lose large amounts of money, if it were strictly applied
6 in year one -- and we believe that is important that not
7 happen and that districts be held harmless. We will talk
8 about why that is -- so the total net cost over at least
9 using this as a base year, if you phase it in with more
10 current data which you would have to do, all of this would
11 have to change a bit.
12 But at least holding that year constant, we saw
13 a revenue change of about an additional $600,000 that
14 comes largely from the hold harmless.
15 The other recommendation that we believe is
16 critical in addition to the first point, that the 100
17 percent reimbursement be replaced with block grant funding
18 is a 12-year phase-in. We think that that is important
19 because of the nature of special education. Special
20 education students, I believe, as you know, unlike general
21 education students, have a legal entitlement to an
22 individually defined education program. This is a
23 contract between parents and the district. Districts can
24 be sued. The State can be sued if the terms of this
25 contract are not met. Once students are identified and
85
1 services are prescribed for these students, they need to
2 be provided as required by law.
3 There's also a maintenance of effort that's
4 required so that if districts are spending and the State
5 is spending through state aid a certain amount in a given
6 year, they cannot spend less in the next year. So there
7 are a number of reasons why we think the draconian dropoff
8 is not appropriate, would require considerable
9 implementation pain and would not work in the area of
10 special education.
11 Therefore, we recommend that it be phased in
12 gradually over time. Is there something sacred about 12
13 years? Probably not. Do we think you should use five
14 because that's maybe what you've used in other programs?
15 We also think not. We think it is a different situation.
16 We picked 12 because that would be the amount of
17 time, of course, that everyone in the current system would
18 then be phased out, graduated, hopefully phased out is not
19 a good term to use for students, hopefully graduated and
20 there would be an opportunity, then, for slowly districts
21 to adjust some of their practices.
22 Now, at the same time districts may, indeed,
23 especially small districts, have very severe populations
24 above and beyond what is in the block grant, and it is not
25 reasonable to expect them to change practice, because
86
1 their needs are real. And that's why we think that it is
2 absolutely imperative that if you go to a block grant
3 funding approach a contingency fund be established as part
4 and parcel of this funding approach.
5 I will tell you that many states, I would say
6 most states, have a contingency fund of this type, and it
7 is more needed in some states than others, depending on
8 the general type of formula you have. I would say there's
9 probably not a state in the union for which the argument
10 could be made more strongly that a contingency fund is
11 needed if you go to a block grant approach other than
12 Wyoming.
13 Under the 100 percent reimbursement arguably it
14 is not so critical, but if you go to a block grant
15 approach, I believe it to be essential that you have some
16 form of contingency fund. It doesn't need to be huge, but
17 the analogy I think you need to think of is it is like
18 insurance. There are certain costs and risks that are
19 wise to be shared across much larger population groups and
20 that's kind of the idea behind the contingency fund.
21 The third recommendation we make is some kind of
22 enhanced or bolstered regional services. We are not
23 suggesting or recommending that you completely revise
24 everything you do and go to a very heavily defined and
25 quickly implemented regional approach to services.
87
1 Over time that might not be a bad idea, but you
2 may want to move into it more gradually. But at the very
3 least the idea that small districts are going to work in
4 isolation to deal with low incidents, extremely complex
5 cases is just not viable. It is absolutely essential.
6 You take, let's say, an extreme case of
7 deaf-blind in a district with a hundred students overall,
8 how could they possibly have the expertise to deal with
9 the complexity of that situation? Regionalization makes
10 eminent sense. And again, you're going to find some type
11 of regional services in special ed in virtually every
12 state in the nation. So I think you need to think
13 seriously about moving to some type of bolstering local
14 cooperation.
15 Some of this is occurring already. Some of this
16 is occurring in conjunction with the BOCES. The BOCES may
17 be the place for this to occur. It was not the focus of
18 the study to look at this in great depth, but one clear
19 conclusion that came out of the work that we did was that
20 some bolstering and movement in that direction is
21 important. We think this approach in its very nature will
22 lend itself to encouraging that, by the way.
23 Costing out the resource guidelines, the funding
24 model would cost the state approximately, as I said,
25 600,000 in supplemental revenues based on the most current
88
1 data available.
2 Exact startup costs, of course, are contingent
3 on more current data and exact details and conditions of
4 implementation.
5 We also believe that these guidelines,
6 irrespective of whether they're used as base funding or
7 not, should be used as a basis for enhanced monitoring on
8 the part of the State and the ability to kind of work
9 collaboratively with districts to make sure that students
10 are receiving the services that they need or if perhaps
11 possible overidentification is occurring, to work in
12 conjunction with these districts to determine what is
13 reasonable and appropriate for students throughout the
14 state.
15 We do recommend as well some bolstered capacity
16 within the WDE to be able to do this. I know this is a
17 lot to digest. It is a complex area. I apologize for
18 that. There may be a reason why the states have not
19 attempted to take on the definition of adequacy and
20 special ed, but it may be coming for others and I
21 compliment you on at least taking on these difficult
22 tasks.
23 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Becca, if you might speak
24 a little bit before we open this up for questions. And I
25 believe you mentioned over what period of time federal
89
1 funds have almost doubled. It is the period of time
2 you've been here. And what was that period of time? And
3 the trend I heard was we are continuing to see increases
4 in that. Is that correct?
5 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, that is
6 correct. Over the last five years since I've been with
7 the Department of Education, the federal dollars coming
8 into the department to support the services for students
9 with disabilities has increased from approximately 8
10 million to a little over 16 million in our federal grant
11 this year.
12 The move with the reauthorization of the IDEA,
13 the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, which is
14 up for reauthorization, the big push this go-around with
15 that reauthorization is to try to bolster the federal
16 support at the state level. When IDEA was first enacted
17 back in 1975, the proposed support, legislative support,
18 was theoretically at 40 percent. There's been a huge move
19 this go-around to get the U.S. government to spend more
20 money supporting states at the local level with increasing
21 the amount of federal IDEA funds at the state level.
22 So yes, I would anticipate that our federal
23 grant will continue to increase over the next several
24 years.
25 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: That 17 million, then, is
90
1 over and above the state's 100 percent reimbursement for
2 these services.
3 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, that is
4 correct. We get a grant based on poverty indicators and
5 total student population. We then through formula at the
6 Department of Education flow through approximately 84
7 percent of those funds to the local districts. They do
8 fill out a consolidated grant application which is how
9 they get all of their Title funds, Title I, II, IV,
10 Perkins, those kinds of things, including IDEA funds.
11 And they use those funds at the local level to
12 enhance services provided for students with disabilities.
13 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Then the concept -- I'm
14 hoping that you can lay some groundwork for the committee
15 as we look to the future, a little bit of the discussion
16 we had about the issue of maintenance of effort and that
17 some wisdom that might need to be used is that new state
18 expenditures or new state monies, if we were to begin new
19 programs, how we funded those and how we structured them.
20 Once we begin with state monies then we cannot turn to
21 increased federal monies in the future to support those
22 programs, even though that might be the need because we
23 would then be supplanting.
24 Could you talk more about our restrictions in
25 that area so that we can use some of that wisdom in
91
1 planning how we begin some of these -- how we look to the
2 future and how we structure some of this.
3 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, I can. State
4 maintenance of effort is critical in this funding
5 component. While the federal dollars do look enticing
6 with thinking that we have over $16 million coming into
7 the state and that will increase, the federal law requires
8 that the state spend state dollars first on educating
9 students with disabilities and using the federal dollar to
10 assist in those services.
11 The State has a requirement to meet state
12 maintenance of effort and local school districts have that
13 requirement, to meet their local maintenance of effort.
14 So that if you start using state funds for a
15 specific program in educating students with disabilities,
16 you must maintain that effort with state dollars. School
17 districts may not begin a program for educating students
18 with disabilities using state money and then replace those
19 state monies with federal dollars. That is supplanting.
20 So a district must maintain their effort with state
21 dollars before using any kind of federal dollars.
22 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: So I call your
23 attention -- we may have already been digging on this hole
24 with the 100 percent funding by doing what we thought was
25 right for our students. You know, we may already have
92
1 ourselves in somewhat of a corner.
2 But certainly if we look at regional development
3 of services and contingency funds and so forth to the
4 extent possible, I think we need to be careful how we plan
5 those and how we might proceed on them and how we might
6 fund them.
7 So I thought that was some piece of information
8 that I came to a clearer understanding of that the
9 committee needed to be aware of.
10 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, another point,
11 if I may. It is critical as you're moving forward and
12 creating a new funding model for special education, that
13 if you do start creating new programs, that if you want to
14 work with the department on how to use the new federal
15 dollars to create new programs, that if you start using
16 federal dollars, then you may not go back and use state
17 dollars.
18 So I encourage you when you're looking at
19 starting new programs to possibly looking at the federal
20 dollars at the state level when you're looking at possibly
21 developing regionalized services, to be looking toward the
22 federal dollars when looking for new programs, but that
23 you are maintaining the programs the districts now have at
24 their local level using their current state money.
25 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And how does this
93
1 interact with the declining numbers of students? We have
2 seen dramatic declines in students in some cases in
3 numbers statewide. How does the maintenance of effort
4 issue interact with numbers of students?
5 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, according to
6 the federal law there are a couple of ways a local school
7 district does not need to meet the maintenance of effort.
8 And they have to show their maintenance of effort when
9 they apply through the consolidated grant for all of their
10 federal funds.
11 Specifically, a district does not need to meet
12 the maintenance of effort if their population of students
13 with disabilities has declined through graduation or
14 moving or other means.
15 Perhaps a school district has had an
16 out-of-district placement that has been very expensive and
17 that student has aged out, turning 21, is no longer the
18 responsibility of the district to educate that child.
19 There's been a decrease in teacher capacity in
20 that districts may lose a number of long-term teachers
21 that are being paid at a higher rate than brand-new
22 teachers coming in.
23 So there are ways that a district can show
24 legitimately through these ways outlined in federal law
25 why they can't meet their maintenance of effort, either
94
1 through total dollar amount or per-pupil spending.
2 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Dr. Parrish, on the issue
3 of adequacy it is my general impression that you addressed
4 it primarily in your look from what are we supplying or
5 what should we be supplying without much look at what are
6 we getting, what are we achieving, what are the results.
7 Do we have -- and I guess, you know, part of
8 what I envision in a total picture of adequacy is what are
9 we getting for what we spent and was it adequate, and I
10 think we have -- is it fair to say we have part of the
11 picture here and what do we need to be putting in or
12 estimates of that, but we would have to look elsewhere for
13 measurement of what are we getting? Or what are the fair
14 statements on that end? What are your thoughts?
15 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, that's an
16 excellent question. Adequacy always implies some kind of
17 an output or outcome standard, so we can't really talk
18 about adequacy of services or what we should be doing
19 without some conceptualization of what children should be
20 achieving or what we want children to achieve; otherwise,
21 how much do you need, well, for what purpose, and we have
22 to think about that.
23 Now, I would say to you that this is an area
24 that we have a long way to travel in education generally.
25 It is not something that in terms of educational
95
1 technology or the production function, in terms of what
2 we're really getting for our investment. It is an area of
3 research that we're still developing for all of education.
4 We look a lot to sort of individual test scores,
5 but most people believe that doesn't tell the whole story
6 or maybe even part of the story. In special ed those same
7 kinds of test scores could be certainly indicators that we
8 need to start looking at, in conjunction with this system,
9 though.
10 We start to have some guidelines, some
11 expectations with regard to the funding and we need to
12 look at and start having expectations with respect to
13 outcomes. I would hope those would be broader than just
14 test scores but that they would include test scores.
15 I would say, though, inherent anytime you have a
16 committee of the type we had with highly qualified, a
17 great array of professionals who sit there and tell you in
18 their best professional judgment what they think class
19 sizes, caseloads need to be to acheive outcomes of an
20 appropriate or high level, it is a subjective judgment.
21 And it is true, we don't have measures of those
22 outcomes, per se, but even if we go to test scores, how do
23 we measure the effectiveness of a speech therapist? There
24 may be ways in terms of overall indicators, but it is
25 complex. The outcome standard is complex in its
96
1 professional judgment.
2 Should we do more? Do we need to do more? I
3 think absolutely. I think this leads us along the path on
4 the resource side and then we need to quantify and
5 identify the outcome side and monitor it over time as
6 well.
7 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman.
8 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Let's begin with some
9 questions.
10 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Just a quick
11 question on Rebecca's comments. The 100 percent concerns
12 me also. Is that adjusted for inflation somewhat? In
13 other words, if we're spending 100 percent or we're paying
14 for 100 percent and let's say it is $5 million and the
15 feds put in a million, as we go down the road are they
16 going to adjust our 5 million for inflation or will that
17 be constant dollars?
18 DR. PARRISH: I'm pretty sure it is
19 constant dollars, not adjusted for inflation, so it in a
20 way you get a little bit of relief in that sense.
21 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Thank you.
22 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Committee, shall we open
23 this to general discussion and questions to Dr. Parrish or
24 to Rebecca at this point? I think Senator Goodenough did
25 ask earlier and then we will come to Senator Scott.
97
1 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Madam Chairperson, I
2 had a question that Wyoming has a higher percentage of
3 identified special ed students than the national average
4 or other places, and I wondered if you had a sense of why
5 that was, if we were better at identifying the students or
6 if there's factors such as alcohol use and abuse in the
7 state that leads to more kids needing special education
8 services or just why.
9 Do you have an opinion as to why that would be?
10 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, Senator
11 Goodenough, that's a good question. It is a complex
12 question. You can analyze it by looking at certain
13 indicators of the category of disability in which children
14 are placed. You can look at such indicators as you
15 mentioned.
16 Poverty has been recognized by the federal
17 government as a factor they believe is a reasonable
18 explanatory factor or a factor that should be used to
19 adjust federal funds. But I think probably thinking that
20 there's any simple solution is probably a pretty elusive
21 goal.
22 You know, you hit right at the crux of the
23 matter, it seems to me. If we see a district that's
24 identifying at, let's say, 16 percent and another is at 8
25 percent, what do we make of that? Do we make of that that
98
1 one district has twice as many students in need of special
2 ed than another? Could be. Is another district better at
3 identifying than another? Could be. Is one
4 underidentifying? Is the 8 percent being much more
5 careful and looking at other interventions outside of
6 special ed to make sure we've tried every other
7 alternative prior to identifying a child for special ed?
8 Could be.
9 Some of those things are things we would
10 probably like to encourage and some are things we would
11 probably like to discourage. It is difficult to sort it
12 out. The only way I know to do it, what they do in Canada
13 and in England, they actually do audits of IEPs. They
14 don't just audit your books, they actually interview kids,
15 call kids in, look at the IEP, look at an independent
16 assessment just like an auditor of your books.
17 And without independent assessment we'll never
18 know the answer to that. Would you agree with that?
19 MS. WALK: Yes.
20 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: You mentioned funding
21 reimbursement systems are very different. In Wyoming
22 right now we're at 100 percent and people are worried that
23 that creates a potential for overidentifying. Then you
24 mentioned some states were at 50 percent or 30 percent.
25 So is it potentially true that they would be
99
1 underidentifying because of the cost associated to their
2 system and the way that the funding formula goes? Would
3 it be a benefit to them to underidentify for their
4 budgetary picture?
5 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, Senator
6 Goodenough, it certainly could be. I mean, I think in
7 places where there's greater fiscal support for special
8 education we might expect that more students will be
9 identified for special education. There's a judgment as
10 to whether that's a good thing or bad thing. If it is
11 underidentifying, then it is a bad thing, I suppose. Is
12 it appropriate identification? It is a subjective area
13 and it is rather hard to determine exactly.
14 I think the sense of the federal policy on this,
15 and increasingly states are moving, I think, to a policy
16 in which they say we would like identification to be sort
17 of funding neutral so it is sort of an identification-
18 neutral funding approach.
19 And what that really means is that the federal
20 government and more states now are going to systems like
21 we've recommended for Wyoming in which the amount of
22 funding is based on some measure of total enrollment
23 rather than the number of kids identified for special ed
24 with the belief that children will then be identified more
25 based on the merits of the case than any fiscal incentive
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1 one way or the other.
2 The reality is, of course, I think as you point
3 out. When we move to that kind of a basis arguably we
4 create a disincentive to identify. So to say we've now
5 moved to an incentive-free approach because we no longer
6 create an incentive to identify which was always debatable
7 anyway and to say now by removing that incentive, we're
8 incentive free, the reality is, I suppose, we've created
9 incentive not to identify.
10 We also know we see increased identification
11 rates year after year throughout the nation, every year
12 since the passage of IDEA. I think the sense is there's
13 so many other pressures to increase the identification
14 rate that policy seems to be define ways to try to control
15 and maintain identification rates a little closer to sort
16 of current identification levels.
17 Whether that's good policy or not, of course, is
18 arguable.
19 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Well, and I think in that
20 discussion, Committee, you know, it is good to keep in
21 mind that while we are discussing special education, there
22 are a number of other -- should be a number of other
23 options within our district to assist children who are
24 having difficulty other than special education
25 identification.
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1 I mean, we've struggled with those and we ought
2 not -- I guess I -- and you're free to disagree -- see as
3 much damage in overidentification as do I in
4 underidentification in individual students that I've seen
5 over the years.
6 Senator Scott, I believe you were next.
7 SENATOR SCOTT: Yeah. My question at this
8 point relates to the district sizes we have. Because we
9 have a lot of very small districts are we seeing -- as you
10 look at the data, are you seeing random variations among
11 the smaller districts in number of kids, in expenditures
12 in particularly the most severe cases? It would strike me
13 we were at some risk for that because of the size of our
14 districts.
15 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and Senator
16 Scott, I think we do -- whether it is random variation, we
17 see variation. Let me start with that. We see
18 considerable variation. As was pointed out, one of the
19 things that we were able to do, partly because the
20 committee meets in many places throughout the state, which
21 was of benefit to us because we found it very convenient
22 for us to visit districts while we were there.
23 I visited two districts about four miles apart.
24 Very similar student populations. One identified at about
25 27, 28 percent and the other identified at 8 percent. So
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1 we see a lot of variation.
2 Now, to the extent to which that is random and
3 which district is more appropriate or maybe that variation
4 could be justified, again, if you send in that individual
5 audit team to look at every one of those students
6 identified, you might say, "Boy, that's true. That's
7 exactly what we see," but I guess I would be doubtful that
8 that does not have a fairly substantial random element.
9 Whether it is just size, though, or whether it
10 is other factors as well, my guess is it is partly size
11 and partly other factors that create that.
12 SENATOR SCOTT: And exploring the same
13 line of thought, this time with the larger districts, it
14 would seem to me particularly with the more severe cases
15 where you might have need for a number of other
16 services -- medical services outside the school area, that
17 you would see some tendency of parents with severely
18 involved kids to move to the larger communities where
19 those services would be much more available and that that
20 would bias the expenses a bit.
21 Do you see any sign of that?
22 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, Senator
23 Scott, based on the percentages of kids in the so-called
24 hard categories, it wasn't clearly evident from an
25 analysis of the data.
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1 However, we have looked at this type of
2 phenomenon in California, for example, for another study
3 done there, and there is considerable evidence that yes,
4 that does happen. And the implications of that might be
5 twofold. One, that you might expect that more of your
6 most severe students would cluster to larger communities
7 for the reason you cited.
8 The other side to that might be, though, that
9 perhaps more services that these students require are not
10 the sole responsibility of the district as they might be
11 in a smaller community. I'm not sure it doesn't cut both
12 ways.
13 I mean, it could in the sense that I move to
14 Cheyenne, for example, because I know there's an array of
15 services that could be provided by agencies other than the
16 school district, so I move there. I've got more high-cost
17 kids there, but, in fact, the responsibility to serve
18 those kids gets dispersed across more agencies, whereas in
19 the small district they're less likely to stay, the
20 districts are more likely to be on their own.
21 That is somewhat just theorizing.
22 SENATOR SCOTT: What other agencies? It
23 would seem to me that you're talking about parents' own
24 expenditures and insurance expenditures, aren't you?
25 DR. PARRISH: It could be. And I will
104
1 admit, I don't know enough about what other agencies are
2 available to support special education in Wyoming. I do
3 know from the committee and the task force -- I'm sure it
4 is a problem in Wyoming that everything falls onto
5 education, as it is nationally.
6 It has been addressed by the federal government,
7 it has been addressed by many states that when education
8 through the IDEA took on the responsibility for special
9 education, many other agencies that had been providing
10 services to this population, there's considerable evidence
11 they've backed away.
12 In California at least I know and in most other
13 states you find mental health to provide services, social
14 services provides services, we provide in California the
15 Department of Developmental Disabilities provides
16 services. Some services for special education students
17 are provided by other agencies other than just education.
18 Now, if that doesn't happen in Wyoming then my
19 point is not correct.
20 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Rebecca.
21 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, if I may
22 respond to that, Senator Scott, in Wyoming because we
23 don't have a variety of agencies, the responsibility of
24 educating students with disabilities does fall on the
25 local school districts.
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1 While in Cheyenne where it is a larger
2 community, Cheyenne has more of an opportunity to get
3 assistance from outside agencies with whom they can
4 contract those services, whereas if you are in Big Piney,
5 for instance, you don't have that opportunity to have
6 those other outside agencies where you can seek the
7 assistance.
8 But in Wyoming to educate a child with
9 disabilities, that responsibility does fall on the local
10 school districts.
11 Now, if a parent does want services outside of
12 school, perhaps they want family therapy because they feel
13 that that would benefit their child, and they want to do
14 that on their own, certainly they are capable -- they may
15 do that, and in a larger community they would have that
16 opportunity where there are more available services.
17 But the responsibility of educating a child with
18 disabilities, to provide those educational services,
19 whether it is OT -- occupational therapy, physical
20 therapy, speech/language, counseling, if the IEP team
21 determines those services are what a child needs in order
22 to benefit from a public education, the local school
23 district by federal law must provide those services.
24 SENATOR SCOTT: I can think of two
25 programs that we've got here in Wyoming that do provide
106
1 services. One is the DD waiver as a result of
2 depopulating the Lander Training School, and that is
3 Title XIX. That's funding that is independent of
4 location.
5 And the other would be our community mental
6 health centers now. I may be missing something, but --
7 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, Senator Scott,
8 the waiver for the DD, the developmentally disabled,
9 population is to provide services after school hours. So
10 it is respite care. It is not educational services.
11 Mental health certainly does provide services
12 for family and students with disabilities, but if it is
13 determined those services are what a child needs to
14 benefit from a public education, then it is the
15 responsibility of the district to work with that agency in
16 order to get those services provided.
17 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: As a follow-up, since
18 we're in that area, it was my understanding from a couple
19 of national meetings, Education Commission and NCSL, that
20 there are a number of states that utilize a Medicaid match
21 for many of those services that the districts are required
22 to provide in many instances.
23 Does Wyoming do any of that or are those all
24 state dollars?
25 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, I believe those
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1 are all state dollars, that at this point -- you could ask
2 some of the local directors if they do any Medicaid
3 match -- Cheyenne does. Cheyenne evidently does. I see
4 Glenna Calmes from Uinta 1 shaking her head that no, they
5 don't that, so it is on an individual, case-by-case basis.
6 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: So am I accurate in
7 saying if the district opts to do that, it is saving state
8 dollars; if they opt not to do it, we're expending 100
9 percent state dollars instead of exercising our Medicaid
10 match?
11 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, I would need to
12 look into that more with the Medicaid match. I'm not
13 familiar enough to be able to thoroughly address that for
14 you.
15 Do you want to comment?
16 DR. PARRISH: Again, we didn't study this
17 area in Wyoming, specifically, but we have looked at it
18 across the nation and the degree to which states tap into
19 the Medicaid capacity to fund special ed varies
20 dramatically across the states, even along the large
21 states.
22 New York would be a good example. I think they
23 pull in 40 million a year through Medicaid funds in
24 support of special ed programs. California is a very
25 disjointed, disorganized effort as best I can tell. Every
108
1 time I talk to them I argue they really should look at
2 this.
3 Sometimes one reason many districts will not tap
4 into this is because it can be somewhat onerous so the
5 cost of making the claim may be greater than the
6 reimbursement. But in states that have put together a
7 state system to facilitate this, I think if you can take a
8 statewide perspective, it can be beneficial.
9 Whether it would be to a state of this size in
10 relation to the cost of setting it up is something you
11 would have to look at. There's a lot of variation across
12 the states and it is generally underutilized by states.
13 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Representative McOmie.
14 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Go ahead.
15 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Peck.
16 SENATOR PECK: Two or three questions I
17 would like to have you discuss here. Getting back to
18 Chairman Devin's question about outcomes, are you of the
19 opinion that if the Individual Education Plan is properly
20 described and outlined, and if the student completes the
21 educational plan, why no further measurement than
22 completion would be required?
23 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, Senator
24 Peck, my own opinion would be that that would not be true.
25 Becca should comment on that as well.
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1 I'm a policy finance person with expertise in
2 special ed and sometimes it gets a little out of my area
3 of expertise. Although I've been working in this area a
4 lot of time and outcomes are something I see as related to
5 finance because that's really what we need to be worried
6 about, not just what are we putting in but what are we
7 getting out.
8 In my opinion, simply meeting the goals of the
9 IEP would not be sufficient in looking at a global sense
10 how the system is working. I think it is imperative that
11 we look -- we hold the children in special ed to the same
12 standard that we hold every child with perhaps a few
13 exceptions, but they're much smaller in number we see
14 being practiced right now in many states.
15 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, Senator Peck,
16 if I could just address that, holding a child to their IEP
17 goals and objectives certainly is one measurement of
18 outcome that we would like to look at, but we certainly
19 want to look at how children with disabilities are
20 performing on our WyCAS.
21 We want to look at our graduation rates, dropout
22 rates, our suspension, expulsion rates on students with
23 disabilities, that those are comparable to students
24 without disabilities, so those are some performance
25 outcomes that we do look at in order to see if children
110
1 with disabilities are achieving at the same rate as their
2 nondisabled peers are.
3 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chairman, a second
4 question. In your study of this vast area, assuming
5 finite resources, do you see any evidence of the emphasis
6 on special ed and trying to get our less perfect kids up
7 to their maximum level of performance being a competitor
8 with the gifted and talented, the brightest kids? Do you
9 see any evidence of lack of resources invested in gifted
10 and talented coming about because of our emphasis on the
11 less generously endowed kids?
12 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and Senator
13 Peck, I have not studied that issue specifically. As you
14 probably are aware, there's national discussion, national
15 debate about what we're spending on special education and
16 to what extent it usurps funds that might be available for
17 general ed students, let's just say.
18 My own inquiry into that more general question
19 is that while I'm sure that there is some reasonableness
20 to some of those arguments, that certainly a dollar spent
21 here can't be spent there. At the same time what I see,
22 looking at national trends, at least, is that we're
23 spending -- we are spending more on special education and
24 it is taking up a larger percent of the educational
25 dollar.
111
1 At the same time, we're spending more money on
2 general education, and so general education has also
3 benefited from renewed national interest in education that
4 we've even seen over the last ten years.
5 Personally, at least my analyses suggest that
6 the argument that even though special education is taking
7 up a larger percentage of the pie, that it has come at a
8 cost to general education, looking at the national data,
9 really isn't true, even though funding has gone up, even
10 when we take out the special education component.
11 SENATOR PECK: Can you explain how the
12 contingency fund will work, who gets access to that and
13 under what rules?
14 DR. PARRISH: Senator Devin and Senator
15 Peck, that's a good question. I didn't get into that in a
16 lot of detail. It is something I think we probably want
17 to think a little bit about, but we have outlined some
18 guidelines. We've even set forth sort of a threshhold
19 that districts would need to dip into their own local
20 additional money beyond the block grant up to some point
21 before they would be eligible for application.
22 But they would basically be able to apply under
23 some of the following conditions: We believe that we
24 have -- we have spent our block grant amount and we have
25 spent beyond that threshold or we predict that we're going
112
1 to in local funds; therefore, it is almost like an
2 insurance claim, then I'm going to apply to the higher
3 fund.
4 The criteria for which one could make an
5 application as we laid it out would be, for example, we
6 have enrolled some very high-cost populations. We think
7 the services that we have in IEP for them are entirely
8 appropriate to their needs. They create extraordinarily
9 high costs for us, and therefore, we're applying to the
10 funds.
11 We will talk a little bit about how and who
12 might approve that. But another criteria might be the
13 funding guidelines assume a certain percentage of children
14 in special ed, and we believe overall we have a higher
15 percentage who need special ed and we can document that,
16 we're happy to have you come in and look at our records
17 and to work with us, and if you believe we're
18 overidentifying, fine, too, but we believe we're not
19 overidentifying, and that's another reason.
20 A third reason in which we describe a district
21 might apply is one we know is pretty common throughout
22 Wyoming, and that is you say we need to give speech
23 therapy to children who require it. You put in an average
24 salary of 60,000. The reality is we have to contract for
25 a speech therapist because we've had an ad in the paper
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1 for the last year and we cannot hire one at that rate. We
2 have to contract and it costs us 120,000 a year.
3 We believe that that is a legitimate argument.
4 It is a national problem. It is not just a problem in
5 Wyoming. We believe it is going to require a stateside --
6 wide solution to get some of these scarce service
7 providers into remote areas and that that's another reason
8 as to why a district might be eligible to apply. And
9 there could be others.
10 Now, the approval process, actually, we haven't
11 talked so much about this, but it could happen in a couple
12 of ways. It could happen that the WDE, the department,
13 says, "Okay, we received your application. We're going to
14 look at it and judge on the merits of the case and either
15 approve all or part of that claim."
16 Another way that it has been done that I think
17 is kind of an interesting concept is that a committee of
18 special ed directors in some states have been formed to
19 use their professional judgment, so it is not just a
20 department decision and it is kind of a committee of your
21 peers who decide on the merit of the case.
22 Of course they know that every dollar they
23 allocate to you out of the fund is a dollar for which they
24 can't apply, so it is another way of dispersing the
25 judgment required and some people think that's a fairer
114
1 system, less onerous for the department. There's two
2 different ways at least that that could be done.
3 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: I think Representative
4 McOmie was next.
5 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Thank you, Madam
6 Chairman. Earlier I asked about the block grant and the
7 way things are being generated are all based upon ADM.
8 And on page 20 you defined the -- you showed the
9 difference between very small, small, medium, large and
10 statewide.
11 You know, the small -- there's a real contrast,
12 117 percent more -- not 117, but it costs 17.7 percent
13 more to do the very small and 8.3 percent more for the
14 medium, taking the average of the medium and the large and
15 dividing that.
16 Is there anything in your block grant formula
17 that's going to address the problem that we're trying to
18 deal with also in small school adjustments? Did you do
19 that in there?
20 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and
21 Representative McOmie, we did. Keep in mind what we're
22 looking at on page 20. Again, don't want to be too picky
23 about the words "cost versus spending," but we're looking
24 at spending and not cost. Cost is what we would say from
25 an independent perspective or assessment meets a certain
115
1 goal, let's say, should be spent. What we're seeing here
2 is being spent. They may be one and the same or they may
3 not. It is two different perspectives.
4 Here we're looking at spending. We did believe
5 there was some legitimate arguments of diseconomies of
6 scale. We built it in in two ways. One is through the
7 remoteness factor, so we have lower caseloads for remote
8 schools. Now, not all small districts, not all schools in
9 small districts will be remote, so we defined it as remote
10 and not small. But that's one element they're primarily
11 going to be in small districts so we believe that's one
12 element that provides more resources, infuses more
13 resources into small situations.
14 The second was the bolstered -- what we believe
15 is bolstered administrative component in small districts
16 over what we see as current practice because we believe
17 that, quite frankly, it was kind of a general way to get
18 some more funds into those small situations. We believe
19 that it could very well be required by administration, but
20 it might be required by direct service and the flexibility
21 is there to do that.
22 So those would be the two primary ways that
23 additional money is infused.
24 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Follow-up, Madam
25 Chairman.
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1 Then all schools would get this block grant,
2 even though they didn't have any students?
3 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and
4 Representative McOmie, the money goes to districts. It
5 doesn't go to individual schools. But you're correct, a
6 small school -- let's just say a small school with ten
7 students and none of whom are special ed would generate
8 money for that district.
9 The reason we did that is because there's no
10 reason to say -- we looked at it at a point in time and
11 there's no reason to say that student won't show up
12 tomorrow, so rather than say whatever you happen to look
13 at the day we do the count applies throughout the year,
14 remember the money goes to the district, all of this
15 rather than being tightly coupled and preceptive is
16 supposed to be a general basis of guidelines for us to
17 meet the cost at a district level.
18 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Thank you. That's
19 all.
20 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Sessions.
21 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, I think
22 the thing that we have to keep in mind in balancing this
23 is, unlike most other states, we are not -- we are limited
24 with a cost-based educational system for regular students
25 that is supposed to be cost-based. And so -- and this is
117
1 not punitive, as far as I can see.
2 But what we have to be careful of -- you talk
3 about supplanting funds. We cannot in order to take care
4 of special ed students because of the limits of the block
5 grant -- we cannot expect money to be taken out of the
6 cost of education for other students to take care of our
7 special education students.
8 And I know that it is a mix sometimes and you
9 can go back and forth with things, but I just don't think
10 that -- we cannot have the mindset that, well, you can
11 take it out of our other money if you don't get enough
12 money to meet your special ed costs. Because I guess I
13 looked at this for eight years and have seen the problems
14 with it, and I don't think that we can tell our districts,
15 well, just take it out of your other fund because, you
16 know, what they're getting is supposed to be cost based
17 for regular students.
18 I don't know.
19 DR. PARRISH: If I could comment.
20 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Yes.
21 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and Senator
22 Sessions, I think that's an excellent point and certainly
23 something that we considered very heavily in the committee
24 at deliberations as well as the study team in trying to
25 think about what we would recommend to the State under the
118
1 circumstances which we find in the state.
2 And that's why we feel that the 12-year phase-in
3 is important. That's why we feel the hold harmless is
4 important and that's why we feel the contingency fund has
5 to go part and parcel with this. We feel it is the
6 softest implementation we can recommend.
7 At the same time, we feel it is our judgment
8 that it is time to move away from the 100 percent, that we
9 need to do it gradually and carefully in a way that we
10 might recommend in a state that is in a different
11 situation than Wyoming.
12 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And while Senator
13 Sessions makes an excellent point, Committee, I guess I
14 would also refer you back to some of the data we've heard
15 today. And when we say cost based, that does not
16 necessarily translate to what you are expending because
17 there seems to be a tremendous variance in what I perceive
18 I need to expend based on what district I'm in.
19 The variation on page 5, you know, shows
20 tremendous spending ranges. We saw that through here.
21 Some perceive that they can repair the car and get along
22 and some perceive they need a new Cadillac. So we need to
23 be careful in that just because it is being spent it is
24 actually being a cost today but it may not need to be of
25 that level of cost in all cases, and in other cases it may
119
1 very much need to be.
2 So that's the difficult task we're trying to
3 address.
4 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, I just
5 in a discussion of those districts, you know, the
6 variation in the cost per district, from knowledge of
7 smaller districts and things, I would venture to say that
8 in a lot of our small districts, especially with what
9 they've been living with the last few years and the
10 inability to do some long-range planning, I truly believe
11 there are students who are not getting the special ed
12 services that they need.
13 And, you know, you can name district after
14 district on an elementary level who has -- they have no
15 access to social workers or counselors or occupational
16 therapists and you've got one speech therapist for a whole
17 district. And so you've got -- and I know of one district
18 particularly who in the speech therapy/audiology
19 department you have aides that are doing the work that a
20 speech therapist should be doing, these kinds of things.
21 And I guess I would say that in your smaller
22 districts I think that maybe there's a question of
23 availability of services. I know there's a lot of
24 cooperation going on between small districts at this
25 point, but I don't think we should necessarily say that
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1 the high-cost districts -- and I'm willing to look at
2 those -- but that they're overspending in comparison to
3 some of the smaller districts. And there are specialists
4 out there that cannot be hired for any amount of money in
5 Wyoming, too, for small districts.
6 So I don't know, it is a complex issue, but I
7 would like to thank you for the work you did and I think
8 it has been very professionally done and I appreciate it.
9 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Well, and I guess maybe
10 that leaves that whole area of underservice and the
11 critical shortage of health care professionals which is
12 only going to get worse until we get some of this
13 addressed also might speak to the committee looking
14 further into the future to those types of regional
15 services sorts of centers that perhaps for small districts
16 could be bolstered out of BOCES.
17 I'm a little bit familiar with the northwestern
18 section of the state. I understand they've got some
19 excellent models going where they are supporting out
20 beyond their walls with their professionals and so forth,
21 but it holds some consideration for potential.
22 Representative Miller, did you have a question?
23 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Yes, thank you,
24 Madam Chairman.
25 I'm just having trouble -- Dr. Parrish, I'm
121
1 having trouble trying to see -- you know, the purpose of
2 this study was to look to see if our funding was being --
3 the money was being spent wisely and there was no, like,
4 overcharging or the dollars were being utilized to the
5 best ability that we could get them used for.
6 And so I'm still having trouble seeing why this
7 block grant funding based on ADM will be better than -- I
8 don't see a reason why it is going to be better. In fact,
9 I see possible abuse because as special ed needs in a
10 community or in a school district go up and down, they're
11 not going to turn any funds back, they're going to use
12 them elsewhere on non-special ed needs.
13 And right now it is kind of a cost-based system.
14 They have to demonstrate the need for it in order to get
15 that funding and then they get their funds back a year
16 later.
17 Could you just address that a little bit? I'm
18 having that little difficulty there understanding how this
19 is an improvement and I don't see where the cost savings
20 are going to be in the future because I see pressure will
21 come back to the legislature every year to increase the
22 block grant modeling for special ed by a certain
23 percentage. So I don't see how that is really going to
24 save the State money.
25 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman,
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1 Representative Miller, you covered a lot of ground, but
2 maybe I'll kind of try to respond in a generic way.
3 I think it is an improvement because I came to
4 the conclusion that the 100 percent reimbursement, first
5 of all, in our opinion is not a cost-based system. So I
6 just need to clarify that we would not interpret that as a
7 cost-based system, number one.
8 And number two, we believe it is somewhat of a
9 laissez-faire system without guidelines that allow
10 districts to make their own determinations, and we believe
11 that's what has resulted in the huge variation in service
12 that we see which we believe is troublesome and will
13 continue to be a potential source of trouble for the
14 State.
15 We believe that the guidelines provide some
16 attempt to try to define what is reasonable and adequate
17 for all students so that right now there is considerable
18 evidence, as Senator Sessions pointed out, that students
19 are being underserved in many districts. I think some of
20 the data certainly suggests that.
21 I believe the guidelines will help, but they
22 will not in and of themselves without some additional
23 support from perhaps regional entities and/or the
24 department to make sure that services are now provided now
25 that funding really is available, that lack of service
123
1 providers is a statewide problem and not a local
2 community's problem.
3 So we believe that it will provide smoother
4 services, more consistent services throughout the state,
5 and we also believe in terms of the area of cost that
6 while it is true the block grant we believe needs to
7 increase over time, and that it should, by some factor,
8 compared to a reimbursement system where I think we saw a
9 10 percent rise in claims over the last year, that -- and
10 it could very well be is that a one-time incident or is
11 that likely to occur -- but those are the kinds of
12 concerns we have generally about a 100 percent type of a
13 funding system, that kind of whatever you claim is
14 reasonable and what you can do.
15 We think delineating what is reasonable in a
16 much more specific fashion basing funding on that, phasing
17 it in very slowly over time is a way of moving to
18 something we think is more sustainable over time, more
19 responsible, more definable.
20 The other thing I would say about it is other
21 states have census-based approaches, and this is sort of a
22 census-based approach that we're recommending here.
23 Census based means funding based on the total student
24 enrollment.
25 But I think the important distinction we're
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1 making for Wyoming is that the census-based amount is
2 based on something that we can define very specifically.
3 So in Massachusetts they have census based,
4 Pennsylvania has it, California has it, but nobody can
5 tell you where that amount came from. So we can argue
6 subjectively, well, I think it ought to be higher, lower,
7 increase it by 5 percent, 10 percent. This model has
8 clear guidelines underpinning it and it does separate it
9 from any other census based.
10 And I think while there will be a discussion
11 about does the State need to do more in the future, it
12 will be a statewide discussion and not each individual
13 district making that determination quite so independent.
14 I don't know if I answered your question with
15 that.
16 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Madam Chairman,
17 follow-up. Just to -- one problem that's bothering me in
18 going to this block-based ADM funding is just the
19 different demographics in Wyoming. The counties are quite
20 different from one another. For example, the county that
21 I represent, Fremont County, has some of the highest
22 alcohol and drug abuse in the state, some of the lowest
23 income potential in the state.
24 And I'm just looking at some of the numbers. I
25 do have your preliminary report here and I see where
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1 our -- looking at the block grant funding for '01-'02
2 versus the cost-adjusted simulation revenues, it shows
3 that like School District 25 loses nearly a third of their
4 funding with the new model whereas like my friend from
5 Teton County, their district funding goes up 50 percent.
6 And, you know, I just got a fundamental problem
7 with that, now. We have need demonstrated in our area for
8 this and I'm not for sure it is being addressed in the
9 model you're proposing here of looking at simply the ADM
10 and saying everything is equal across the state. It is
11 not equal and I'm not sure if we need some sort of factor
12 in there to adjust that and I'm not sure where we go with
13 that.
14 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman,
15 Representative Miller, you raise some goods points. If
16 those factors could clearly be identified, they could
17 conceivably be tied in. As I said, at the federal level
18 it was determined that the best proxy for that kind of
19 variation is poverty and they make an adjustment according
20 to poverty. Right now, although we see a great deal of
21 variation throughout the state, to try to correlate it as
22 pointed out to things like poverty statewide it doesn't
23 seem to be related statewide. Now, should it be? Perhaps
24 it should. And that's the kind of adjustment that could
25 be made but we would argue that it should be uniformly
126
1 made throughout and not just in places where some people
2 decide to rev up services in relation to poverty and
3 others are relationally unserved if we believe that high
4 poverty should drive this.
5 If we look at the model that you're looking at
6 and it does show in the simulation that somebody is going
7 to gain 50 percent, somebody is going to lose 50 percent,
8 keep in mind with the hold harmless and the phase-in the
9 actual change in funding is very gradual and very slight.
10 So, anyway, I think that's important to keep in
11 mind.
12 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Representative Lockhart
13 and then Representative McOmie.
14 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: First of all, I
15 want to apologize for not hearing the introductory
16 remarks. I got here a little bit late for that. But what
17 I had in my mind that we're going to get from this very
18 special study -- incidentally, I hear high marks for the
19 way it was handled, the professionalism and the
20 involvement -- was for the state legislature to come up
21 with a way to appropriately fund for special education to
22 meet both our desire to do that right, the Supreme Court
23 directive that it needed to be done and to fit that
24 opening that we left with the Supreme Court, we needed a
25 little additional time in special ed for reasons outlined
127
1 in the study. We didn't have the data.
2 So I guess I get to my little different position
3 than my good friend from Fremont County. I think we've
4 come up with something that will push the right amount of
5 dollars towards the school districts and then have,
6 because of the block grant, that local control, that local
7 decision of how best to use that fund in these individual
8 cases because each of us can come up with exceptions and
9 try to figure out how to do that at the state level. I
10 think it is more appropriate to get it to the local level,
11 sort of our overall mantra for school financing, is to get
12 the money in a block grant to the school districts and
13 then have them make those decisions.
14 So I think we're moving in the right direction
15 to get the funding formula, give us a little time to
16 transition, but I think we're there. So I guess maybe it
17 is a pitch that I think this has made a great step forward
18 toward what we need to do fairly quickly to solve this
19 issue of not identifying special education needs and then
20 funding them.
21 So counter to just going with the one percent
22 reimbursement which has all of the iterations on an
23 individual basis, I think this is an improvement.
24 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: I guess as a follow-up to
25 both of those questions, one of the pieces that I did not
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1 hear you expand on in terms of why is the block grant
2 better would be the latitude that it gives the district in
3 the use of the money, perhaps on the prevention end that
4 Representative Lockhart speaks of, but it -- am I correct
5 in my understanding that for some of the pieces, some of
6 the identification of special education students, at
7 least, you need to wait until that student is, perhaps,
8 two years behind in their reading abilities and so forth
9 to actually begin to identify and justify the spending of
10 funds, which decreases your latitude as a district to get
11 early aid to that student?
12 But I certainly have seen this in print. I have
13 heard it discussed. Can you tell me if this new block
14 grant piece would give districts more latitude to address
15 potential risk students, potential special education
16 issues at an earlier level?
17 DR. PARRISH: Well, I will start. Madam
18 Chairman, I think you raised an excellent point. The
19 latitude would be determined on state policy in the sense
20 if you look across the states right now, irrespective of
21 the type of special ed funding approach that they use, and
22 there's huge variations on what they use, another thing
23 that varies a lot is what states allow local districts to
24 spend that money on.
25 I don't know what the requirement -- I believe
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1 under your one percent reimbursement, if you're not
2 spending it on special ed, you can't claim it so the
3 requirement is it all be spent on special ed. Our
4 recommendation would be that there be some allowance that
5 these funds generated through the block grant could be
6 spent on special ed or some types of prereferral or other
7 preventative services. I think we would believe as a
8 study team that that would be wise public policy.
9 And when we look at special ed and the whole
10 idea of over- or underidentification, we do get into the
11 issue of is special ed the best game in town for every
12 child with some type of remedial needs. And it is very
13 hard to make the argument that it is and that creating
14 alternatives -- not that special ed should go away.
15 Special ed clearly needs to be there, but that we want to
16 intervene early and try alternatives and to allow some
17 flexibility for that, again, with some monitoring in hand.
18 I don't think we're talking about football
19 uniforms here, we're talking about pre-referral services
20 with some monitoring. Again, monitoring would probably be
21 required, but with responsible use of that, allowing the
22 flexibility for some of that to be reused in what we call
23 a pre-referral mode in terms of services is something we
24 would recommend.
25 MS. WALK: If I may address that as well,
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1 Madam Chairman, right now school districts have what is in
2 place under the accreditation rules their building
3 intervention teams. And this is a process that should be
4 used for pre-referral. Special education should not be
5 the be-all and end-all of interventions for kids who are
6 having difficulty in education.
7 But I would encourage and not want to see
8 districts put any kind of a timeline on how long they have
9 to wait before they can refer a child for special
10 education services. That would be a noncompliance -- that
11 would be a compliance issue under the IDEA.
12 If a school district has a suspected child with
13 a disability, certainly it is within their right to
14 provide intervention services. That's good practice.
15 Keep in mind, students with disabilities are regular
16 education students first and that is -- that's critical to
17 understand, to providing those intervention services.
18 They're regular ed first. You have to go through a whole
19 process to be identified as a student with a disability.
20 So certainly intervention is very important. We
21 see that under the No Child Left Behind, all of the early
22 literacy things we're seeing come out. I would encourage
23 districts to use funds to provide those intervention
24 services but not to deny a child or a parent the right to
25 an identification or the right to an evaluation to
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1 determine whether a child truly is a child with a
2 disability.
3 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Okay. Then you raise
4 another issue that if we could go to page 14 and 15, I
5 need to understand what is really being said there. And I
6 guess let's go to page 15, the issue we are spending -- of
7 those two graphs, does it tell us out of this what we are
8 spending in Wyoming and am I accurate in looking at the
9 bottom that we are spending -- and we will just assume
10 these numbers are correct -- because it depends what year
11 you take them from and when we've added money, but $7,410
12 per student in Wyoming on our general ed student? Is that
13 what that says?
14 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, just to
15 clarify, when we see a general ed student, that sort of
16 requires some definition, but what it means is let's take
17 total spending in the state divided by total students and
18 that's the amount.
19 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: That's the amount? Okay.
20 So then maybe more accurately that's our ADM guarantee or
21 that's our average statewide funding per student.
22 DR. PARRISH: Average expenditure per
23 student.
24 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And for special ed, then,
25 we were spending approximately 2,500 more per student for
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1 students in special ed?
2 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, that is
3 correct. What this particular chart shows is that for the
4 special ed component of the average special education
5 student services, Wyoming is spending 20 percent more than
6 what we find for students across the nation.
7 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: I understand that. But
8 if you move back and combine that with the bottom chart on
9 14 and a note I made myself -- and I'm not sure -- if
10 we're spending approximately $9,957 per student in special
11 education, my note said that 65 percent of that funding
12 came from special ed funds and 34 percent came from
13 general ed funds.
14 DR. PARRISH: I can see where that
15 confusion might come. But what we're looking at in both
16 the bottom of page 14 and the bottom of page 15, maroon,
17 the maroon component, so we're looking at the maroon
18 component; in other words, for a special ed student
19 they're also receiving regular ed services. In the
20 maroon -- okay, blue.
21 The blue component on the bottom of page 15
22 aligns with the maroon component on the bottom of page 14.
23 In other words, we're only looking at the special ed
24 component of what we're spending on the average special ed
25 student. I may have confused you even more.
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1 There's just two things we need to consider, how
2 much we're spending on special ed is different than the
3 question of how much are we spending on special ed
4 students because special ed students are also getting
5 general ed services.
6 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: What I'm trying to
7 determine, if 65 percent of this for special ed students
8 is coming from special ed funding reimbursed at 100
9 percent and only 34 percent of it is coming from our
10 per-student funding, it looks to me like there are
11 considerable number of funds left over in our individual
12 per-student funding, because we're only spending 2,500
13 more on a special education student and 65 percent of that
14 is coming from special ed funds.
15 So it looks like there's extra funding there
16 that the districts have, if I'm understanding these charts
17 correctly, out of their general guarantee per student,
18 that there's some funds there that are not being spent on
19 that student.
20 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, I think I
21 understand your point and it seems that one could make
22 that argument, I think, without looking and nothing --
23 again, we didn't look at your general ed component in
24 detail. I think Jim Smith from MAP is here. He might
25 want to comment on that, or others could.
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1 But conceptually, if you say I give 10,000 to
2 every student in the state and I say plus I'm paying the
3 special ed component, I'm saying all the special ed
4 components and some of those students have a lesser
5 general ed component we factor down, so I guess I see your
6 point.
7 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: What I'm trying to
8 clarify for the committee, where we've got funds, we have
9 the federal funds, special ed funds, we may have general
10 ed funds that are not being spent on those students that
11 are out there, so I'm just trying to broaden our
12 understanding of where they are.
13 A couple of other quick questions, then.
14 In our discussion of the number of these
15 students, special ed students, if we're measuring quality,
16 the percent of those that should be able to take the
17 regular WyCAS, to look at regular testing, that number
18 surprised me in reading and in your professional opinions,
19 those that should be taking the regular test versus some
20 special adapted form, those with very difficult things,
21 was I quoted as high as 97, 98 percent.
22 In your professional opinion is that one of the
23 things -- is that accurate? Should we be looking at that?
24 And I guess part of the reason I ask is because I think,
25 first, it is our obligation to see that we're actually --
135
1 what are we getting out of this piece and are we getting
2 what we need, but then also we, as I understand it, this
3 is a population we have to look at in the No Child Left
4 Behind for how are they performing.
5 So could you give me some help on that -- on
6 what percentage of these students should be taking the
7 regular test.
8 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, I can. When
9 IDEA was reauthorized in '97, it allowed for -- it
10 required that students with disabilities be included in
11 any district for statewide and statewide assessment
12 systems that a state would have. We have WyCAS. And if
13 students with disabilities could not participate in the
14 statewide system with accommodations, without
15 accommodations, then the State is required to develop an
16 alternate assessment which is our WyCAS Alt.
17 Nationally speaking, work done by NCEO indicates
18 that the population of states, the percentage of students
19 who cannot participate with accommodations in a state's
20 general assessment is 2 or less percent of the general
21 population. Wyoming has stayed within those participation
22 percentages, meaning that we have a very high
23 participation rate of all students participating on WyCAS
24 with or without accommodations, as high as 98, 99 percent,
25 given a variance during the year.
136
1 And yes, I strongly support that. I think it is
2 holding students with disabilities to the same standards
3 as their nondisabled peers. We need to account for their
4 achievement on the standards, on graduation and they need
5 to be working towards those same standards and
6 participating as much as they can on our statewide
7 assessment.
8 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Is this a population,
9 then, that we are going to -- in addition to our
10 obligation to them as a state, is this a population that
11 we are obligated to track in the No Child Left Behind and
12 to bring them along in their proficiency?
13 MS. WALK: Senator Devin, yes, to continue
14 on with your question, I'm sorry, yes, absolutely. Under
15 No Child Left Behind those stipulations when they're
16 looking at subgroups, students with disabilities is one of
17 the subgroups that is required to meet the average yearly
18 progress, the AYP, that all of the districts in the state
19 are held accountable to.
20 There are several -- there are four subgroups
21 that are held -- that are looked at in the No Child Left
22 Behind. Students with disabilities is one. Their
23 proficiency on our statewide assessment is critical to
24 moving the state forward to meeting the 100 percent that
25 No Child Left Behind requires for all children being able
137
1 to read and do mathematics in 12 years, I believe it is,
2 under No Child Left Behind.
3 Certainly students with disabilities, they are
4 being held -- that group of students is also being held to
5 achieving at the same 12-year rate as children without
6 disabilities. It is a huge accountability. We need to
7 move students with disabilities along as we are moving
8 their nondisabled peers.
9 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Representative McOmie,
10 you have a question.
11 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Thank you, Madam
12 Chairman. Madam Chairman, I would like to address the
13 same concerns that Representative Miller addressed, and
14 that is if we give the block grant and on down the road it
15 comes in everything is a block grant, of course then you
16 said maybe we need some stipulations.
17 I'm not aware of a lot of stipulations we've put
18 in. We allow our local school districts to use those
19 block funds however they find to use them. Now, if
20 they're receiving X number of dollars for the -- for these
21 special education programs and they don't have the special
22 education students and they find other places they want to
23 spend this money and they don't have the demand for the
24 studies because we already have the reading assessment
25 that we're adding and things like that into our programs,
138
1 they develop a program and then they get hit with some
2 special education students, what is going to happen then?
3 Where are they going to get the money to deal with these
4 special education students? Are they going to have to
5 shut down programs they have which school boards then take
6 a lot of heat from the people that were in these?
7 I have a real concern about this. And I guess
8 it is more of a statement, it is a disagreement in
9 philosophy, I guess, with what you've presented, in my
10 mind.
11 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Could I follow up
12 on that for a second, Madam Chairman? Just to add to what
13 Representative McOmie said, that was some of my concern,
14 is that they establish something else with that extra
15 money they have, then they get hit with the extra special
16 needs kids, then they come and ask for this exception.
17 That's what I see happening. And then so the
18 total funding is just going to go up at a faster clip.
19 DR. PARRISH: If I could comment, I think
20 you raised some good points and this needs to be thought
21 through carefully. However, there is also the notion
22 about special ed, and it may be -- and you may want to
23 comment on this as well, but I think there's two ways sort
24 of looking at the world in special ed and the truth may be
25 somewhere in between.
139
1 It is black and white, it is cut and dried what
2 a special ed child is. Either you have one or you don't.
3 Why would you give money to a district that doesn't have
4 any in relation to the ones that have a lot of them?
5 The other view of the world is it is quite a
6 gray area as to how many kids are in special ed. When you
7 start moving to gray areas and you look at that view of
8 the world, it is harder to make the argument I want to
9 give you money depending how many of those gray area
10 children we're going to call special ed as opposed to not
11 as opposed to maybe providing an array of services for
12 them inside and outside of special ed that might be
13 appropriate to meet their needs.
14 As an example, when we look at the 1 percent --
15 let's say two high-poverty districts and one of them is
16 identifying at 28, 29, 30 percent, the other one is at 6
17 or 7 percent. I have concerns with kind of continuing to
18 go along in that vein as opposed to trying to say that
19 these populations from a state perspective all have needs
20 that are probably fairly uniform, monitoring needs to be
21 incorporated to see if there's legitimate variation. If
22 there's not, some guidelines should help us here.
23 It could happen that an alternative program,
24 let's say a pre-referral program could start. And
25 suddenly a family moves in with three kids who are
140
1 autistic, for example, yes, then would it be expected that
2 that district would apply to the contingency fund? Yes.
3 And then I suppose you could have concerns about the fact
4 that you allowed this alternative program to be started in
5 the first place.
6 But on the other hand, another way to think
7 about it is maybe districts really could continue to
8 identify at 8 percent quite appropriately as opposed to 30
9 percent if they had these alternative programs and that
10 fostering them is very much in the state interest.
11 One of the things we know is that the cost of
12 identifying a child and documenting that that child is
13 special ed costs about $2000. My argument all along, not
14 just here but other places, if what that child really
15 needs is $800 worth of remedial reading, why would we want
16 to spend 2000 just to say you qualify or you don't.
17 The opportunity to maybe think about other ways
18 to serve children and flexibly use the money, while it
19 could have the downside you point out, I see your point of
20 view and see the validity to it, I think there are some
21 counterarguments that at least need to be considered.
22 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Scott.
23 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I have as
24 much a request as anything. I come to this as sort of
25 favoring the block grant approach because really of the
141
1 ability of the district to spend money on some of the
2 alternatives to special education that may well be better
3 for the kids, you know, some of the things like preschool
4 programs -- there's any number of things you can do that
5 will keep a significant percentage of the kids out of
6 special education.
7 But I have some concerns, one that
8 Representative Miller is right, that there's some
9 districts with very different characteristics in the
10 state. I'm concerned that we will because of the number
11 of small ones we have have enough random variation. It
12 truly is random variation. That will get us in trouble
13 with a block grant with many of our smaller districts.
14 And I really find this data a little
15 overprocessed to address those concerns. So I would hope
16 that the department would get us the data on a
17 district-by-district basis relating to how many kids
18 they're identifying relative to their population and the
19 kinds of things that look -- are behind the slides on page
20 21.
21 I think one of the things that may show is
22 the -- we've got a problem, Madam Chairman, because we
23 don't have the kind of providers that we need and we have
24 that problem and may find it very difficult to do anything
25 about it. You know, all of the lawyers in the world
142
1 demanding that you provide occupational therapy don't do
2 any good if you don't have an occupational therapist.
3 So I think we're going to need -- before we can
4 make an intelligent decision, Madam Chairman, I think
5 we're going to need to see some of the raw data involved
6 here.
7 DR. PARRISH: If I could comment, Madam
8 Chairman, Senator Scott, as you might imagine, there's a
9 lot of underlying detail. It is all in the report. So I
10 think the district-by-district information you're
11 requesting I think you will find in the report.
12 Second point I would make is I guess we've had
13 some discussion about this generally, I would respectfully
14 question the notion that we can't get, let's say, an
15 occupational therapist in a remote area irrespective of
16 what we're willing to pay. My guess is there is an amount
17 that would bring an occupational therapist in, and, quite
18 frankly, the law requires that you pay that amount.
19 As an example, in Alaska we saw a speech
20 therapist being flown a thousand miles to serve one child
21 at the end of the Aleutian Chain. Might that be
22 unreasonable and might there be alternative ways to serve
23 that child? There may be alternatives. But simply saying
24 nobody wants to move to the Aleutian Chain and that child
25 doesn't fall under federal protection is in violation of
143
1 federal law.
2 I think there are alternatives, quite frankly,
3 to doing it the way they did it, but, on the other hand,
4 to say 50,000 is what I pay for an occupational therapist
5 and I can't find that in some parts of the state for
6 50,000 is not the same as saying I couldn't find one for
7 any price. And many districts in Wyoming right now are
8 paying much higher prices because they're contracting.
9 So recognizing that from a state perspective and
10 saying if we would do regional things, bolster what we're
11 doing through the university, we probably could start to
12 solve that or at least do better because we're already
13 paying premium prices in many districts throughout the
14 state right now through contractors.
15 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Sessions, I
16 apologize. I think I went to Senator Scott before.
17 SENATOR SESSIONS: That's all right. I
18 just had a question about data since Senator Scott and I
19 seemed to spend the summer talking about this. If we go
20 to the block grant in this is there going to be increased
21 data requirements for districts to send to the state,
22 increased oversight or, you know, whatever, or is it going
23 to decrease so that you give them the money and they're
24 free to do with it as they choose? Or is there going to
25 be no change at all?
144
1 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And I guess when you
2 answer that, if it is significant it would be helpful for
3 you to delineate whether there are some certain minimum
4 federal requirements, since a significant piece of money
5 here is federal, we may be seeing what we've encountered
6 in some programs is these reporting requirements are there
7 regardless of what we do because they're federal
8 requirements. So to the extent that applies.
9 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman and Senator
10 Sessions, I think the required -- what would be essential
11 to drive the system would be substantially less than what
12 you collect right now.
13 In my opinion, though, does that mean you should
14 stop, for example, the 401 data collection and the SEEDS?
15 And my opinion is that you might want to alter it, I
16 suppose, but I would advise against stopping it because I
17 think it is a huge source of information from the state
18 perspective, again trying to get an early handle on
19 looking at this. Rather than individual districts kind of
20 worrying about what they should or could be doing, the
21 State is much more involved in that.
22 I think it is very important for the State to
23 know what the money is being spent on. I think the 401
24 data collection would not need to be used any more for
25 reimbursement purposes but still would or could have a
145
1 monitoring purpose but it is not essential to drive the
2 system.
3 In terms of federal requirements, maybe you can
4 speak to that better.
5 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman and Senator
6 Sessions, we still have federal requirements for
7 reporting. We have a two-year biennial performance report
8 that we must send into the federal government and it is
9 based on our performance goals and indicators that we have
10 chosen to work on as a state. And those are increased
11 performance on WyCAS, graduation rates, drop-out rates,
12 suspension and expulsion rates. So we still have those
13 federal requirements.
14 DR. PARRISH: The SEEDS reporting that we
15 do every December, the data that we do every December and
16 every July, we get data from those reports that we have to
17 submit to the U.S. Department of Education. So we would
18 still continue to need to receive that kind of data.
19 Could it look differently? Could we add some
20 information so that we're bolstering our data collection
21 so we can track kids better? I think that certainly does
22 need to be looked at.
23 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, just a
24 follow-up question. What kind of increased reporting are
25 you becoming aware of with the No Child Left Behind as far
146
1 as special ed students are concerned?
2 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, Senator
3 Sessions, at this point the increased data reporting on
4 students with disabilities comes under the accountability
5 under disaggregation results on WyCAS at this point.
6 There hasn't been an increased burden because we already
7 have the ability to disaggregate those results.
8 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Any further questions?
9 Senator Peck.
10 SENATOR PECK: Let's talk perception for a
11 second. We have lots of data here and more backing it up.
12 Is there going to be a simplification of this
13 saying that the darned legislature which used to pay 100
14 percent is now gutting you back to 85 percent even though
15 you're giving us 12 years to phase it in and a contingency
16 fund? Are we going to be attacked saying you used to pay
17 100 percent and now you're only paying a part, even though
18 page 4 says there's not been a runaway student
19 identification and spending?
20 DR. PARRISH: I guess, Senator Peck, Madam
21 Chairman, perception is -- anybody can predict that as
22 well as anyone else.
23 If you want my opinion on it, I knew coming into
24 this state -- and you might as well know -- I'm sure you
25 do as a committee -- that asking anybody to move away from
147
1 100 percent and say, you know, you have to swallow that
2 pill and like it is sometimes difficult.
3 On the other hand, there were members of the
4 committee who are special ed directors who felt that we
5 should be moving away. So even among the committee, even
6 among the special educators on the committee, there was
7 not unanimity that there should be a move away.
8 Will you have a perception battle? You very
9 well might. That's another reason we suggest a very slow
10 implementation. We suggested hold harmless, partly for
11 perception and partly because of disruption. Perception
12 is often based on what people feel at the local level, and
13 having people feel something very draconian was not
14 something we felt was wise.
15 MS. WALK: Senator Devin, Senator Peck, if
16 I could address that, on our committee, on the
17 stakeholders group, we did have the support of the three
18 parent organizations that are pretty vocal here in Wyoming
19 on services for students with disabilities and they were
20 serving on this committee.
21 Certainly it is going to take a huge educational
22 component for educating our parents, for educating local
23 districts and teachers and that kind of thing. But I
24 think it is something that has been opened up. They were
25 part of the committee. They knew this was coming, so the
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1 door has been opened.
2 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: I would like to break for
3 lunch unless we have a pressing question.
4 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: I don't think
5 this is a pressing question, but I need to answer my
6 colleague and friend from Fremont County.
7 One of the components of this is poverty and I
8 think we need to expand the definition of poverty.
9 Certainly in Teton County we have what we call
10 professional poverty inasmuch as the nurses, teachers,
11 firemen, after they pay the housing cost and property
12 taxes they fall below the poverty line.
13 So I would like to see that definition included
14 so that the 50 percent extra that we get can be merited.
15 That was a statement.
16 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman,
17 this is just something that would be talked about the need
18 and how hard it is to get some of the people we need. My
19 daughter-in-law is an occupational therapist and she works
20 in this system. She's also a young mother and we've
21 given -- she's making enough money now she's going to
22 become part time so she can stay home with her children
23 part of the time.
24 So sometimes paying enough creates a little bit
25 of a different problem than what we had.
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1 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Well -- and we may have
2 to come to some of the more innovative pieces of sharing
3 the professionals in some of the BOCES, between some of
4 the districts.
5 If there's no objection, I would like not to
6 take more than an hour for lunch. I think you can get
7 lunch in this building, unless that interferes with
8 anyone's plans, and we could reconvene, then, at 1:45 and
9 that gives people a break, but we do have a heavy agenda.
10 (Meeting proceedings recessed
11 12:45 p.m. and reconvened
12 1:30 p.m., October 22, 2002.)
13 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: We will continue with
14 questions to the committee, Dr. Parrish and Rebecca at
15 this point. We will ask for any other comments -- I
16 realize some couldn't make it because of the weather --
17 and then we will open it for discussion and questions.
18 Short of having the final report, I would like
19 you to have the opportunity to ask as many questions as
20 you can on this area.
21 There are certainly three major areas here that
22 you need to consider. One would be moving to some sort of
23 a block grant proposal, the contingency fund and the
24 regional assistance in terms of some of the services and
25 development of those in future years, and those pieces
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1 could be staged.
2 I think probably the block grant and contingency
3 fund need to go in together. The regional piece the
4 committee could take a bit longer to develop if they
5 needed to to see what that looked like in some of those
6 pieces.
7 Anyway, I did have one question that came from a
8 committee member over lunch that I know I got a little
9 information on before, but I appreciate your answer.
10 Senator Scott.
11 SENATOR SCOTT: Again, on page 21, that
12 chart -- and incidentally, I hope that in the final report
13 the districts would be identified by name because not
14 doing it by name we can't apply what else we know about
15 the districts to see what makes sense.
16 But on the areas where there were zeros shown, I
17 was told that in the way the SEEDS reporting works that if
18 you don't have somebody on staff but contract, that then
19 the data shows you have nothing going on in that area when
20 in fact all you've done is contracted whereas you can't
21 hire or are small enough so you shouldn't hire the
22 relevant professionals.
23 DR. PARRISH: Well, Madam Chair and
24 Senator Scott, I would like to at least comment first and
25 then Becca can talk more about the SEEDS.
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1 My understanding, though, is that that was not
2 true. If I understood your question correctly, if a
3 service is being provided, it should be listed in SEEDS
4 whether it is provided by a district employee or a
5 contracted person.
6 And if that's not correct that is something I
7 would say you ought to change immediately because then the
8 SEEDS information aren't very useful for any purpose.
9 But if that's true, that's different than what
10 we understood.
11 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I suspect
12 that, in fact, that's what is happening, that the people
13 filling out the reports understand SEEDS reporting the way
14 I described and that you're getting some zeros there
15 simply because of the way things are being paid for rather
16 than whether the services are being provided.
17 MS. WALK: Senator Devin and Senator
18 Scott, we receive information on two different forms and
19 one of them is the 401 form which is where districts
20 report their expenditures for reimbursement, and what
21 you're saying about that issue, Senator Scott, is correct
22 on the 401.
23 On the SEEDS report, we get that report --
24 districts are required to report to us on September 1st
25 the number of students with disabilities they're serving
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1 with that district on that day. It also includes up to
2 five related services that the district may be providing.
3 For instance, a child with a disability may be
4 getting speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical
5 therapy and counseling. Those related services are
6 provided on the SEEDS report and that's what is showing
7 here.
8 What could be happening on the SEEDS report
9 which is where you see zeros, 1 percent and 2 percent is
10 that sometimes if a child has a speech disability, they
11 may not put speech therapy down as a related service
12 because that is their special education service they're
13 being provided. So that could be a little disconnect on
14 the SEEDS data that you're looking at right here.
15 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: But it should be
16 certainly reflected in the services provided on the SEEDS
17 data, whether it is contract or it is not.
18 MS. WALK: Senator Devin, that's correct,
19 whether it is contracted service or provided by an
20 employee of the school district, it must be provided on
21 the SEEDS data.
22 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Other questions the
23 committee might have at this point of these two?
24 Okay. Then I would like to ask of the task
25 force members who are here, are there comments to be made
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1 or of anyone else within the group?
2 If you will identify yourself, I would
3 appreciate that. We have asked that the -- if we could
4 get more heat in here and I'm told that they are working
5 on the system. As you know, this building is in the
6 stages of remodel and I guess at best they're promising to
7 shut the fans, the cool fans off.
8 MR. KOURIS: I'm Mike Kouris, special
9 education director in Riverton, and I sure appreciate the
10 opportunity to speak, although I'm not used to doing this.
11 This is the first time I have ever come to a committee
12 meeting like this and spoke. I was one of the
13 stakeholders on the task force and appreciated having the
14 opportunity to be on the task force and was able to give
15 my input and thought that it was considered, and there was
16 much disagreement a lot of the time.
17 And I have agreement with some of the
18 recommendations that came in, although personally, and I
19 think I represent other groups also, that we don't feel
20 like a block grant is the answer, especially if it is
21 based on ADM. And I would respectfully ask that you
22 really consider that when you're looking at that because
23 that then takes away from funding based on needs of
24 children.
25 And I'm one of those districts that some people
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1 may consider overspend because I spend 125 percent of the
2 state average, and also 66 percent of my students receive
3 speech therapy services. And that's not just me
4 willy-nilly offering speech therapy to children. Those
5 are determined by teams, through assessments.
6 And, in fact, several years ago we hired an
7 independent auditor to come to Riverton to audit our
8 program to see if we were maybe giving, like you said,
9 Cadillac services rather than services based on need. And
10 the independent auditor said no, that he saw a program
11 that was offering services based on need, based on
12 evaluation, based on assessment and kids were getting what
13 they deserve and need and federally mandated to get.
14 If, in fact, we go to a system that is based on
15 ADM, immediately my district would be short $100,000 based
16 on the formulas, if we just go flat that way. And I don't
17 know where that money would come from and I would have to
18 take money away from children's services in order to go
19 down to that.
20 So in a nutshell, like I say, I'm not used to
21 speaking like this, but any questions of me that you might
22 have, how our district operates within that special
23 education area.
24 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: You were a member of the
25 task force.
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1 MR. KOURIS: I sure was, yes.
2 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: I guess I would have the
3 question, you know, how do -- if we do not move to a block
4 grant type of proposal, as you've heard discussed
5 extensively here today, pros and cons, and we stay at 100
6 percent reimbursement, how do we assure responsibility and
7 equity and proper levels of use to all districts?
8 In other words, it would seem that it would be
9 to the advantage of your district to overidentify, to
10 overutilize and so forth and so on. It is an opportune
11 method to increase funds.
12 So how do we get those pieces in the system that
13 would assure appropriate levels?
14 MR. KOURIS: That is exactly the question
15 that Dr. Parrish had us all consider and look at. I
16 thought we were headed that way in the committee looking
17 at adequacy, and we based those adequacy figures on
18 children's needs.
19 And I think the key is into that, but then to go
20 just to a block grant to what we were spending and then
21 base future funding on ADM takes that all away. So I
22 think there's somewhere in between that that we can get to
23 with oversight, with audit from the State Department of
24 Education.
25 In fact, we were audited four years ago during
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1 our five-year revolving audit. They went through our
2 special ed records, I think 10 or 15 percent of our
3 special education IEPs when you audited us --
4 MS. WALK: That was on the old system,
5 Mike. That would be 15 percent of your total special ed
6 students, yeah.
7 MR. KOURIS: They actually go through IEPs
8 when they audit us, that whole team, and those kinds of
9 audits could reveal if a district was trying to
10 overidentify for some reason or looking at other things
11 besides basic services for children.
12 So I think some answers are in that.
13 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Now, I'm told that the
14 current audit system -- I guess my question would be does
15 the current audit system look at IEPs for that, because it
16 is my understanding that the current audit system is
17 focused a little more on was the money legally spent, not
18 necessarily was it appropriately spent or was the adequate
19 amount spent versus too much or so forth and so on.
20 Could either of you comment on that, or both?
21 MR. KOURIS: I think Becca could comment.
22 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, the current
23 system we use to monitor special education at the local
24 level has been in effect for three years now, and we did
25 change it from the practice Mike was talking about where
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1 we would go in and just look at kids' IEPs to see if the
2 forms were filled out correctly is basically what it was.
3 And we would look at either 15 -- 20 or 15
4 percent of a district's special education population to
5 see if, in fact, the children's IEPs meet compliance with
6 the IDEA. That wasn't really telling us if the kids were
7 getting their needs met and if services were actually
8 being provided.
9 We've now changed our monitoring system that
10 looks at a variety and a number of different data. We
11 look at children's IEPs. We get survey information from
12 parents, we get survey information from administrators,
13 teachers, a myriad of service providers in a district to
14 see if those services are also being provided.
15 We also take a student's IEP, the child's actual
16 IEP and look at it and follow the student around with
17 their IEP to see if, in fact, the services that are on the
18 IEP are actually being implemented.
19 So I think we do a better job now of ensuring
20 that a student's services as outlined on the IEP are
21 actually being implemented. But I need to remind the
22 committee that the Department of Education is not a member
23 of each child's IEP team. Each child has their own IEP
24 team made up at the local level of people who know the
25 child and of administrators and teachers and service
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1 providers who are going to educate the child.
2 The department is not a member of the IEP team,
3 and therefore, it is difficult, really not even
4 appropriate, for us to look at a child's IEP and say,
5 "Well, looking at this child's IEP and looking at his
6 disability I'm not sure he ought to be getting speech
7 therapy three times a week." That's an appropriate thing
8 for the IEP team to determine.
9 What we need to determine is if the IEP team
10 says yes, he needs speech therapy three times a week, is
11 he, in fact, getting speech therapy.
12 MR. KOURIS: Can I continue with that?
13 Also the rules and regulations for special education talk
14 about all of the assessments we have to do to prove those
15 services are there, so that team is basing those decisions
16 off of those assessments and needs of the children.
17 Did that just raise more questions?
18 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Scott.
19 SENATOR SCOTT: I would like to follow up
20 on that.
21 So there's nobody that looks to see is the child
22 actually qualified, that the assessments have been done
23 and that they really did show -- what's your criteria?
24 Two standard deviations below the norm, is that right, or
25 am I remembering things that aren't true?
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1 MS. WALK: Senator Devin, Senator Scott,
2 you're absolutely correct that there are very strict
3 procedures that districts go through in order to identify
4 children under the 13 disability categories that are
5 outlined in our rules.
6 When we do review an IEP, we look to see that,
7 in fact, the education, the MDT, the multi-disciplinary
8 team, fills out the correct forms. If the child is
9 learning disabled, we have specific tests that they must
10 do. We look to see that those tests were done by
11 qualified individuals and that they did meet the specific
12 criteria.
13 So I didn't mean to lead you to think that it
14 was just a free-for-all. No, that's not it at all. There
15 are very specific criteria that they must meet. And then
16 when we do an evaluation of the file review, we do ensure
17 that those tests are conducted by qualified individuals
18 and carried out.
19 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Representative Lockhart.
20 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
21 a question for Mike Kouris. As a practitioner I have two
22 questions. You mentioned that you would be $100,000 down
23 under the ADM. Under the hold harmless I would thought
24 you would be kept at the same level.
25 MR. KOURIS: The question is to divide the
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1 amount of money that you're overspending now by 12 and
2 take 1/12th from the district every year to reduce that
3 block grant -- no.
4 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: That's not what I
5 understood. Am I --
6 DR. PARRISH: Just to clarify, the
7 recommendation is, for example, Mike, in your district --
8 exact details of implementation and how you might allow
9 for things like cost of living, you know, stuff that we
10 really need to work with MAP and make sure it is consonant
11 with other assumptions, but it is something that we would
12 lay out and say it is never less than you were getting in
13 the base year.
14 You might get a gain. You might say I have been
15 claiming 5 percent more every year and now you're going to
16 be held to the same you were over the prior year. You
17 wouldn't lose over the base of the prior proposal.
18 Gainers would be phased in at the base plus 1/12th of the
19 difference between what they're getting in the old model
20 year by year, but in short, no one would lose money off of
21 the base.
22 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: As I understood, the
23 extra cost in the system to the State would be the fact
24 that we would prevent those from losing.
25 DR. PARRISH: Right, that's correct.
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1 MR. KOURIS: So if I could follow up on
2 that, too --
3 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
4 that was my understanding and it was different from what I
5 heard.
6 Second question, Mike, as a practitioner in the
7 state, we have this mantra in the state of Wyoming of
8 local control. How would you keep the local control
9 flexibility with what they're granted in block grants if
10 you earmark this amount versus if you had a block grant
11 and you sought these changes in Fremont County School
12 District Number 1 or whatever district it is? And what's
13 the answer to that?
14 MR. KOURIS: In my mind if it is a block
15 grant it almost has to be earmarked for special education.
16 If it is not -- well, there's fallacies there. If I have
17 a high-cost student leaving my district, I would be
18 getting money I don't feel like I should be getting. If I
19 have new students move in which are high-cost students,
20 they're in and out, then I wouldn't have the money to fund
21 those students that year.
22 Well, the block grant, I wouldn't ever have the
23 money so that money would have to come from somewhere
24 else.
25 If our whole staff gets a raise next year and 75
162
1 percent of my money is in staff, I don't know where I
2 would come up with the funding or the district would come
3 up with the funding to give special ed people a raise.
4 That's got me confused on how that all would work. If it
5 is locally controlled under a block grant, then the
6 district can do anything that it wants with it. It sure
7 wouldn't be encouraged to -- they'll spend it on the most
8 current needs and those may not necessarily be special ed
9 in their eyes.
10 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
11 one follow-up. The mantra of local control and
12 decision-making you don't agree with in these special ed
13 areas, is that what I'm hearing?
14 MR. KOURIS: We have to follow the rules
15 and regulations from the federal government in special ed
16 and also the state rules and regulations. I think we're
17 already out of local control with that with special
18 education children. If a child needs services, we have to
19 give the child services. If we don't have the money in
20 the block grant, then it needs to come from somewhere
21 else.
22 So if it is a block grant, and this is personal,
23 you will put me in the position then of trying to convince
24 my school board not to fund this after-school activity in
25 order to fund a special ed service.
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1 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: In answer to one of your
2 questions, if you had high-cost students move out you
3 would be -- it would be correct, you might end up with
4 some extra funds to apply. If you had high-cost students
5 move in that exceeded your ability to meet that, then
6 that's what the contingency fund piece would be for.
7 MR. KOURIS: And my suggestion would be --
8 and I talked to Senator Scott at lunch -- that maybe these
9 high-cost children should all be in the contingency fund,
10 any out-of-district placement maybe should be in this
11 contingency fund, so if they move to Evanston, they're
12 automatically put through that.
13 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Would that provide us an
14 indirect incentive to move high-cost kids?
15 MR. KOURIS: If the money follows the
16 children?
17 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Out of your systemf
18 MR. KOURIS: Well, if the money follows
19 the children, I don't know. I guess it wouldn't matter
20 where they went, which would be ideal.
21 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: But under current funding
22 you've received funding for them and under new funding if
23 that was picked up all by the contingency fund, then it
24 would appear that we've also done some amount of double
25 funding, then, if funding that was there before is left
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1 there and now a new source of funding has to be created.
2 MR. KOURIS: That's what a block grant
3 would do. I would rather move the funding with the child,
4 if there's some way we could do that.
5 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: But the block grant would
6 do that only to the extent that the high cost exceeded
7 what is happening now.
8 Let me ask the question on salary increases for
9 personnel. Those types are treated in the general
10 personnel to the -- we did, in fact, double fund. Clear
11 up until last year seniority for special ed was getting
12 paid out under the 100 percent and seniority was getting
13 paid out under block grant, so the district was getting
14 double funded to the tune of about $7 million -- or the
15 districts -- $7 million a year.
16 Now, in the future if his people had seniority
17 increases and so forth, that personnel issue comes out of
18 the main general funded block grant, does it? How did
19 that end up getting addressed last time?
20 DR. SMITH: Madam Chairman, you're looking
21 at me.
22 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Looking at Jim Smith.
23 DR. SMITH: For the court reporter, this
24 is Jim Smith from MAP.
25 Under the current system as it is right now, the
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1 special ed teachers and administrators and so forth are
2 treated entirely separately because they're 100 percent
3 reimbursed.
4 Under the proposal that Dr. Parrish has been
5 talking about, they -- the special ed teachers and
6 administrators would be put into the block grant and be
7 treated exactly the same as other teachers and
8 administrators.
9 So it would -- in terms of raises and so forth,
10 those would still be local decisions, but to the extent
11 that the legislature provided an external cost adjustment,
12 that would be extra money that would be applied through
13 the entire block grant.
14 Under the current system, the external cost
15 adjustment obviously doesn't apply to special education
16 because it is 100 percent reimbursed.
17 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Thank you. We need to
18 walk through each one of these, so I appreciate you
19 bringing them up because we need to mentally walk through
20 those pieces.
21 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, just a
22 question. So then with the block grant funding for
23 special education, none -- so what we do now is we just
24 put all of the special ed people back into the general MAP
25 model and they're funded and so you just add them to the
166
1 MAP model on the general education fund so that increases
2 your personnel and so would increase the money that you
3 get from the funding -- from the general fund.
4 So then -- and it takes them out of the special
5 ed funding, right?
6 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: But the special ed
7 funding goes into the general funding so you roll the
8 special ed funding into the general block grant and then
9 you pay everything out of that. So the funding goes, too.
10 SENATOR SESSIONS: But what you're doing
11 is we're saying we're going to -- you're going to give so
12 much based upon per pupil -- for the block grant for
13 special ed, and that would be identified, so that remains
14 constant, but then we're putting the -- all of the
15 teachers, all of the personnel back in to be counted in
16 the other personnel costs?
17 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Well, they can only be
18 counted one place or the other. You see, there was double
19 counting going on before.
20 SENATOR SESSIONS: I understand that, but
21 I'm saying that -- okay, well, if you take it out of -- is
22 not 84 percent of your cost related to personnel?
23 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: That's about right. And
24 the funding that's paying special ed now would go to the
25 districts still and on the hold harmless proposal it would
167
1 go to the district at no less rate, and then external cost
2 adjustment that go to the district in the future would go
3 onto that piece.
4 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, but
5 then when each district refigures their personnel costs
6 and their seniority and stuff, then that's figured for all
7 personnel in the district and that does not exclude
8 special ed if we go back -- if we do this proposal, is
9 that true?
10 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Right, it would be.
11 MS. WALK: Yes.
12 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Yes, you would like to --
13 MS. CALMES: I'm Glenna Calmes, special
14 services director from Evanston, Wyoming, which is Uinta
15 County School District Number 1. I also was a member of
16 the stakeholders group and very much appreciate being able
17 to be here today.
18 A lot of things that Mike Kouris shared with you
19 are very similar to the items I've thought about so I'll
20 try not to repeat those things but maybe move forward for
21 purposes of timesaving.
22 The question the senator just raised is one that
23 does come up very strongly in my mind. If we put the
24 special ed staff in a block grant and provide a block
25 grant to the district for that staff, then what does
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1 happen when the district gives staff a raise? If we don't
2 get any additional funding in our special ed block grant,
3 then we have to do what, cut someplace in order to provide
4 for the new salary for those staff members?
5 So it is a question that I have and I don't know
6 that this is the place we have the answer because I'm
7 hearing different things from different people and I'm not
8 familiar enough with the entire funding piece in terms of
9 the whole foundation program to know the answer to that.
10 And perhaps those of you at the table there do, but that's
11 a question and a concern that I do have.
12 A couple of other things is that the current
13 block grant proposal rolls the Part B funding into the
14 allotment for the school district. And one of the
15 concerns that I have expressed through the entire time
16 that we've worked, the months that we've worked on this
17 system is that in most districts -- and I'll speak mostly
18 for my own -- the Part B monies are used to provide things
19 that are essential to students, we believe, in our
20 district, and yet they are way beyond or well beyond the
21 amount of funding that the State provides to our school
22 district.
23 For example, Dr. Parrish has mentioned several
24 times his concern about the lack of money that we spend as
25 school districts in this state for assistive technology or
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1 alternative technology, alternative materials for
2 students.
3 The reason that doesn't show up on my 401 report
4 and that you, the legislature, are not paying us for that
5 is that I take that out of the Part B money. All of the
6 staff development I do for the special ed staff and part
7 of the general ed staff in my district in reference to
8 special ed students and hopefully benefiting general ed
9 students as well comes out of my Part B money. Those are
10 just two examples.
11 If you take the Part B money and roll it back
12 into the allotment you give me, those things will, quite
13 frankly, go away. I don't know how else to express it.
14 Those things will go away.
15 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: What are you calling the
16 Part B money?
17 MS. CALMES: The federal money, the grant
18 money from the Fed.
19 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: There was not a proposal
20 to take that back.
21 MS. CALMES: If you look in the -- I don't
22 have the page open. I had it in front of me. If you look
23 in the materials that are provided, when you look at the
24 total block award, the Part B monies are written into that
25 so that would mean that the State would not be giving us
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1 that much money; we would have to use the federal money to
2 make up the difference.
3 In my district this year that's a little over
4 $300,000. Quite honestly, that's a lot of money.
5 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: The State would not be
6 giving which monies now?
7 MS. CALMES: If that was rolled into the
8 block grant and the State used that as part of the
9 decision-making and said --
10 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Used what?
11 MS. CALMES: Part B monies.
12 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: No, we're not mixing
13 federal money with state money.
14 MS. CALMES: That's not the way I
15 understood the formula that was described to us on the
16 telephone call and the page I have in my book, so that's a
17 piece to be sure is well clarified. Those of us as
18 special ed directors around the state don't understand
19 that the same way, so that's a piece we would need
20 clarification on because that is a concern and that may be
21 one you would want me to sit and ask Dr. Parrish to
22 clarify for you before I go further.
23 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Sure.
24 MS. CALMES: Madam Chairman, I might
25 comment on a few of the things and we can continue just to
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1 try to clear the air a little on a few issues.
2 One was the salary raise issue. I'm looking to
3 Jim, too, but I think the idea here is that special ed
4 staff are rolled into the block grant and then the issue
5 becomes, well, what if I want to give them a raise. I
6 don't know that that's any different than the issue of
7 giving anybody a raise. There's something built into the
8 MAP model to allow for raises or --
9 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Before I ask Dr. Smith to
10 answer that question, I would like to ask you from the
11 district, do you ever give raises to special ed teachers
12 and not give them to the other teachers?
13 MS. CALMES: And the other is true as
14 well.
15 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: So right now they're
16 being treated as one group?
17 MS. CALMES: Exactly. And that would be
18 my concern, if we were to move to the block grant and hold
19 us harmless at the set amount, if that's the funding used
20 to provide for special ed, additional salary for special
21 ed staff would come from that same block grant amount
22 which means there would be less funding then to do other
23 things that need to be done.
24 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And that is where the --
25 that is basically where the external cost adjustment comes
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1 into play.
2 MS. CALMES: If that is accounted to the
3 block grant, I think that would be acceptable for that
4 particular piece.
5 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: It is and, you know,
6 those raises are not a local school board decision, and
7 frankly, the more flexibility they have as a local board
8 member I've found the more you have that opportunity.
9 But it should be there. Those schools in a hold
10 harmless position are going to have more to work -- more
11 work to do, but they are not -- than those that perhaps
12 have not been spending as much, but a 12-year phase-in is
13 a pretty soft cushion. We've never gone more than three
14 that I recall before, so it is kind of a pillow landing if
15 we're going to make a move.
16 But I just -- I know there are these issues so I
17 appreciate you raising them.
18 Does that clarify for you how raises happen
19 here?
20 DR. PARRISH: I think we haven't worked
21 out all of the implementation details, but I think your
22 point strikes me as the appropriate one. We treat them as
23 a group. A special ed teacher is no different than a
24 general ed teacher and the issue of raises would be
25 treated uniformly across the board. I don't know that
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1 they're separate issues and I don't know that we're
2 suggesting that be built into the model.
3 I suppose it would be true, even through the
4 hold harmless, and that's kind of the point, you might say
5 well, we've been growing at 10 percent every year and
6 you're holding me harmless but I'm losing that 10 percent
7 growth, and I suppose that could affect my capacity to do
8 all of the things I was doing in the past.
9 But I think maybe the point is we want to
10 question some of the things that were being done in the
11 past and put them under guidelines. If they can be
12 justified, they fall under the contingency fund. Then if
13 they can't, then they fall by the wayside.
14 In terms of federal dollars, we're not talking
15 about any loss of federal funds here. To give an example,
16 if in the last base year a district got $900,000 in state
17 funds and $100,000 in federal funds, what we're saying is
18 they would get a million dollars as a base. So the
19 federal funds is still in that amount, it is just not
20 delineated the way it used to be, which never made a lot
21 of sense: I give you 100 percent funding plus federal
22 monies.
23 In terms of adequacy we couldn't think of it
24 that way. We had to give it a holistic approach, let's
25 pull the funding sources together and fund it. The
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1 federal funds don't disappear here. It is more a little
2 the way people are accustomed to thinking about it. But
3 no one is losing the federal funding other than the thing
4 I mentioned before. If everybody wants to continue
5 exactly what they've been doing over the next 12 years,
6 some people would have to cut back on something but I
7 think that's kind of, again, the idea behind the
8 guidelines.
9 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, again on the
10 federal dollars, the federal funds that the district
11 receives are based on a specific formula and that formula
12 is given to us through the U.S. Department of Education.
13 So we have to flow through that amount of money. There is
14 not a choice at the state to hold back or retain the money
15 that is allowable to flow through to the school districts.
16 So they will continue to get their federal dollars which
17 will continue to increase based on the amount of money
18 that the State does get.
19 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And that's true under the
20 current system and it would be true under the proposal?
21 MS. WALK: That is correct, Madam
22 Chairman.
23 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Yes, and I think there is
24 some misunderstanding out there about that so I hate to
25 spend a lot of time on it but I really don't want people
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1 to continue -- I want us all to be clear and not continue
2 under a misunderstanding because that's an important
3 concept.
4 MS. CALMES: If I may, there were just a
5 couple other things I wanted to address very quickly. You
6 were talking a little bit about availability of staff and
7 staff concerns. And one of the things that we have talked
8 about is if the districts are getting 100 percent
9 reimbursement or credit on the foundation program for what
10 we spend, what is to prevent us from just doing whatever.
11 And there are really two things, probably more
12 than two but at least two that come to mind and one, quite
13 honestly, is the availability of staff. There are many of
14 us who would like to be able to do some additional things
15 in our district with additional staff members but, quite
16 honestly, we can't find them. We can't hire them. Even
17 when we go out on contract with agencies that we're
18 willing to pay a lot of money for staff, we still can't
19 find those people. The agencies can't find them for us.
20 That is quite honestly one of the things that will keep
21 costs down, there just isn't the staff out there to hire.
22 That's one issue.
23 The availability of staff, and we talked about
24 perhaps building the regional centers down the road I
25 think could be very helpful in some areas, some parts of
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1 the state. And I would encourage the body as we start
2 talking about doing those things to again ask for support
3 and input from the stakeholders because there are some
4 things I think could be very helpful and others perhaps
5 would not be down the road.
6 The accreditation piece that we've talked a
7 little bit about is one of the times when that whole
8 concept of what are we doing with children before they
9 become evaluated to see if they should be a child
10 receiving services under a disability act is an important
11 part of accreditation. I know that is strictly outside
12 of, quote, special education, but it is part of what
13 happens in our districts and know that the legislative
14 body has in the last couple of years done a lot to help
15 improve services to children in that area. We thank you
16 for that because that is something that does make a
17 difference and I think will make a difference for our kids
18 in the future.
19 Thank you for your time today.
20 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: We thank you for raising
21 the issues because it is important to clear them up so we
22 all know what page we're going forward on and its
23 ramifications.
24 MR. GOETZ: Ed Goetz, business manager
25 here in Laramie. I wanted to give the specialists an
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1 opportunity to speak before I got up to talk about what I
2 usually discuss and that is having to do with financial
3 issues.
4 My concerns with this recommendation -- I am a
5 member of the task force -- by basing it on ADM, as our
6 ADM drops, which we all know it is now and has been for
7 the last several years, then that means that the block
8 grant also decreases.
9 But as Dr. Parrish showed in his presentation,
10 in fact, our special ed numbers have flattened out and are
11 not decreasing.
12 So my concern has to do with how do we maintain
13 effort at a state and local level when our block grant
14 funding will be going down? And if that goes down but we
15 still have to maintain the same level of services, then
16 how do we deal with the issue of supplanting, that even
17 though we have federal funds available to us, how do we
18 shift those costs from what we're spending in the general
19 fund now to federal sources without supplanting.
20 Obviously new activities, new personnel, those
21 kinds of things can be paid for from federal sources, but
22 existing personnel, existing activities cannot be just
23 shifted from general funds to federal funds without
24 creating a supplanting situation.
25 Madam Chairman, you asked about what would be an
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1 alternative, an alternative that was brought forth in that
2 task force is to continue 100 percent reimbursement but
3 use the staffing guidelines as triggers for the Department
4 of Education to do the specific level of monitoring that
5 Mike Kouris mentioned, not on the same cycle as
6 accreditation since obviously every five years wouldn't
7 work under this scenario, but rather to enhance the
8 ability of the Department of Education to do this by
9 adding staff and giving them the ability at any time to
10 visit a district if they see issues with identification
11 rates, spending levels, service provision rates.
12 I'm just a business manager so obviously I don't
13 know all of the different areas that would trigger this,
14 but that is our idea of how you could make sure that there
15 aren't abuses and to bring districts who are out of line
16 into line if the State sees that there are issues.
17 The solution that they have devised, while it
18 certainly makes sense and I think is well thought out and
19 they have incorporated a lot of the ideas that our task
20 force came up with, another concern I have is that this
21 just adds another layer of complexity to an already
22 incredibly complex model.
23 And, of course, you have a whole list of reports
24 that you have coming which will add even further layers of
25 complexity to this. And I'm very concerned that this
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1 whole model is going to collapse under the weight of all
2 of these different components that require even more
3 additions to the spreadsheet that's already somewhere in
4 the neighborhood of 30 pages connected to each other.
5 Absent that, I guess my plea to you, if you
6 decide to move in the direction of the block grant
7 funding, is that Dr. Parrish has emphasized the need to
8 take this as a package, and I think that that's extremely
9 important. Giving short shrift to any of these areas I
10 think would be devastating.
11 I also think that you have to look at the
12 current data for special education expenditures based upon
13 what was just turned into the department this summer
14 rather than 2000-2001. I realize it isn't all there and
15 isn't all checked, but by the time you get into session it
16 will be.
17 I also think a hard look needs to be taken at
18 the salary data and make sure that that is as up to date
19 as it can be if you go in that direction. My district in
20 particular, our costs went from 3.9 million to almost 4.4
21 million, and so pegging this back to over a year ago will
22 be pretty detrimental to us and we will be, quite frankly,
23 forced to look at either making reductions in other areas
24 or trying to find creative ways to get around federal
25 regulations that we don't want to do either.
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1 So those are my recommendations. I just hope
2 that if you go in that direction it is taken as a package.
3 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Rebecca or Dr. Parrish,
4 would you like to -- would you comment on the issue of
5 supplanting state funds? I think there is -- supplanting
6 federal funds which it is my impression we cannot do, so
7 could you comment, clarify for the committee what the --
8 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, I would be
9 happy to. Local districts are required to meet the
10 maintenance of effort with state funds. They may not use
11 federal funds to meet their maintenance of effort. That
12 would be supplanting.
13 And what Ed was commenting on is that, yes, you
14 could not take current programs that you already have in
15 place in a local district and if, in fact, you didn't use
16 your local funds, your state funds, you could not take
17 federal funds to add to those local funds in order to
18 carry that out. That would definitely be supplanting.
19 You could not add your federal funds to that.
20 If, in fact, you were starting new programs that
21 had never used state funds, you could start those programs
22 using federal dollars. That would not be supplanting.
23 But then you would have to maintain those new programs
24 with the federal dollars. If you ever went back to
25 changing your funding from federal to state, you could
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1 never go back to changing it then from state back to
2 federal.
3 Does that answer your question? You could go
4 from -- you could go from state -- you cannot mix federal
5 funds in with your state, local funds for programs already
6 existing. If you would like to start new programs and you
7 do not have the local funds to start those programs with,
8 you may use your federal funds to start that.
9 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Now, he talked about the
10 ADM piece and if the district lost money then they would
11 use federal funds, but the proposal with the hold harmless
12 provision does not suggest that any district would lose
13 state funds, they would stay whole with their state funds,
14 and therefore, the supplanting issue becomes moot because
15 they're not --
16 MS. WALK: We would never want to see a
17 supplanting issue because that would be a major issue,
18 obviously, for the district.
19 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: But the hold harmless
20 provision does provide for that.
21 DR. PARRISH: If I can comment, Madam
22 Chairman, the ADM-driven system is not designed such that
23 let's just say it is 1,000 in special ed funding for every
24 ADM person. It is, rather, there's a block grant amount
25 that's calculated and it is allocated to districts based
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1 on the ADM.
2 So that a reduction -- but then there's also the
3 hold harmless. So a drop in ADM would not drop the block
4 grant funding. Plus we expect federal funding to be
5 increasing so we would actually expect that while overall
6 enrollments are dropping in Wyoming, actually special ed
7 funding would increase for districts.
8 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Scott, you had a
9 question.
10 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I'm trying
11 to understand this federal supplanting issue, and let me
12 ask you, suppose you had -- say you were in the district
13 and your speech/language effort was costing you $100,000
14 and you were getting that entirely from state funding.
15 And suppose you found that you had to increase that by 10
16 percent to keep enough speech pathologists to get the job
17 done.
18 Are you telling me you can't use federal funds
19 for that extra $10,000? I thought that if you had
20 $100,000 spending, you had met your maintenance of effort
21 requirement there and you could use federal funds for the
22 increase that you needed. No?
23 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, Senator Scott,
24 if you have -- if you're already providing those services
25 for special education and you are providing $100,000 in
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1 speech therapy, if that's the example that you're using,
2 and you get additional children in who need speech therapy
3 and you need to hire additional speech therapists and you
4 need to contract with them, you could use -- because
5 you've already met your maintenance of effort and you have
6 additional needs and these are excess costs, you could use
7 your federal dollars for that.
8 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, slightly
9 different version of the question. Suppose the
10 circumstance was not that you had extra kids and needed to
11 hire extra people, but in order to stay competitive in the
12 marketplace you had to give a 10 percent raise to the
13 speech pathologists and that was costing you the
14 additional 10,000. Could that be used for --
15 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, no, Senator
16 Scott, that would be a supplanting issue because that's a
17 salary you're already paying your teachers and again it
18 goes on the salary schedule which is a local
19 responsibility.
20 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: I believe there was --
21 did you --
22 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: A question, Madam
23 Chairman. Would hiring auditors from the state level to
24 review IEPs around the state be a supplanting issue or not
25 if they didn't already exist?
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1 MS. WALK: Senator Devin, Senator
2 Goodenough, no. At the state level if we at the
3 department decided we wanted to hire a team of auditors to
4 go in and help us with monitoring the provision of free,
5 appropriate public education, we could use our federal
6 dollars at the state to provide those services.
7 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Thank you.
8 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: It has been my
9 impression, however, that your philosophy has been to pass
10 as many of those dollars on to the local districts as
11 possible; is that correct?
12 MS. WALK: Senator Devin, yes, we flow
13 through approximately 84 percent of our federal funds to
14 the local districts, but we also are required to keep back
15 a certain percentage of funds for capacity building and
16 then a certain -- what is that, 16 percent for capacity
17 building as well as administration for the federal grant
18 program.
19 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Madam Chairman, it
20 just seems like if the big concern is that districts are
21 going to cheat with 100 percent reimbursement, that it
22 would be better to come up with an auditing system that
23 would make the legislature feel comfortable rather than go
24 to a block grant system.
25 And so then sometimes I know there's federal
185
1 money that it is difficult to find uses for with all of
2 the strings attached to it, so if you could use some of
3 that money for state-level auditing and that that would
4 make the legislature feel comfortable that they weren't
5 getting ripped off at every turn, seems to me like that
6 would be a good use of the money.
7 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Representative Lockhart,
8 you had a comment, and then Senator Scott.
9 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
10 it is actually a question for Ed. I hear from the
11 trustees of school boards that they like local control and
12 they like block grants. Are you hearing different things
13 in Albany County, in your district, that earmarked funds
14 versus block grants is what they prefer?
15 MR. GOETZ: Well, Madam Chairman and
16 Representative Lockhart, I think that under the current
17 system effectively we already do have a great deal of
18 local control. When we're reimbursed 100 percent, I think
19 that gives us the freedom to make whatever decisions
20 locally that we need to based upon, obviously, the expert
21 recommendation of the people in special education and then
22 also, you know, what is driven by the board's decisions
23 within that realm.
24 So I guess I don't see those two issues as being
25 a dichotomy, if we have a block grant it is local control
186
1 and if we have 100 percent then it isn't local control. I
2 think both ways we still have that.
3 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: I guess the part perhaps
4 that I -- and you need to follow up on this -- that I
5 would see the latitude restricted under the current system
6 is that you must do the $2000 identification of the
7 student as the special ed student and then you're
8 restricted to spending on that population versus greater
9 latitude with a block grant to use some of those monies to
10 offer early help?
11 MR. GOETZ: Well, again, Madam Chairman, I
12 guess perhaps there would be more flexibility, but usually
13 when you get those kinds of opportunities it is a sword
14 that cuts both ways.
15 Perhaps you do have more flexibility in how you
16 spend it overall, but, again, if the overall funding in
17 that area goes down but your student population stays the
18 same, then you're going to have to figure out a way to
19 make up that gap.
20 So obviously if your population goes down and
21 you get a little bit more funding, that's the good side of
22 the sword. But if you have to make up that gap, that's
23 the bad side of the sword. So with 10 percent funding we
24 don't have to deal with both edges.
25 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Representative Lockhart,
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1 did you have --
2 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
3 I tried to be kind of specific with my question. Had you
4 discussed this local control flexibility with the board or
5 had they given you any signal or your superintendent, for
6 that matter, and specifically in that area of local
7 control?
8 MR. GOETZ: As it relates to special ed?
9 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: What we're
10 talking about here, 100 percent versus block grant.
11 MR. GOETZ: I think at this point it is
12 too early to know. We only received the report on the
13 17th. We're trying to digest it and see what is going on
14 so we haven't had a chance to confer with the school board
15 at all.
16 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Scott.
17 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, you
18 covered it all.
19 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Other questions?
20 Did you wish to make a comment? If you will
21 give a written copy to our staff, I need to ask you due to
22 the acoustics in this room and for our court reporter if
23 you would speak up or stand as close to her as possible I
24 would appreciate it because it is hard to hear.
25 MR. HUDSON: I'm soft spoken, so I will
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1 stand over here so you can hear me.
2 This is a shorthand note in relation to block
3 grant versus 100 percent reimbursement. This is an
4 implication of why I believe the 100 percent reimbursement
5 is superior to the block grant.
6 SENATOR SCOTT: Would the gentleman
7 identify himself?
8 MR. HUDSON: Dan Hudson from Fremont
9 County 14, business manager, and I'm also a school board
10 member at Lander, Fremont Number 1.
11 This is an example from Fremont 14. In
12 particular what it says when you get to the third
13 paragraph after you read through the rest of it, it shows
14 at the top end what happens after a year is selected as
15 your base year a program would all of a sudden be
16 underfunded or overfunded. These are numbers right out
17 straight of the WDE 401, everything but the last one which
18 hasn't been audited is audited. They are the real
19 numbers. The amount of funding per student changes up and
20 down depending on the base year.
21 The last paragraph I think has something you
22 probably rarely see. Quite simply it states a case,
23 depending on your base year, that would cause overfunding
24 of a program and so long as we had a hold harmless and a
25 12-year run-in, it would cause overfunding for all of the
189
1 run-in years.
2 Ordinarily educators are out here telling you we
3 don't have enough money and I'm telling you on this one
4 the block grant would be a method for overfunding an issue
5 based on what happened within one district.
6 The only comments I would make past that, Madam
7 Chairman, one item that Representative Lockhart has
8 made -- my eyes are going bad -- and yourself has inquired
9 about is the issue of local control as far as the 100
10 percent versus block grant.
11 Districts receive revenue either 100 percent or
12 block grant. Where you get the local control is on the
13 expenditure side of it. School boards decide if they want
14 to purchase two buses or possibly an additional teacher.
15 It is expenditure. You receive the money on revenue; you
16 get it one place, you get it the other, fine. Special
17 education is the one place, as has been pointed out with
18 maintenance of effort, you have to obey the laws. This is
19 the most inflexible piece of the formula.
20 But the other pieces of it, yes, we can decide
21 flexibly to spend more money on additional staff here,
22 another bus there, additional building there. Special ed
23 does not move very much in that manner.
24 Now, questions?
25 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Questions, committee?
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1 MR. HUDSON: Thank you, Madam Chairman.
2 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Thank you for your
3 comments.
4 Yes, Mrs. Scott.
5 MRS. SCOTT: Elaine Scott, board of
6 trustees, Natrona County School District Number 1. I have
7 a question that would be directed to Becca Walk.
8 In our district we have a waiver for some of our
9 special education programs in some schools that are using
10 what we call Neverstreaming where the special ed persons
11 don't have to follow some of the same federal rules.
12 For example, speech therapy, we will find that a
13 child will do better having therapy that involves peers
14 than just one-on-one between the adult speech therapist
15 and the student, so the speech therapist goes into the
16 classroom, works in the classroom setting with the
17 children who have needs, but their peers as well. And
18 that's just one example of how this Neverstreaming
19 operates in these buildings. It is a lot more complicated
20 than that.
21 But anyway, how would any of these changes you
22 all are considering today affect this waiver we have for
23 how we can operate some of these special ed programs?
24 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, the
25 Neverstreaming program that Mrs. Scott is speaking of is a
191
1 successful program in Natrona County. It has shown data
2 over the last several years to actually reduce the number
3 of students identified early in Natrona County for needing
4 special education, and the district has been -- we applaud
5 the district for those efforts.
6 What they have done is they have taken their
7 federal money, including Title I, Title II, their federal
8 special education dollars and while following the
9 guidelines under the proportionate amount you may use for
10 federal special ed money, they have provided a continuum
11 of services at several elementary schools in Natrona
12 County starting with the Mills school.
13 And what they do is they provide the continuum
14 of services in a very least restrictive environment within
15 the general education classroom, reducing the number of
16 children that are eventually referred on to special
17 education. They still refer the most needy children on,
18 but all children are receiving a wide continuum of
19 services. And it has proven to be very successful and
20 we're pleased with that.
21 I would not see that this would have any kind of
22 bearing on a loss of services within that program at all.
23 It would have no bearing on the local -- what you are
24 doing at that level with your federal funding at all.
25 MRS. SCOTT: We wouldn't be penalized if
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1 it is a block grant by not being able to continue this
2 with the way our local control is put forth?
3 MS. WALK: Madam Chairman, you would not
4 be penalized at all.
5 MRS. SCOTT: Thank you. I just wanted to
6 hear that. Appreciate that.
7 MS. WALK: You're welcome.
8 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Other comments?
9 Our final report should be in our hands when or
10 should be out at what point in time?
11 DR. PARRISH: We have discussed that with
12 LSO staff. They want to give us some specific comments.
13 I think they're more detail oriented. There were some
14 areas that I think were confusing and I think they're
15 somewhat more technical adjustments and we have assured
16 them if they can provide us a list of their comments
17 fairly soon we could turn them around, I think, quite
18 quickly.
19 If there are some things that require more
20 complexity than we had anticipated, but based on our
21 initial discussions, it sounds like we could remediate
22 fairly quickly, so as soon as we get comments from LSO I
23 would think we can turn it around, I would say five
24 working days or less. It could be one or two days
25 depending on the nature of it.
193
1 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And I'm advised that you
2 will be available for the November meeting of the
3 education committee?
4 DR. PARRISH: Madam Chairman, that's
5 correct. I've been asked about that and I'm clearing that
6 time in my calendar.
7 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Okay. Then, Committee,
8 if you have further questions at this point, and I saw you
9 make notes of the requests of the committee in terms of
10 some of the data, so I think we will await that report
11 along with comprising the input and questions you've had
12 today, and hopefully you will have had time to -- by the
13 November meeting to have given this considerable amount of
14 thought and take a look at that final report and the
15 additional data and be ready with your questions and your
16 thoughts at that time, unless there's anything more today,
17 we would like to move on to the next topic.
18 I know that the hall is warmer than in here.
19 Have we decided that closing the doors is the most prudent
20 method of warming this room up?
21 MS. BYRNES: Madam Chairman, I closed them
22 because of the noise, but I can open them for the heat.
23 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Maybe we will alternately
24 try whatever method works.
25 With that, we will move on to the small school
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1 adjustment, agenda Item Number 4.
2 Mr. Biggio.
3 (Discussion held.)
4 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, while Mary is
5 getting the handouts out, let me thank you on behalf of
6 the superintendent, Department of Audit and the Data
7 Advisory Committee for the opportunity to work on this
8 project with you.
9 Mary is handing out a report and that has a
10 number of sections in it. There's an executive summary,
11 background section, a history of the definition of small
12 schools -- so if you are in any way having problems
13 sleeping tonight, you can start with that section first --
14 Data Advisory Committee recommendations, and finally, the
15 superintendent's recommendations.
16 As a way of background, you remember February of
17 2001, the Supreme Court came back to us and said we have
18 some problems with your model and you need to revise some
19 of the pieces in that model, and one of those pieces was
20 the small school adjustment.
21 With that the legislature contracted with MAP to
22 do not only a recalibration but also a review of many of
23 the components within the model, one of which was the
24 small school adjustment, one of the concerns regarding the
25 small school adjustment and the issues of schools centered
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1 around collocation, and that generally refers to a
2 situation where a single building or campus is designated
3 by a district as two or more schools.
4 And this grew out of an historical practice of
5 school being designated by grade spans. This really
6 wasn't an issue until the model began reimbursing
7 districts based upon small school size. So at that point
8 the collocation issue did become a little more relevant.
9 MAP at that point also provided you with a
10 definition of school that was attempting to address
11 collocation. That definition was based on a combination
12 of facilities at the school or schools and that would then
13 identify where the collocation occurred or did not occur.
14 During a legislative session this was addressed,
15 as well as many other issues that related to small school
16 funding, and as a result you passed the hold harmless
17 provision for two years as well as a special study related
18 to small schools.
19 The superintendent was required to do some
20 things within that study related to the definition of
21 small schools, and in that study she has to provide you,
22 and we're doing that today, with our recommendations on
23 how to define small schools for the small schools funding
24 purpose.
25 In that process the state superintendent asked
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1 the Data Advisory Committee to assist in that process.
2 The Data Advisory Committee is a statutorily established
3 group consisting primarily of business managers from the
4 school districts as well as a superintendent, a CPA, LSO
5 and the Department of Audit in those recommendations on
6 definitions.
7 One part of your special study requirements
8 stated that the definition process and the small school
9 adjustment process had to involve the districts and their
10 data in the process so this is the way we fold the
11 districts and their data into the process.
12 The Data Advisory Committee began meeting during
13 the summer and continued meeting through the fall and now
14 has that definition in place and will recommend that to
15 you today.
16 Also, your cochairs asked the Data Advisory
17 Committee to participate in an effort to define parameters
18 and standards for school-level accounting and reporting of
19 expenditures. In the past school-level expenditure
20 reporting was encouraged but not required. As part of the
21 small school funding effort, the districts are now going
22 to be required, beginning July 1, 2000, to report
23 expenditures.
24 So the Data Advisory Committee has been
25 instrumental in defining those standards and we will talk
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1 about that further.
2 At the risk of boring you I won't go much into
3 the history of the definition of the process, but let me
4 tell you when we started in this in 1997 the definition
5 was fairly simple, keying on grade spans, keying on number
6 of students by grade span as well as some geographic
7 limitations, quarter-mile rule, five-mile rule.
8 Through the years things have been added, taken
9 out, lots more complexity added and then removed to the
10 point where we're now back to a fairly simple definition
11 and that definition keys again on grade spans and numbers
12 of kids.
13 One particular piece I will point out to you is
14 that in the initial definition the grade spans were K-8
15 and 9-12 for the small school adjustment. Now we're back
16 to K-5, 6-8 and 9-12. We have a couple other restrictions
17 in the definition for things that schools that have a
18 significant decline in enrollment as well as some
19 efficiency and operational issues but pretty much related
20 to ADM and grade span at this point.
21 As I mentioned earlier, when the superintendent
22 was tasked with this study, she asked the Data Advisory
23 Committee, again school district personnel primarily, to
24 help her with recommendations for the definition of
25 school. And you folks then came back and also asked them
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1 to participate in the school-level reporting and tracking
2 of data.
3 During this process we first looked at the
4 definition of school, and as mentioned earlier,
5 collocation issues continued to drive most of our
6 discussions. And to make the long story short in this
7 process, the committee felt that the collocation question
8 was much better dealt with through a funding process as
9 opposed to a definition process. And I will get into that
10 a little bit later.
11 With that in mind, the committee proposed a
12 generic definition of school that followed the lines of
13 National Center for Education Statistics and that says
14 that a public school is an institution which provides
15 educational services and has the following
16 characteristics: Has one or more grade or grade groups,
17 has one or more teachers to give instruction, is located
18 in one or more buildings or sites, has an assigned
19 administrator, receives public funds as primary support
20 and is operated by an educational agency. They also
21 define collocation and more than one school in a single
22 building.
23 With all of those pieces in mind, the committee
24 then proposed a funding solution to address the small
25 school problem based upon multiple prototypes. As it
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1 stands now, we have a single prototype by grade band for
2 K-5, 6-8 and 9-12. For funding purposes the committee
3 felt that we should look at a school as a group of
4 services and the cost of services would comprise a school.
5 So as we deliver educational services to
6 students, we look at a school as that delivery of services
7 and we differentiate between delivery of services and a
8 building or a structure.
9 So we would fund those two pieces separately.
10 We would fund the delivery of services through a prototype
11 for schools. We would also fund a building through
12 another mechanism, either a prototype or another way of
13 funding the building. We're separating two pieces out,
14 services versus physical structure.
15 Building costs could be related to things such
16 as the operation of the building, heats, light, square
17 footage, wear and tear, age of the building, those sorts
18 of things. The school itself or the delivery of services
19 would be primarily personnel, instruction personnel,
20 teachers, aides, instructional support personnel, direct
21 supplies and materials required for instruction.
22 The committee recommends that MAP develop
23 multiple financing prototypes that vary with ADM and grade
24 span. The school would then be funded based upon the
25 prototype that most closely resembles its characteristics
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1 of ADM and grade span, and these prototypes would include
2 adjustments for economies of scale at varying levels of
3 ADM.
4 For example, there might be a prototype that
5 would address schools under 25 ADM. That prototype would
6 contain all of the costs that are needed to operate a
7 school of that size.
8 With all of those costs included in the
9 prototype, then there would be no more need for a small
10 school adjustment. So as your ADM varies, you would fit
11 into one of the prototypes. The prototypes would give you
12 all the funding you needed to operate a school of that
13 size; therefore, we wouldn't have to have a small school
14 adjustment; therefore, we wouldn't need a small school
15 definition, per se.
16 Now, a couple things that you might want to
17 consider in this. If you decide to move in this
18 direction, this has the potential to add significant
19 complexity to the model. As you go through the report,
20 you will see an Appendix B where I've shown all of the
21 schools by size. And schools range from a low of 1 or 2
22 ADM up to 1525 at some of the larger schools. And those
23 ranges break out all through that group.
24 The last item in your report is a graph that
25 shows ADM broken into a number of spans and the number of
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1 schools in those ADM spans. Now, there's nothing here to
2 suggest that those are the appropriate spans. I kind of
3 looked at the spans and said here's where logical breaks
4 occur and grouped them in that fashion. But this gives
5 you an idea of the kinds of differences we have in ADM by
6 school across the state.
7 The legislation also requires a superintendent
8 to complete a number of tasks. The first was to develop
9 necessary information and procedures for the establishment
10 and application of criteria for defining small schools for
11 the purposes of the adjustment.
12 Also that the superintendent give consideration
13 to recommendations provided by the consultant, that's MAP,
14 pertaining to small schools, specifically their definition
15 as it relates to buildings and facilities.
16 And finally, to report to you with
17 recommendations.
18 And the superintendent wants very much to
19 express her appreciation for the work that the Data
20 Advisory Committee did and hopes their efforts will help
21 you as you continue on the small school funding effort.
22 On the first task, the department, MAP,
23 Department of Audit and the committee met to develop
24 initial standards for tracking and reporting school-level
25 expenditure data. And this begins July 1, 2002, so that
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1 by the end of this school year we should have good data
2 for you for expenditures at a school level. And this is
3 going to be required statewide.
4 The Data Advisory Committee is a key in this
5 process. They have served as, in a sense, a gatekeeper
6 for developing standards, for reporting and tracking of
7 this data. The Data Advisory Committee reviews items of
8 consistency and standards for tracking and will continue
9 to do so all through the year.
10 Those standards will be adopted and required by
11 all of the districts statewide. The department, as the
12 Data Advisory Committee recommends new standards or
13 changes to the existing standards, will put those into our
14 accounting requirements for the school districts and the
15 Department of Audit will then follow up to ensure that
16 districts are meeting those standards.
17 So we believe we will have good data for you at
18 the end of this school year on school-level expenditures.
19 The committee also recommended the alternative funding
20 method based on the prototypes. And this process would
21 account for differences in the economies of scale and
22 could also potentially address the collocation issue,
23 either through multiple prototypes for collocated versus
24 noncollocated schools or through a separate funding method
25 that addresses buildings as opposed to that concept of
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1 services that we talked about earlier.
2 With that in mind the state superintendent
3 believes that adoption of a definition at this time may be
4 premature. It is our understanding that MAP would support
5 a project to request input from districts regarding the
6 appropriate level of resources for schools of varying
7 sizes; that school-level accounting effort is also
8 progressing well.
9 With those two pieces working down the road
10 together, we think by the end of the school year we should
11 have sufficient data that would allow MAP to review the
12 process and make recommendations to you concerning
13 alternate ways of funding small schools.
14 If you go with a prototype process as we've
15 talked about earlier, that may obviate the need for a
16 definition of school. If you choose some other method,
17 then of course we're available to continue on with the
18 work of the definition.
19 The state superintendent recommends, first, that
20 you acknowledge the efforts of the Data Advisory Committee
21 in supporting the alternate methods of funding small
22 schools; that you support the continued work of the DAC on
23 the districts on school-level accounting and consistency
24 questions; that you postpone for now the adoption of a
25 definition on small schools; that you provide funding and
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1 direction to MAP to obtain input from districts on
2 resources needed to deliver the basket of goods and
3 services at varying ADM levels, you also request MAP to
4 evaluate the results of that study in light of the
5 information from the school-level accounting data and
6 provide you with recommendations on funding methods for
7 small schools, and further, following your evaluation of
8 those MAP recommendations and if you need us to, direct us
9 to come back with the definition of school for the small
10 school purposes.
11 Again, we thank you very much for the
12 opportunity to work with you on this project and we will
13 certainly support you in any additional efforts that
14 you've asked us to do over the next year and a half.
15 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Thank you. Committee,
16 any questions of Mr. Biggio?
17 Senator Sessions and then Senator Scott.
18 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, I would
19 like to say in your short review of this, this is one of
20 the few things that has made common sense to me for a long
21 time, that we get away from half a mile, mile, whatever,
22 and fund it based on numbers of students and what it takes
23 to educate, you know, I guess model or prototypes of
24 students.
25 And however that comes out, I think that
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1 possibly may solve the problem that we've been struggling
2 with. I just applaud you. I think it is an approach that
3 finally maybe we've come to the solution for small
4 schools.
5 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Scott.
6 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, question
7 for Mr. Biggio and probably the same question of Mr. Smith
8 of MAP when he gets his chance.
9 You have mentioned briefly that this is going to
10 add complexity to the model. My concern would be that it
11 adds almost an impossible level of complexity to the
12 model.
13 Could you expand a little on what -- the degree
14 of complexity we're talking about and how it is going to
15 affect the operation of the model and collection of data?
16 And I've not seen this but for about five minutes now.
17 Are we talking a dozen new prototypes? Two dozen? What
18 are we talking about here and how do you deal with the
19 ones? Because it is a continuum that are between your
20 various prototypes.
21 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, Senator,
22 that's a very good question. Under the current model the
23 prototypical funding provides when you go through the
24 process a dollar amount per student per grade span and
25 then we roll up all the students in the grade spans across
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1 the districts and apply those prototypical dollars to the
2 district level numbers.
3 If you go to a school-level process, now you're
4 applying that same logic to each school as opposed to the
5 district. So instead of running up the numbers for each
6 district, you would run up the numbers for each school in
7 the process. So that has the potential to add a lot more
8 calculations to the model and a lot more size to the
9 model.
10 The concept is the same, except you have a lot
11 more calculations and the volume increases significantly.
12 Now, how many prototypes would be needed I have no idea.
13 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: I guess in regard to
14 that, the issue of whether this is perceived as a fairer
15 method by which to allocate and determine the allocation
16 of costs to these varying schools under varying
17 conditions, because in order to keep it less complex or as
18 simple as it has been, the concepts don't vary and it is
19 the concepts that I think we need to agree on and function
20 from. The calculations can be done as a matter of
21 computer spreadsheets. And we will agree we will no
22 longer be able to do them on these kinds of things as we
23 could with the CRU. It is just not there.
24 But what is the perception of fairness in the
25 districts that this might more fairly represent what they
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1 believe to be their costs versus the approaches that have
2 been tried before?
3 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, I will give
4 you my thoughts on it and you might want to ask some of
5 the folks in the audience. I think it all comes back to
6 what the districts perceive is the appropriate level of
7 services for -- let me back up -- the appropriate level of
8 resources to deliver the services for a size of school.
9 What we hear from the districts at this point is
10 that with the small schools, especially the small schools
11 in the small districts, that the level of services
12 provided by the model are inadequate.
13 If the districts were convinced that the level
14 of resources to provide those services in those smaller
15 schools were adequate, then I think it might take that
16 question off the board.
17 Now, whether this method or some other method is
18 the appropriate way to go, I guess that's up for debate.
19 This is one way to get there, but I think for the schools
20 the issue is adequate resources.
21 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: I think there's certainly
22 been a problem in that -- and we addressed the issue of
23 remoteness this morning a little bit in the other study.
24 But the more remote that school or the more numbers of
25 remote schools you have sometimes the more costs that
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1 incurs versus the collocated, and yet depending on size,
2 we've tried to treat them similarly.
3 We've also tried to treat similarly those that
4 are not very remote but small within a large district the
5 same as those that are quite remote within a small
6 district.
7 So, you know, certainly the differences have
8 been there, and it has been difficult to try to treat them
9 the same.
10 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, that's a good
11 point. If you talk to Jim, Jim Smith, he feels that,
12 opposed to the collocation issue, there may be a greater
13 cost differential in small schools, in small districts
14 versus small schools in large districts and that the
15 prototype may differentiate between those two categories
16 as opposed to collocation.
17 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Committee, additional
18 questions?
19 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, are there any
20 additional things you would like us and the Data Advisory
21 Committee to review in the interim while we're waiting for
22 some of this data to come through?
23 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Committee, anything? I
24 mean, they're certainly pursuing the issues that we've
25 wrestled with, the problem issues, and we simply got down
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1 to the point if we're going to try to address it at the
2 level that we can justify cost based, we have got to have
3 school-specific data to tell what our differences are
4 because lumped together you just can't sort it out.
5 So if you have anything at this point, I guess,
6 basically what you're saying is at this point you -- if
7 there's anything to work on, you would like to know it,
8 otherwise you're awaiting some of this data starting to
9 come in?
10 MR. BIGGIO: Yes, ma'am.
11 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Scott.
12 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, and I want
13 to reserve the right to change my opinion once I've had
14 time to read the material, but my instincts is that what
15 we need is them to give us a response that's responsive to
16 the legislation that asks them to do a definition. And we
17 didn't get that and I'm a bit afraid that what we're
18 getting is unworkable.
19 So if this is the time to make a request for
20 more information, I would like a report that responds to
21 the item that was in the education bill last time and this
22 doesn't.
23 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Would that, then -- okay,
24 in a manner they have approached that by saying we think
25 we need different prototypes on different types of school.
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1 Are you again asking to go back to our one-size-fits-all
2 definition that we've struggled with or --
3 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, it seemed
4 to me that where we were starting to come out was that we
5 had a prototype and then an adjustment that was staggered
6 in for schools that were under that.
7 I'm afraid the road that we're going down is
8 there's, what, 500 schools in the state and we will have a
9 prototype for each one.
10 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, Senator, I
11 don't think that's workable but you may have specific
12 grade ADM ranges that schools would fit into under this
13 suggestion.
14 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Certainly your last page
15 29 that indicates some groupings might indicate some
16 pieces that we're looking at?
17 MR. BIGGIO: Yes, ma'am.
18 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And then collocation
19 versus noncollocation versus extreme remoteness, et
20 cetera, might be other pieces?
21 MR. BIGGIO: Yes, ma'am. And there may be
22 some room to combine some of those pieces together. For
23 example, we may combine the multiple prototypes with the
24 definition of school that somehow addresses collocation.
25 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Is it the sense of the
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1 Data Advisory Committee that perhaps they need to see some
2 of the data coming in from this individual school piece in
3 order for them to see grouping patterns?
4 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, I don't
5 recall the Data Advisory Committee dealing with grouping
6 patterns. Their primary suggestion to us was the
7 separation of the concept of school as a service delivery
8 model versus building. And we really didn't get into
9 where breaks should occur, just that multiple prototypes
10 might be a better way to look at it.
11 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Sessions.
12 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, on the
13 data -- within the Data Advisory Committee is there a
14 possibility that you could recommend some groupings based
15 upon their knowledge of school districts and locations
16 and -- you know, because we've got two sides to this, if
17 I'm looking at it correctly.
18 We've got the services side based upon numbers
19 of students, and I look at that and it looks like it fits
20 in, it looks like maybe there would be three, maybe a
21 fourth one just off the top of my head that would fit in
22 that, but that would be services alone.
23 And if you did that and then if you did the
24 collocated or the building issues on the other side of it,
25 I don't know, discuss how the two meld together, discuss
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1 where the variation is between services and building
2 maintenance -- building issues so that when we come back
3 maybe, you know, you would have that -- maybe that's what
4 our definition of school would be based on the two issues
5 there, services and collocation building.
6 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, Senator, I
7 would be happy to take that back to the Data Advisory
8 Committee.
9 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: I guess, Committee, I
10 need to know from you whether you would like them to
11 continue to proceed in this direction and do as Senator
12 Sessions asked, to continue to work on that.
13 If you would prefer, as Senator Scott indicated,
14 maybe just coming back with a more specific definition,
15 can you give any further direction to -- Senator Scott.
16 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I will say
17 at this point that this is radically different than what
18 was expected, that I am, for one, totally at a loss at
19 this point to see which direction we ought to go. I think
20 we're going to need to think about this more. We got this
21 report, what, 15 minutes ago and I, for one, am not
22 prepared to make a decision based on what I know at this
23 point other than that I do have some concerns over the
24 direction we're going due to the complexity issue and
25 because I had perceived some possibility that we're going
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1 to have a discrimination against districts based on some
2 things that may or may not be cost based.
3 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Okay. I think certainly
4 the committee can have the time to look this piece over.
5 When we were in session reacting to the Supreme Court's
6 ruling, we did ask for a form of definition but we also
7 had discussion that a prototype separate for small schools
8 may be needed.
9 And the more we've worked on this issue the more
10 we have come to the conclusion that in order to just move
11 along to capture those costs we needed that
12 school-specific data which should give us some cost-based
13 issues or some cost-based basis, but we may be moving down
14 this separate prototype road in order to address it
15 because it just may not be a one-size-fits-all prototype
16 with a small school piece superimposed as we've tried to
17 do.
18 Look it over, I guess. We certainly can come
19 back to the issue in November.
20 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman,
21 what you're saying is right on cue inasmuch as with the
22 facilities commission we're looking for those definitions.
23 It is going to be a matter of size and right now I think
24 we have three prototypes and it looks like we're going to
25 need maybe 10 or 12, but there's going to be quite a few
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1 needed.
2 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And what my cochair on
3 the Capital Facilities is referring to is that we found
4 that particularly common square footage areas, lunchrooms,
5 gyms and so forth, that piece has got to be different for
6 really very small schools and medium-sized schools than it
7 does for, say, large schools. It is just not going to --
8 and we're in the process of trying to refine those pieces
9 to get them appropriately sized because they are unique
10 and it is the only way we can work with the pieces.
11 Representative McOmie.
12 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
13 think that -- I kind of like the new approach. We've
14 studied this thing to death and hadn't come up with any
15 solutions. I would like to see what they come up with, at
16 least. I was one of those that felt we could come up with
17 an answer in a year anyway. If this doesn't work within a
18 year, we have another year to come up with what I thought
19 we could come up with, if that makes sense.
20 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: That has been an issue
21 we've struggled with from the beginning.
22 Representative Lockhart.
23 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: I would like to
24 go on with Del and that's where I was going before he
25 spoke. The reason we're looking to definitions, as I
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1 remember, is we knew we had to get to a small school
2 adjustment and that was to the funding. Maybe there's a
3 better way and maybe this group has come up with a way
4 that gets us through that so our goal with defining small
5 schools was we would ultimately get to funding.
6 And maybe what you're doing here on school
7 identification issues does the same thing more
8 appropriately. I think it is kind of interesting and I
9 would encourage them to keep going. I would hate to have
10 20 definitions, but if we can get it down to a lesser
11 number than that and maybe, if at all possible, kind of
12 tie it in with what the capital construction of school
13 buildings are somehow, we would have something.
14 Because the issue is to appropriately fund small
15 schools, but we know there's a difference and we have the
16 same issue for what is needed in a small school and the
17 models that we're going to -- buildings we're going to
18 have to replace. I would commend the committee and those
19 on it for some good work here.
20 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Sessions.
21 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, when
22 you brought up the school facilities -- Capital Facilities
23 Committee, you're looking at the same thing, I think maybe
24 after eight years we've come to the realization that
25 things are different and -- but you're looking at the same
216
1 things that we're looking at and funding issues for small
2 schools.
3 And on the building side of this is there a
4 possibility of getting together and coming together with
5 the same kinds of recommendations for maintenance and
6 those kinds of things as you're doing with the square
7 footage on the capital -- cap con committee? I mean,
8 you've got your major maintenance piece there and you've
9 got to figure out how to fund that per school size, and
10 I'm just wondering if people or subcommittees or whatever
11 from these two committees could get together and discuss
12 that and maybe come up with one common statement or one
13 common philosophy on these two issues.
14 I don't know. It would be interesting to put it
15 to people who have some building expertise.
16 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: I think it is certainly
17 something interesting to keep in mind. It might be too
18 early for us to tell at this point until we learn more
19 about where we're at and what we're doing.
20 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, I have
21 one other question.
22 When we -- and maybe Mr. Smith or Mary could
23 answer this. When we did the small schools this last
24 time -- and this has to do with Senator Scott's complexity
25 issue -- and, you know, we had the -- I can't remember
217
1 what it is called, but anyway, like on the cost of living
2 adjustment, when we do the reversal and all of this kind
3 of stuff, how much more complicated would it be if we had
4 three or four prototypes instead of all that figuring
5 within the one prototype? I mean, are we really looking
6 at way more complication or if we take one away is it kind
7 of a wash?
8 DR. SMITH: Madam Chairman, Senator
9 Sessions.
10 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Mr. Smith.
11 DR. SMITH: I guess the first answer is it
12 depends, but let me -- I think as I've talked with Larry
13 about this, I think there is perhaps some not full
14 appreciation of what the small school adjustment is for.
15 Everyone understands it is for adjustment of economies of
16 scale, but diseconomies of scale arise from having certain
17 fixed costs amortized over a smaller number of kids. You
18 have one principal and one kid. That's very expensive.
19 One principal, a thousand kids is one thousandth as much.
20 This thing arose out of collocation, and I'm not
21 convinced that multiple prototypes are going to solve the
22 collocation problem. Think of the fixed things. You have
23 three schools in one building. You still have one
24 gymnasium in that building. You have one principal,
25 probably, or two half-time principals. You have one
218
1 cafeteria, et cetera.
2 Now, if you took those three schools and
3 scattered them out where they had to stand alone, then you
4 have a much bigger cost over a smaller population. So
5 there may be some diseconomies in a small collocated
6 school, but they're going to be negligible. The real
7 difference is when these schools have to stand alone
8 somewhere else.
9 Now, Larry mentioned my comment about whether
10 the difference may have to do with small schools and large
11 schools, and I can tell you -- and this is not perfect
12 information, this is just based on visiting two schools
13 that are very close together and they're very similar in
14 many ways. One is Guernsey which is essentially three
15 schools in one building. Nearby is I think Southeast
16 middle, elementary and high school, about the same size,
17 but I can tell you from looking at those two schools, they
18 face very different costs.
19 Guernsey is stand alone. It is a small school,
20 small district no matter how you look at it.
21 But Southeast is part of Torrington and I know
22 just from conversations that they're able to share some
23 faculty with Lingle-Fort Laramie, able to share some
24 faculty and some facilities with the schools in Torrington
25 so that they have different costs than Guernsey does.
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1 So to me I think the issue is probably district
2 size, small schools in large districts and small schools
3 that are remote. I think those are the two
4 characteristics that are more important than whether
5 they're collocated or not.
6 So the three schools in one building have very
7 different characteristics than three schools operating
8 somewhere else separately. That's a lot more than you
9 asked in the question for, but the answer is if you had to
10 do -- if you had to think of all of these permutations --
11 small schools in small districts, small schools in one
12 building -- I have this giant matrix in my mind that you
13 would have to fill every cell and that would be extremely
14 complex and I'm not sure that it would be any more precise
15 than where we are now because every time you make these
16 cuts and slices and dices, you make judgments and you make
17 compromises.
18 So I'm not sure that if you had to do it in
19 every way that you satisfied every unique condition that
20 you would be able to do it. But I think there is probably
21 something between what we have now where there are no
22 small school prototypes, it is based on a statistical
23 analysis of lumping all of these different kinds of small
24 schools together, to something that's more rooted in the
25 professional judgment of people who operate these schools
220
1 which is sort of the basis of the original prototypes. It
2 may be an improvement and I think it would certainly make
3 people who operate these schools more comfortable that it
4 reflects their reality.
5 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, so what
6 I understand is there is hope for maybe working out
7 something midway in the complexity issue where we can
8 still address services versus buildings or facilities and
9 come up with something that reflects costs a lot -- that
10 are much more accurate than what we have right now, is
11 that --
12 DR. SMITH: Madam Chairman, the short
13 answer is yes. But I want to make sure that -- to make
14 the point that you can't separate buildings from services
15 because a big chunk of the diseconomies of scale come from
16 being in buildings. You can't -- you know, think of it as
17 if you have three schools in one building you can share a
18 gymnasium. If you have three separate schools, you have
19 three separate gymnasiums, so the costs are different.
20 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, I don't
21 want to prolong this but I know that the way our athletic
22 structure is set up and our PE programs, if I have three
23 different levels in one building, I have to have more than
24 one gym somewhere.
25 DR. SMITH: I'll give you two gyms.
221
1 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Maybe we should say
2 library or cafeteria.
3 SENATOR SESSIONS: I'm just saying, you've
4 got to make some adjustments for those different levels
5 within that building and maybe increase some of those
6 things to provide those services that we're asking schools
7 to provide.
8 DR. SMITH: You're exactly right. I was
9 just sort of making an example.
10 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, maybe
11 we can, you know -- if you get together -- I have a great
12 faith after this summer in multiple minds working
13 together, and maybe if we continue to work together with
14 people who know the issues, you know, out in the field
15 there we can come up with something that is not overly
16 complicated -- well, I won't say that, it is all
17 complicated, but maybe something that is fairer than what
18 we're doing now.
19 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Mr. Biggio, thank you.
20 MR. BIGGIO: Thank you.
21 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Committee, we can try to
22 find a moment when you can concentrate on this and go over
23 it in the meantime between now and our November meeting.
24 (Discussion held.)
25 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Let's take our break
222
1 before we take up our next noncontroversial subject. Can
2 we come back in at about ten to 4:00 then?
3 (Recess taken 3:45 p.m. until 4:00 p.m.)
4 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: With that, Committee, I
5 would like to welcome Buck McVeigh and Dr. Robert Godby
6 that you spoke briefly with in Afton and ask you to begin
7 our next very noncontroversial topic, regional cost
8 adjustment.
9 MR. MCVEIGH: Thank you, Madam Chairman.
10 My name is Buck McVeigh. I know several of you on the
11 committee and it is good to be here today with you. I
12 regret the fact I missed the September meeting. I had a
13 family emergency, but it is all okay now.
14 I've been the division administrator now for
15 over four years and I was once in the trenches, having
16 worked on our Wyoming cost of living index, but I was
17 looking back on when I did that and it was in the
18 mid-'80s, so a lot has changed with the index since that
19 time and it has been evolved a lot more into other things,
20 particularly education finance.
21 I'm not going to take much time because Rob has
22 quite a bit to share with you, but I know, just to relay
23 that we know that the cost of living is not -- is
24 certainly not perfect for the device of measuring regional
25 cost adjustment.
223
1 Nonetheless, we're still very proud of that
2 index. It is Wyoming-specific data and we in our office
3 commend you folks for funding this study. We're very much
4 interested in doing what we can to either tweak the index
5 to be the instrument for providing regional cost
6 adjustment or coming up with the complete alternate
7 measure.
8 I feel very fortunate that we found Dr. Godby to
9 do our study. When I first saw the school finance
10 amendments and that we were expected to do this study, and
11 particularly with a short time frame, I was really
12 worried. So we're very pleased to have Dr. Godby. We're
13 working together very well on issues. He has a number of
14 good ideas and you'll hear some of those today.
15 So with that, Madam Chairman, Dr. Godby.
16 DR. GODBY: Madam Chairman and committee
17 members, just before we get started I want to make sure
18 that you have all of the handouts that have been generated
19 this morning.
20 There should be a thick presentation that could
21 have been put on PowerPoint, I suppose, called the
22 Regional Cost Adjustment Study with my name on it.
23 You should also have something called Table 1 on
24 a piece of 8-by-14 legal paper. That's two pages.
25 You will also have an 8-and-a-half-by-11
224
1 spreadsheet called Regional Cost of Living Analysis.
2 That's two pages.
3 And then a fancy picture called the WCI
4 Distortion.
5 I'm going to refer to all of these materials at
6 some point. Hopefully this won't take you too long. So
7 we'll start with the package which is basically my
8 presentation.
9 Originally I was just going to tell you this,
10 but recognizing that you might want to keep some of it for
11 future reference possibly, I went back to my office at
12 lunch and created a PowerPoint presentation.
13 My talent is not in typing, so I fully realize
14 the irony that you're probably going to see some spelling
15 mistakes at the education committee meeting and I
16 apologize for that in advance, but I think this is just a
17 little more organized and should give you some sense of
18 what the report that you'll get on November 1st is going
19 to look like and also some idea of where we will be going
20 after November 1st with the final report that I told you
21 about last time that will come in June, looking at some
22 alternative methodologies to the WCI, the possibility of
23 using them or trying to use them or trying to see if
24 they'll work. And there's a little bit about that today.
25 So just to get started, maybe it is a fortunate
225
1 accident, more likely it is that somebody thought
2 seriously about the agenda today, all three presentations,
3 mine being the third, link pretty usefully together. If
4 you look at the first page of the presentation after my
5 name, so second page, the sources of cost variation that
6 you can get in an educational system come from three
7 effects.
8 The first one, Special Services, so just a menu
9 of things you have to offer is going to affect your costs.
10 We heard about that this morning with special education.
11 There's two other things that are referred to in
12 the literature as input cost variation. That would be,
13 for example, teacher salaries, you know, different costs
14 of, say, gasoline or diesel fuel for buses, that sort of
15 thing. And they can vary across places. That's the
16 specific adjustment that the regional cost adjustment is
17 supposed to take care of.
18 And then the third source is what we call
19 productivity variations which is the small school
20 adjustment. And on top of the first two, you may need to
21 do that for scale diseconomies and you've just spoken
22 about that.
23 So recognizing that I'm looking at this as an
24 input cost variation, and in particular, the model that's
25 being used applies that strictly to personnel costs, some
226
1 sort of context is probably useful.
2 So if you turn to the next page, you will see
3 that it refers to Table 1, which is that long table on the
4 legal paper. And that lists a survey of states that
5 currently make regional adjustments for both input
6 variations in cost and also some productivity variations.
7 And it is very brief. It is not meant to tell you exactly
8 how each one does it, but just to identify that they do it
9 and to give you a sense of how they do it.
10 You probably haven't had time to scan through
11 it, but I'll just give you the highlights. There are four
12 states on this table that use what I'll call a cost of
13 goods index, which is what the WCLI is. Strictly
14 speaking, it is misnamed because it is measuring the cost
15 of goods in a basket, not measuring the cost of living.
16 So I'll call that cost of goods indexation. And the four
17 states that use that methodology are Alaska, Colorado,
18 Florida and Wyoming.
19 And we talked a little bit about Colorado the
20 last time I spoke to you, and we won't get into it too
21 much today.
22 There's one state, Virginia, that actually
23 legislates a cost of goods adjustment, and it is
24 actually -- technically speaking, what they're trying to
25 do is get a cost of living adjustment. They probably did
227
1 some sort of studies behind the scenes, but what the
2 legislature does there is there's nine separate districts
3 all close to D.C. and they just get some money, extra
4 money. They get about 10 percent for instructional
5 salaries and about 19 percent for support salaries and on
6 average it is approximately a 14 percent increase for the
7 nine districts in the state that are closest to
8 Washington, D.C., where the cost of living seemed to be
9 higher.
10 I mention that because that's one possible way
11 of doing it, although in Wyoming given that the courts
12 have said this needs to be cost based that likely wouldn't
13 fly.
14 Additionally there's three states that use what
15 is known as a wage index. And they construct an index
16 based on the wage of different workers in the state.
17 Ohio, Tennessee and Massachusetts all do that.
18 Nevada I won't mention because they only make a
19 productivity adjustment which is for scale economies.
20 And Texas is kind of the special case. Instead
21 of using a specific index based on data like this, they
22 actually do a statistical analysis based on a lot of
23 different data, and I'll come back to that kind of method.
24 They kind of stand out as the one different place among
25 these ten.
228
1 So that is the first table that you'll get in
2 the report in November. And it was constructed from a
3 variety of places. The sources are on bottom.
4 If you turn to the next page, something else
5 that's important on this table is that there's five states
6 that when they index regional costs, they make sure that
7 states -- that districts can only benefit from this, so
8 nobody ever loses money relative to the baseline which
9 politically we can all understand would be something
10 that's desirable.
11 So four states set a minimum index value of 100,
12 or they'll use the number 1 and index everything above
13 that for the lowest cost district in the state or the one
14 that needs the least adjustment, and then everybody else
15 gets something on top of that.
16 Massachusetts is slightly different. They allow
17 some districts to lose money; however, if there's a high
18 incidence of poverty in that region or in that district,
19 then the minimum they can get is the baseline funding, so
20 they can't lose if there's a disadvantaged group in there.
21 A couple of states, also Florida and Ohio, in
22 particular they limit the range of their index, so there's
23 a maximum adjustment that can be made. So they take an
24 index, set it up, rank the districts relative to one
25 another, how they should be adjusted, and then they crunch
229
1 that index down. So there's a maximum amount they can be
2 adjusted by, and that would be Florida and Ohio although
3 some changes are made in the states as different court
4 challenges come along.
5 And if you look in the table, the Ohio
6 adjustment only allows about a 9 percent adjustment, and
7 similarly, Florida allows a maximum when this was
8 tabulated using some of the sources on the bottom of about
9 23 percent between the minimum and the maximum.
10 So again, it is not clear you could do that in
11 this state just because of the court rulings, that they
12 strictly have to be cost based. If you had some index
13 value that said that wages are 40 percent higher in an
14 area or cost of living is 40 percent higher in an area
15 than some other place, then I think the way I've
16 interpreted what is going on with the courts, they would
17 say you have to make an adjustment that's suggested by
18 that index.
19 Florida and Ohio obviously have been able to
20 avoid that problem.
21 So turning to the next page, Wyoming and the
22 WCLI, a little bit of background, we all know about the
23 court ruling that ruled that if the WCLI is used, housing
24 and medical components have to be included in the index.
25 Previously MAP had suggested not using those, and the big
230
1 reason -- the medical one is just kind of secondary. The
2 big reason was due to housing and the concern that when
3 you price housing, you're also pricing where the house is
4 and that affects its value.
5 It has been referred to in different places as
6 an amenity bias, and I'll refer to it as that. Previously
7 MAP took that out just so they could avoid that. And if
8 you turn to the next page, this page refers to the
9 original report and then the changes that that made. The
10 WCLI without housing -- and some of these numbers were
11 done from memory this morning since I didn't have the
12 references with me -- the WCLI moved from about, I think,
13 a variation of about 20 percent to almost 60 percent
14 between the lowest and the highest areas when you include
15 housing.
16 So all of a sudden the regional adjustment gets
17 a lot bigger.
18 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Scott.
19 SENATOR SCOTT: 20 and 60 percent of what?
20 DR. GODBY: Just the variation between the
21 lowest and highest index value. The lowest -- the highest
22 place would get 20 percent more than the lowest place. So
23 if this were -- I'm doing this from memory. It was
24 approximately 20 percent. So the highest level in WCLI
25 was about 20 percent higher than the lowest number in the
231
1 WCLI without housing.
2 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: So, Dr. Godby, the 20
3 percent is with housing out?
4 DR. GODBY: Right.
5 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And the 60 is with
6 housing in?
7 DR. GODBY: I told you I did this from
8 memory. This is there to give you a sense of how much had
9 changed. 60 percent comes from the fact that the current
10 WCLI value, the lowest place is 88.5 and the highest place
11 is 141. That makes the highest place 60 percent higher
12 than the lowest place.
13 So that's the first troublesome thing that
14 arises in the index is the change in the variation.
15 Now, when that happens, some -- we've all talked
16 about this before, but I think it is worth considering
17 again. When this variation increased, the source of the
18 variation was the high housing prices in Jackson. That
19 was legally what blew the thing out of the water.
20 In the current indexation, I think the second
21 highest value in the cost of living index after Jackson,
22 which is 141, is Campbell, I believe, at 105.9, so there's
23 a huge variation between those things.
24 So what did that do? When you added Jackson's
25 or Teton County's housing costs in, it dragged the
232
1 statewide average or the reference base higher. And so in
2 the original report when Cheyenne and Laramie were the
3 base places, they also had housing costs that were
4 slightly higher than average, and so the statewide base
5 went up and more places got lower numbers after that.
6 So more places had a value less than 1 or less
7 than 100 which means that relative to the baseline funding
8 they were going to get less.
9 Now, in addition to that -- well, the last
10 bullet on that page is that there is an effect on funding.
11 In the original model it dropped total funding by about 20
12 million and added a little over 2, I think, to Teton
13 County, and I think one other place benefited a little
14 bit. But everybody else was about a wash and a number of
15 places lost.
16 In response to that, MAP recommended that
17 instead of using the statewide base for Laramie and
18 Cheyenne, they recommended using a statewide average which
19 lowers the number. More districts ended up with a value
20 above 100 so they got some additional funding, but it
21 still left funding about $11 million less than it was
22 before.
23 So I suppose it depends on how you look at it.
24 Going to the index with the wider variation reduced actual
25 education costs, effective costs, but it did that on the
233
1 shoulders of a lot of the places that have a lower index
2 value and very few benefited. In fact, in particular one
3 report recognizes only two and I think another report says
4 six. So it depends on when you look at it.
5 In the second page of this handout, this
6 8-and-a-half-by-14 handout, there are some simulations
7 that Mary ran a couple days ago, some in response to what
8 you asked for last time, some in response to some numbers
9 I wanted to see. So hopefully this will make sense and we
10 can go through it.
11 In the first columns you will see that the
12 columns are labeled at the top A through D, and you will
13 see the districts down the side and how much money they
14 would get.
15 The first column, I believe, is the preliminary
16 guarantees with the old six period WCLIs.
17 Is that right?
18 MS. BYRNES: That's correct.
19 DR. GODBY: Since that was made or those
20 were produced, some new values for the WCLI have come out.
21 And unfortunately this is a problem with data in terms of
22 how it is stored. I think Mary ran into the same problem
23 as I did that previous periods of WCLI are on paper and we
24 needed this right away, a couple computer files, and so
25 she was only able to use four periods. In order to run
234
1 this we did the rest with fewer periods.
2 Remember that the WCLI adjustment is done on the
3 last six WCLI surveys, take the average of that, create an
4 index and use that to adjust.
5 So the next set of three columns where it says
6 four periods, those are using more recent data, so the
7 data is newer but there's fewer observations. In order to
8 completely calculate that, the index value should have
9 six -- should have been computed using six surveys but
10 they were only computed using the four most recent.
11 In each of the sections you will see there's
12 three columns, A, B, C, D, E, F, so on. Three columns,
13 first one has a title at the top called No HH, so no hold
14 harmless. That's the raw adjustment.
15 The second is With a Hold Harmless, which is
16 what I'll refer to today.
17 And the third is the Index Values that were used
18 to generate those numbers.
19 So if you look at columns D, E and F, those are
20 the most recent data. So if you look at column E, in
21 particular, and B, those are the most recent totals. And
22 the original estimate was 718 million required and it has
23 dropped after the most recent survey to 717.8.
24 Why is that? Well, this is one of the troubling
25 things with this index. Teton's measured cost of goods is
235
1 rising faster than everybody else's. If you look at the
2 index value for Teton in column C, which is 138.5, and you
3 compare that to the one in column F at 141, it has risen
4 by about two and a half points and you don't see those
5 sorts of rises anywhere else.
6 So what's that doing? The Teton index value is
7 rising relative to the rest of the state mainly due to
8 increases in the housing costs, and this is actually
9 increasing the statewide average relative to the other
10 districts or counties, and relative to them to the
11 statewide average where they're actually getting less
12 money.
13 So growth in Teton's index has actually reduced
14 total amount of funding to schools. That's despite the
15 fact that there's been inflation overall in the state.
16 You would expect, everything else being equal, you just
17 need to give them more money, everybody, and yet you're
18 giving out less money on this simple simulation because
19 one part of the index is growing faster than another.
20 And that's pretty serious distortion as well. I
21 use that to point that out to you.
22 The old MAP model used a base of Laramie and
23 Cheyenne. If you look at columns K, L and M, that's where
24 the index is adjusted so that the population-weighted
25 average of Laramie and Cheyenne is a hundred and when you
236
1 set up the index like that, Teton's value drops to 136
2 because the housing cost in Wyoming -- in Laramie and
3 Cheyenne is higher than the state average.
4 So we've moved the base higher relative to the
5 top of the scale, which means that more areas have lower
6 numbers. And if you look at the projected funding had you
7 still used that old base, it would drop to 706 million
8 versus the current estimate of 717 that I'm using in
9 column E.
10 So total funding the old way would have dropped
11 even further and this is to show you why MAP suggested the
12 change from using Laramie/Cheyenne base to a statewide
13 base.
14 Now, the last time we visited in September there
15 was some discussion about just what is the impact of Teton
16 County, and so the last three -- the last big square on
17 this table is just some comparative outcomes. The first
18 thing -- I forget who asked for this, but somebody asked
19 that we take Teton right out of the index. I mean,
20 obviously we couldn't get away with this given court
21 decisions but I forget who it was on the committee
22 asked -- okay. It was just asked, take it out of the
23 index, compute the base, and then we just gave Teton a
24 value of 100 in the index so they get the statewide
25 average. And the statewide average is computed on the
237
1 remaining 22 counties.
2 And you will see that that really didn't -- if
3 you look at the bottom of column O in the hold harmless
4 column, that really didn't change the total amount of
5 funding overall, but what it did was it boosted all of the
6 poorer places at the expense of Jackson.
7 If you look at Jackson's number, or Teton,
8 they're now only getting $17 million, where under the
9 baseline case in column E they would get about 23 million.
10 So I'm pretty certain that they would have a problem if
11 you tried to implement this. But that gives you a sense
12 of just where -- how things work out.
13 If you take out Teton, it helps a lot of places.
14 Total funding to all districts increases by about a
15 million, but Teton loses five. So that was kind of an
16 interesting scenario but obviously can't be used.
17 So the next column, Q, R and S, that was done
18 with the same methodology, take Teton out of the index,
19 compute the statewide average and then give Teton 25
20 percent more than the statewide average which is a giant
21 chunk relative to anybody else in that index because you
22 look at the next highest index value is 105.9. That's
23 more than they would have gotten under the old MAP funding
24 rule where housing wasn't included. It is obviously less
25 than what they would get. I would just throw that out to
238
1 show you what happens.
2 Total funding in the hold harmless column goes
3 up to 721 million, so relative to the base in column E
4 you've increased total school funding by -- I don't want
5 to say only 4 million, but it is relatively small compared
6 to the total you're spending. And in this case Teton
7 loses about 3 million relative to what they would have
8 gotten if they're using their index value properly
9 calculated currently.
10 The last column is there just for reference. It
11 turns out we were trying to do something else but we
12 realized there was a mistake there and so it turns out
13 that T, U, V, those three columns are exactly the same as
14 D, E and F.
15 So let's try this again. If you go to the next
16 handout, a smaller spreadsheet on the front of an
17 8-and-a-half-by-11 piece, what you want to do is look at
18 columns D, E, and F, and columns D, E and F shows what
19 happens if you were to take Teton out of the index,
20 compute a statewide base on the remaining 22 counties and
21 then give Teton a 41 percent increase which is what their
22 old indexation was relative to the old statewide base when
23 you do the WCLI the way it is normally done.
24 And funding only goes up by -- increases by
25 about $4 million -- actually 717 to 723, so about $6
239
1 million -- so there's one mistake on there, and dock me
2 for that -- but Teton is about the same.
3 So it actually increases by about 5.7 million
4 relative to using a WCLI as it is now. Teton doesn't lose
5 anything because 101.41 is the multiplier being used to
6 multiply the baseline funding. Everybody else has gotten
7 more money.
8 This is not strictly cost based. It looks like
9 a really convenient number, the solution is only about 5.7
10 million higher. The reason it is not strictly cost based
11 is because the index has been artificially adjusted so
12 that the poorer districts don't get a number that's too
13 low.
14 On the handout where we say Wyoming and WCLI
15 Teton Impact Analysis, it says Additional Handout and it
16 has something next to it that says column.R. You can get
17 rid of that column.R. The first bullet point will be
18 Teton Impact Analysis, if you've found that, and then the
19 next bullet underneath that, the little dot thing says
20 Additional Handout, and something there, column R, ignore
21 that thing. Another typo from this morning.
22 What this says is Teton is taken out of the
23 index. Then we compute a statewide index for everybody
24 else and then we give Teton 141, total funding to all
25 districts is increasing by about 5.7 million. Teton is
240
1 losing nothing and you will note still the next highest
2 index value is 105.9.
3 So the relative index adjustment for Teton to
4 the next highest is still about the same. It is a little
5 bit off, but not much.
6 You should also note even with this messing
7 around with the numbers there are some counties that have
8 index values less than a hundred which means the district
9 in them or the districts would lose money relative to the
10 base. That's where some of the hold harmless funds come
11 from that are computed at the bottom of column E on the
12 smaller handout.
13 All right. Does anybody have any questions
14 before -- yeah.
15 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, you said
16 this wasn't strictly cost based, this business of doing
17 Teton in a separate version.
18 DR. GODBY: So I'm not recommending that
19 you do that.
20 SENATOR SCOTT: Let's think about that a
21 minute because it strikes me that it is pretty well cost
22 based. It seems to me the Court was right when you come
23 to Teton County. You need to do something special there
24 because you can't eat the amenities. You have to have the
25 money to pay your bills. So in order to live you do need
241
1 the higher funding in Teton County.
2 But it strikes me that they missed the other
3 part of that, that in the counties with the lower index,
4 in order to attract the employees that you need to the
5 counties to make up for all of the other factors that are
6 causing their housing costs to be lower because of the
7 cost of living that you do need to pay the extra, and that
8 the MAP approach works for the other counties, and is much
9 more in line with the cost of trying to do business in
10 those counties where you have to attract as you do
11 professionals who are mobile between districts and between
12 states, too, for that matter.
13 And really, this is a much more of a cost-based
14 system than following the same index strictly for
15 everybody.
16 DR. GODBY: That's right. Some sort of
17 adjustment has to be made. We're trying to figure out
18 what it is. The reason I said that's not cost based is
19 because Mary actually thought of this one, we just threw
20 it together, you know, no other reason than let's take
21 Teton out of the index, compute everything else and throw
22 Teton back in at the regular funding level they had when
23 you use the WCLI.
24 If somebody were to argue in front of a judge
25 that Teton's funding isn't staying the same as it should
242
1 have been had the WCLI been used, as they ruled on it
2 possibly before, I will leave that up to you and your
3 lawyers and if you were willing to pursue that, I'm not
4 saying that you couldn't. You're right, you could make
5 arguments that this is cost based to a degree.
6 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
7 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Scott.
8 SENATOR SCOTT: Refine it one more step.
9 It is not just that we have to treat Teton County
10 separately but for all of the counties that are above your
11 base you need to do some level of improvement because
12 they've got to pay those higher housing costs, and Teton
13 County is just the extreme case of that. Same reason
14 probably applies to Cheyenne.
15 But you still have to be competitive in the
16 market to get people to come to the other ones, so you
17 almost need an approach that separates and uses one
18 approach for those that are above and one for those that
19 are below your average.
20 DR. GODBY: Well, if you want to live with
21 this we can stop right here.
22 SENATOR SCOTT: I'm suggesting a
23 refinement on this.
24 DR. GODBY: You guys were hired to do that
25 kind of decision-making and I'll just throw this out as a
243
1 possible solution.
2 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: We have one more comment,
3 if we could. Representative McOmie, a question.
4 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Doctor, I would
5 like to ask you, do you think you would feel comfortable
6 in testifying that Teton is an outlier if you were going
7 to graph this out?
8 DR. GODBY: The short answer I think is
9 yes, and I think if we keep going you will see my
10 reasoning for it.
11 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Thank you.
12 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: But the other part of
13 that question I assume is could you then testify that it
14 is cost based on the approach that is -- right?
15 DR. GODBY: Somebody, right, could argue
16 is that my gut feeling versus do I have some hard data to
17 base that judgment on.
18 Maybe it is not necessarily -- it is definitely
19 the outlier in the sample because it defines the high end
20 of the range, right, and it is miles from the next one but
21 that's just the way things are. Let's keep coming back to
22 this idea of what you can do with these index values.
23 Well, let's think about what some other states
24 have done to make sure that no one, quote, loses in this
25 adjustment. So they do what you recall I said they do in
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1 that big, long table, is that some places make sure the
2 minimum level in the index is 1 and everybody is scaled
3 from that. So the minimum anybody could get is the
4 baseline funding allowed them.
5 So let's take the WCLI, scale it to set Niobrara
6 at 100 because if you look at -- go back to the long
7 table, if you look at column F and you look for Niobrara,
8 you will find that the value there, the index value is
9 87.5 based on the last four WCLI surveys. The average of
10 those four, let's boost that to a hundred and maintain the
11 proportionality with everybody else in the index. Teton's
12 index would go up to 161.4. You will see that on the long
13 spreadsheet in the columns G, I and J where it is titled
14 Lowest Equals the Base.
15 Now, this looks like a pretty successful way to
16 do things when you can say that nobody loses and everybody
17 gains or at least everybody but one. The problem with
18 this approach is what it does to the total amount of
19 funding. You're going to have to come up with about 60
20 million more dollars to fund education, so that's not
21 likely to happen either.
22 And the reason for this is that the MAP model,
23 the rest of the model you're using this for is calibrated
24 on a reference base that's not the lowest but the most
25 competitive market or the statewide average, depending
245
1 where that is. That's why that gets inflated.
2 I will turn to the page called WCLI conclusions.
3 The first bullet point is just stating the obvious, that
4 where consumption of goods occurs affects the value of the
5 consumption. If you want to buy something, the price of
6 it depends on where you're buying it.
7 That's a really important thing to remember
8 because these indexes, whether it is the federal consumer
9 price index or the Wyoming cost of living index, they work
10 with a set basket of good and they're measuring that set
11 basket of goods in one place and they were set up to
12 measure price change over time.
13 So when you look at the consumer price index,
14 that's looking at the whole United States and what they're
15 looking at is what is known as a longitudinal adjustment.
16 Basically those things that you aren't pricing, for
17 example, where you live and those sorts of things don't
18 change. What we're doing in Wyoming for this adjustment
19 is we're taking the same basket of goods and we're putting
20 it in a whole bunch of different communities. That's
21 changing their value. That's what we call a
22 cross-sectional adjustment.
23 That really undermines the validity of one of
24 these indexes. They were not designed to do that. All
25 right? And so the problem is that what we're doing is
246
1 we're taking the cost of the basket, conditional on the
2 surroundings being unchanged. That's the way it is
3 supposed to be used. And the way we're trying to do it is
4 let's take the cost of the basket and let's let the
5 surroundings change, too, but we won't price the value of
6 that change. It is going to screw things up.
7 If you include housing in particular, it has a
8 significant effect on the regional cost adjustment. We
9 can see this. And there's a whole bunch of different ways
10 to do things here. All of the computations here were done
11 including housing and you all recognize that this changed
12 a lot when the Court made the decision that you couldn't
13 drop housing from the index.
14 The bottom line -- and this goes back to Senator
15 Scott's comment -- is that the WCLI probably
16 overcompensates resort areas, in particular Teton County,
17 because people in Teton County are probably -- I mean, if
18 you talk to somebody in Teton, especially somebody whose
19 income is earned elsewhere, say from a stock portfolio or
20 something, that money doesn't go as far in Jackson as it
21 would in Laramie. They know that but they don't move to
22 Laramie. So they're willing to take some -- they're
23 willing to take that cost and still stay there.
24 And similarly, I'm sure that you will find some
25 people are willing to live in a resort area and find their
247
1 salary doesn't need to be compensated as much as the
2 measured cost of living needs to be in that area. You all
3 know that.
4 Similarly, if you go to a place that's pretty
5 remote or small, this is what Senator Scott was saying,
6 you've got to give them more money. So there is a
7 distortion when you use the WCLI.
8 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
9 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Scott.
10 SENATOR SCOTT: May I raise an issue at
11 this point? On the overcompensation side, I really wonder
12 if that isn't someplace we really need to listen very hard
13 to the Court because I thought they had a very good point,
14 that, yes, some people will say they will live in Teton
15 County knowing their money won't go as far providing they
16 have enough money to live on.
17 And in the ordinary middle class range of
18 salaries that you're talking about for teachers, the
19 trouble you get into is that you have got to pay them a
20 living wage, and if you don't, the amenities are all very
21 nice but they can't fund a family.
22 And you will have happen what I believe has
23 happened in Jackson, most of the experienced ones have to
24 depart for elsewhere because they can't afford it and you
25 really skew your teacher composition to the young that can
248
1 make sacrifices so they can enjoy the amenities because
2 they don't have the family responsibilities and you lose
3 that whole experience side.
4 So I really wonder if this overcompensation
5 resort area is accurate when you look at the
6 practicalities of it.
7 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Well, Senator Scott,
8 might there not also be the other balance that those with
9 considerable experience have purchased at a different time
10 and seen tremendous gain or they are not living in that
11 community of Jackson, they're selecting the cost of living
12 difference in the salary piece but actually living in
13 Afton or other surrounding areas or, as you say, they're
14 young and have multiple living situations that --
15 DR. GODBY: Madam Chairman, if you want to
16 know whether they're being overcompensated or not, take
17 the same person, offer them a salary in, say, Niobrara,
18 name it, and offer them the same salary in Jackson and let
19 them vote with their feet, which do they prefer.
20 That, I think -- that's what we want to kind of
21 get at -- and I'm going to come back to that -- why maybe
22 senior-level teachers are leaving Jackson. There could be
23 a ton of reasons. One could be they bought a house 20
24 years ago and they're just cashing out. We don't know.
25 So I'm going to suggest if you compensate --
249
1 given the fact that not everybody has the same
2 preferences, some people like mountains and like skiing
3 and other people don't, that you don't necessarily have --
4 since everybody is a little different, you don't
5 necessarily have to give everybody funds so that they can
6 buy the same basket.
7 I'll come back to that because I'm not sure the
8 basket is actually the same in every place. But the WCLI
9 conclusions on the next page, you're asking the WCLI, the
10 Wyoming cost of living index, to do something it can't do.
11 What you want when you make this sort of adjustment is you
12 want to find something that proxies the true local
13 variations in the cost of education, and in particular the
14 input costs.
15 And this I don't think measures it, and even if
16 it hits Jackson right on the head and is exactly right,
17 Senator Scott has already argued it is wrong then for some
18 other parts of the state. So, you know, we have to worry
19 about that.
20 So then the next page titled WCLI Improvements.
21 I'm going to suggest and you will see in the report that
22 you get that I'm going to suggest a number of improvements
23 that should be made to the WCLI regardless of whether you
24 use it for school finance. And the reason I say that is
25 because we've all heard the election candidates speak and
250
1 regional development has become a huge issue. The Wyoming
2 cost of living index is a necessary part of understanding
3 how development goes on in the state and it is a really
4 important set of data that you should have if you want to
5 look at that sort of issue.
6 So regardless of whether you choose to use this
7 or not, I think the State should seriously consider, if
8 they're serious about regional development, that they
9 improve the index. And I will go further and say that the
10 problems with the index now are not the responsibility of
11 the people in Cheyenne but the responsibility of the
12 resources they've been given to estimate what they've been
13 asked to estimate.
14 So what I would suggest that needs to be
15 improved in the WCLI, and this could help school finance,
16 first of all, what I'll call a coarseness problem; and
17 secondly, that I think there's probably some bias in how
18 you measure the different components in the index, for
19 example, housing, et cetera.
20 So let me just continue on on the next page with
21 Wyoming cost of living improvements. What I have called
22 the coarseness problem we talked about the last time we
23 met in Afton; in fact, Afton is the issue. Lincoln County
24 Number 2 currently sits -- well, Afton in particular, the
25 schools there sit very close to Teton County and the
251
1 prices in that area reflect their proximity, and yet they
2 get adjusted using the Kemmerer value.
3 If you should look at a map of Lincoln County,
4 it is long and narrow. Kemmerer sits down in almost the
5 extreme southeast corner and Afton sits up in almost the
6 extreme north. Just driving to get to Afton last time,
7 Justin Ballard and I, you know, noticed it is obvious to
8 see that you could almost divide that county in half and,
9 in fact, there was a recent court decision about selection
10 of juries that said that you can take half of the jury
11 pool from the south and half from the north and use them
12 for trials in the north only using northern people and
13 southern people for the southern half trials.
14 So where all of the other counties have sample
15 sites that are either central or maybe one, Kemmerer sits
16 on the extreme end of the county and adjusting parts of
17 the county for that messes up what most people would think
18 is a reasonable adjustment. So minimally I would say that
19 you need to add one more sample site to the WCLI.
20 Now, it is important to remember when this first
21 started, this whole issue of school finance, the WCLI only
22 had 15 sample sites and it used to be that they created an
23 index number for the missing eight counties, just
24 professional judgment, what do I think this is like. It
25 was kind of almost an art.
252
1 And so they went to at least 23. They got 27
2 sites because occasionally you will find a county that
3 has -- the rule, I believe, is sample the largest center
4 in the county and if there's a second center with 85
5 percent of the population of the largest center, you
6 sample that one as well and you population weight the
7 basket average.
8 I would suggest that you add Afton. Even though
9 it is not 85 percent of the size of Kemmerer, it has grown
10 substantially in the last census period, the last four
11 years, and it is currently larger than a number of current
12 sample sites. It can be sampled, there is enough data
13 there to do it, and that -- you know, Justin and I
14 actually drove around town before the last meeting to see
15 if you could do it, and sure enough, there's an appliance
16 store, there's things that are elsewhere. You could do it
17 there.
18 I would suggest further you are going to need to
19 look at other counties that may also have this problem.
20 I'm not sure they do at least to the degree that Lincoln
21 County does, but this is what I'm calling the coarseness
22 problem. The sample sites are just -- there's too few of
23 them. Minimally one too few, possibly a certain number
24 too few.
25 The second problem I'm going to talk about is
253
1 the WCLI bias problem. When they take their 140 goods and
2 they price them, they set -- they sort them out, as you
3 know, into a series of categories: Housing,
4 transportation, personal and recreational, I believe,
5 medical. And they weight the prices of certain parts of
6 the basket based on what the federal consumer price index
7 uses, and those are not necessarily reflective of Wyoming.
8 So the CPI weights probably don't represent
9 Wyoming consumption patterns and, in particular, the
10 consumer price index is sampled, the smallest sample area
11 and it only happens in some parts of the United States and
12 not in the western region, is a place of 30,000 people.
13 We're talking about sampling some places in Wyoming with
14 1200 people.
15 Nationally the smallest parts -- the closest
16 places that are sampled for the federal index are near
17 Greeley, the population base of over 50,000 and that
18 accounts for only 6 to 7 percent of the federal sample.
19 So the weights that are coming out of the federal numbers
20 that are being used in the Wyoming cost of living index
21 reflect urban area values. And the problem with that is
22 that housing prices in particular are higher nationally in
23 more urban areas.
24 And you will see this in the report, if you
25 stratify the federal sample and you start looking at the
254
1 smallest places, housing costs fall from about 41 percent
2 of the total to about 34 percent. If that trend is true
3 for Wyoming, then Wyoming's weight is too high on housing.
4 So my recommendation, then, is that if Wyoming
5 wants to be serious about its cost of living index, they
6 need to do a consumer expenditure survey which is the
7 other half of how the federal government does their
8 consumer price index.
9 They first do a consumer expenditure survey. It
10 is a big one and it is expensive, and they ask people
11 across the country what they buy. They actually go
12 shopping with a diary and they break down their total
13 expenditures based in the different categories and that's
14 how they get those numbers.
15 Why would we do this for Wyoming? Let's find
16 out what the Wyoming basket is. It is likely -- it is
17 possibly, let's not say likely yet, that it is different
18 from the national basket and this would be more accurate
19 for regional analysis.
20 Second thing with a survey like that, and this
21 came up the last time we talked, is that you could also
22 ask people when you went shopping how long did it take you
23 to get to your shopping center. We recognize that people
24 in Wyoming are going a long way sometimes to shop and
25 that's certainly a cost, although it is not monetary.
255
1 So there is a possibility here and people have
2 talked here that a travel cost adjustment could be made if
3 you had the information for different regions of how much
4 time they spend doing that.
5 I will leave that there and go to the next
6 improvement. The other source of bias in this basket --
7 and this is why I think even if we're sampling in Jackson
8 I'm uncertain that you're sampling the same set of goods
9 in Jackson as you are elsewhere -- is that the current
10 sampling methodology doesn't really control for quality
11 because they don't have the resources to do it.
12 When they go out and price the rents -- and it
13 is important to realize why they price rents. Instead of
14 pricing housing values, the house value in different
15 places has an asset value which is separate from what we
16 call its consumption value.
17 So what the federal system does and also what
18 the Wyoming cost of living index does is price rents to
19 get just at the consumption value and not at an asset
20 value. If you were to price housing prices in Jackson,
21 you would have to figure out how much are people spending
22 because of the services they're going to get from that
23 house and how much are they spending because they think
24 that they're going to be able to turn it over in five
25 years and make a fortune.
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1 And we talked a little bit about this the last
2 time we met. The cost of living index currently done
3 controls for a large part of that by looking at rents.
4 Although certainly if somebody bought a house in Jackson
5 and they turn around and rent it, they want to capture
6 some of the cost they put into it to buy it in the first
7 place. So even by doing that you're probably not
8 completely getting rid of the asset value.
9 On top of that, it is not clear to me the houses
10 they're comparing in Rawlins, Jackson and Lusk and
11 anywhere else are the same quality of houses. I don't
12 know whether they're the same size. I don't know how old
13 they are. I don't know what additional benefits they have
14 to them. Does this one have a dishwasher and that one
15 not? Does this one have a 40-year-old wringer washer and
16 this one has a brand-new -- it is not clear that's being
17 controlled for. And that's not the fault of the people in
18 Cheyenne. It is the fact they don't have the money to pay
19 the people to actually control for that.
20 And, in fact, there are ways of getting around
21 that. The feds for the CPI actually are very careful
22 about this and they don't sample housing as much as they
23 sample other goods. And the reason for that is housing
24 prices don't change as often and they actually find a
25 panel of people, both renting and houses on the market,
257
1 and they go and they talk to those people and they've
2 already seen the house and they've already said this is a
3 thousand feet on the main floor and is brick and was built
4 in 1970 or close to it, so the capital stock you're
5 comparing is similar.
6 If the housing stock in Jackson is much better
7 than it is elsewhere, that would drive the housing price
8 up. You just would be willing to live in a nicer place
9 and pay more for it, everything else equal.
10 I don't know how much that is affecting the cost
11 of living index, but it is probably affecting it some.
12 Another thing that actually accounts for about 10 percent
13 of the sample as it is currently weighted is automobile
14 prices and they're only sampled in one place in the state.
15 And because of that, it is as if it is presumed that
16 everybody in Wyoming travels to Cheyenne to buy a car --
17 MR. MCVEIGH: Madam Chairman, Rob, I'm
18 kind of curious about this one because as I understand the
19 index, for the comparative side we considered automobiles
20 uniform across the state and for the inflation measure
21 adjust by CPI, so I guess I'm --
22 DR. GODBY: What I'm saying is you
23 shouldn't do that. Likely there's variation across the
24 state in automobile prices. We don't know that because
25 we're not checking. Like I said to you before, this is
258
1 not, you know, harsh judgment or anything on how things
2 are done. This is just -- it is really tough to measure
3 automobile prices because, first of all, the price on the
4 window is not necessarily the price anybody is going to
5 pay.
6 And so when the feds do this, they actually get
7 into a whole number of things. They talk to dealerships
8 and find out what the average markup is for the last month
9 from invoice. It is not clear to me you can do that in
10 Wyoming, but it would be nice if you could.
11 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: On new cars, all
12 cars, the county treasurer -- pardon me, Madam Chairman --
13 it is available.
14 DR. GODBY: I guess you're right. We
15 could find exactly what they paid, at least with some lag,
16 two months possibly, the length of time they need to
17 report how much they paid for it and pay the sales tax.
18 Similarly, there's other goods that need to be
19 quality controlled, so I will go to the next page and I'll
20 say after you spend all of the money to make the WCLI
21 better, it is possible it won't do anything for you for
22 school finance. And it is still likely to be biased
23 because of these amenity values. So I would suggest that
24 this methodology can be considered to define the maximum
25 compensation you need to give to resort districts,
259
1 specifically Teton, and the very minimum that a
2 disadvantaged area -- I'm going to call it
3 disadvantaged -- a lower indexed valued area needs to get.
4 So what else could you do? And it is not clear
5 that you could do this stuff, and I know that MAP thought
6 about this. What you would really like to do is define an
7 index that controls for amenities and disamenity
8 influences and captures the actual input costs. It would
9 actually take into account the substitution that people
10 are willing to make to live in a nicer place but be able
11 to buy less stuff.
12 And there's two ways that have been suggested in
13 literature to do that. One is called the hedonic wage
14 index and the other is the production function approach.
15 Both of these are statistical estimations, and in
16 particular the one state on that long table of states and
17 what they do that I haven't mentioned is Texas.
18 Texas currently puts together what they call a
19 cost of education index using a statistical estimation.
20 They're currently reconsidering how they do that and one
21 of the reconsiderations is using what is known as a
22 hedonic wage index. And they've actually constructed four
23 different estimates and they're looking to see how the
24 indexes vary by method. And so it hasn't been decided
25 exactly how they're going to measure things, but they're
260
1 looking at alternative ways. They are the only state
2 currently that does this. We can come back to that.
3 But if you want to do this hedonic method, what
4 you do is basically ask what influences somebody's
5 willingness to accept a salary offer. And you can look at
6 different things. First of all, are you paying the
7 teacher for their qualifications and education? So that
8 would influence what they're willing to accept.
9 Secondly, you might consider the district's
10 employment conditions: Are the classes smaller? Are the
11 facilities better? Are there more possibly
12 English-proficient students in a certain area so a teacher
13 is going to have less difficulty that way?
14 You can talk about district characteristics; for
15 example, how far is this district from the nearest
16 metropolitan area, from the nearest national park, how far
17 is it from the nearest mountain pass to try to get an
18 idea? And this is going to get at statistically
19 estimating those sorts of effects. You could see how
20 being closer to a mountain area or the national parks,
21 Teton and Yellowstone, how that could affect somebody's
22 willingness to accept a salary offer.
23 Finally, you can look at regional differences in
24 the labor market, how tight it is, if you don't offer that
25 teacher enough will they go become something else in the
261
1 local area because they have the qualifications to do it.
2 Wealth and income.
3 What you do is make a statistical estimate of
4 all of those things, how they affect the average wage
5 accepted, and then you would create an index by plugging
6 in each district's characteristics. And, you know, how
7 you actually construct the index is beside the point. You
8 can do it and that would allow you to predict the wages
9 required in different places which would allow you to
10 predict the regional cost variation as needed.
11 Some of the disadvantages, if we go to the next
12 page on hedonics, first of all, there's data limitations.
13 In order to properly do this you should use national data,
14 get the largest pool possible. Texas has tried to do it
15 with just Texas data and I've asked Mary if it is possible
16 to get just Wyoming data just to see what happens.
17 The bottom line is an index done this way will
18 make a prediction about the minimum salary you can offer
19 somebody in a certain district and get them to accept it
20 based on past things.
21 Now, there is another problem with this, and
22 that's what is known as endogenaity, or I think you've
23 referred to it as circularity previously. If the
24 administrators knew that this is how regional adjustments
25 were done, could they make discretionary decisions to
262
1 influence the index?
2 I don't know. Theoretically it is possible, but
3 how would you do it? Well, let's imagine that you're a
4 poor area and you want to really boost the cost of
5 salaries in your area. So you're not getting a lot of
6 money to begin with. What do you do? You boost all of
7 the salaries. You only get so much money. Where is the
8 money going to come from? Are we going to get rid of a
9 few teachers and then boost everybody else's salary? I
10 don't know. How much could they get away with that?
11 If you were going to create an index like this
12 you could certainly do a sensitivity analysis to see how
13 much messing with the data you could monkey with it to see
14 how the index changes if, say, certain districts decided
15 to change the salaries paid.
16 If you could look at the data currently, since I
17 doubt any of the administrators are thinking they could do
18 that with the data, you might be able to at least get an
19 estimate. So I'll argue that this is one statistical way
20 to at least get at the question of how much do you need to
21 give people. And that would be maybe the low end in a
22 place like Jackson and it might be the high end in a place
23 like -- on the other end of the scale.
24 So we would have two estimates. We would have
25 the WCLI estimate and we would have the statistical
263
1 estimate, and we could at least do testing with that.
2 There's a third way called a production function
3 approach. We'll not talk too much about it. It attempts
4 to estimate the cost of production of education services
5 taking into account a lot of district -- my first spelling
6 mistake -- district size and characteristics. And what it
7 does is it comprehensively estimates the small school
8 effect and the input cost effect together.
9 If you were to do it that way, and it is a
10 pretty controversial method, it would require that you
11 first of all get over that, but secondly, you would be
12 estimating the small school effect and the input cost
13 variation together. So both of those things would be
14 solved.
15 So what are the problems with these alternative
16 methods, the ones available? I haven't talked about a
17 wage index and the reason I haven't talked about it is
18 because lots of reports have already stated you can't do
19 it in Wyoming. The data doesn't exist. There's not
20 enough people to create a data set that's useful.
21 And furthermore, the composition of people
22 across the state and what they work in would make a mess
23 of the index. You wouldn't understand whether the numbers
24 and how they're changing in the index were changing
25 because of wage conditions or because of the types of
264
1 positions that they're in, the industries.
2 So I haven't spoken about that. I don't think
3 it can be done. Previous papers have said the same thing.
4 MAP has said that. Shelby Gerking told you that in 1999,
5 I think, at least when he spoke to the Joint
6 Appropriations Committee. I'm not going to think about
7 it.
8 So there's a couple of statistical methods or
9 you can stick to the WCLI in some form. The problem with
10 these alternative statistical methods is that they require
11 a rigorous statistical analysis. They're not very
12 transparent. If you show the people the actual -- how the
13 black box works that generates these numbers, most people
14 aren't going to understand what goes on inside it. And
15 that often means that they aren't willing to accept it.
16 Now the funny thing about that, certain
17 methodologies once they're used become accepted. You've
18 already been told today that Wyoming is kind of path
19 breaking. This could be another way that they did that.
20 The CPI -- the indexation using the CPI at one
21 time in things like Social Security at one time wasn't
22 accepted. Indexation is now accepted regardless of the
23 bias it creates.
24 Regional adjustments using an index like that
25 are not nearly as acceptable yet, but they're more
265
1 acceptable than, say, some of these statistical methods.
2 It is important to realize that at least hedonics are
3 being used now in the consumer price index. That's how
4 they price computers because a year from now you can't
5 find the same computer in the store as last year. In
6 fact, it is probably a better computer and it is less
7 money. They estimate how the different features of the
8 computer affect its price. And that's how they figure out
9 how the old computer, even though it doesn't exist, what
10 that would have cost if it was still on the market given
11 how it performs relative to the rest of the market.
12 So hedonics are being used in more and more
13 places. It is a possible way also to get around the
14 housing problem in the WCLI. Although, again, that would
15 be more controversial, especially because of how big it is
16 in the consumer price index and the WCLI. Computers are
17 one thing. Housing is something else.
18 The final thing I'll say is that the funding
19 formula should be designed comprehensively. And I'll just
20 hold up this little picture that I drew with a parabola
21 and a line going through it. And this is the sense of the
22 WCLI distortion that we think we have.
23 Places like Jackson need to be compensated for
24 the fact that things are more expensive there relative to
25 Laramie and Cheyenne and things in the center. A dot in
266
1 the center, if you imagine that's Laramie and Cheyenne, if
2 you imagine that things are less expensive to the left of
3 the page and more expensive to the right of the page, the
4 necessary adjustment maybe is the parabola and the reason
5 we do that is places like Niobrara probably need,
6 everything else equal, more money to hire teachers just to
7 attract them there.
8 I've drawn the two sides at about the same
9 height. It is not necessarily true that's the case, but
10 it is the case that you probably need to give them more
11 than Laramie and Cheyenne. For example, if you look at
12 the data, MAP's data that looked at statewide average
13 beginning salaries, in the model there was originally
14 proposed -- the beginning salary was Laramie and
15 Cheyenne's, and that's approximately, I think, 24,400
16 right now. The statewide average is 25,350 approximately
17 right now.
18 So what does that tell us? It tells us that
19 there's some areas in the state that need to give more
20 money because it is more expensive to live and it tells us
21 there's places in the state that need to give more money
22 because they're just more remote and they have to
23 compensate people for the fact that they otherwise
24 wouldn't want to be there.
25 So that's what we're after, is something that
267
1 gets us this parabola shape. And I'll suggest that
2 arrowed line, the WCLI, that's what the WCLI is actually
3 doing. So the WCLI -- I mean, you can argue about where
4 the points of these lines are relative to everything else,
5 but this is the problem: The WCLI is probably, as it
6 exists, the wrong way to go about doing this.
7 And that's the end of my presentation except for
8 one other thing. I should say -- I lied to you there.
9 One thing that I'm kind of concerned about in this model
10 is that you were presented originally with a comprehensive
11 model and the adjustments in that model were all
12 considered as part of the whole package.
13 Now the model is being torn apart and I'm being
14 asked to look at the regional cost adjustment. Somebody
15 else is thinking about a new small schools adjustment.
16 And then there's an existing model that was baselined to
17 certain assumptions.
18 One possible bias in there: When they moved
19 from the Laramie/Cheyenne base in the regional cost
20 adjustment to the statewide average, the Laramie/Cheyenne
21 base was consistent with the beginning salary you used in
22 the personnel thing. They said, "This is the most
23 competitive area in the state. We will base the regional
24 adjustment next to that."
25 After the court ruling, just in order to get
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1 people some more money, they said, "Let's use the
2 statewide average salary and let's go to the statewide
3 average in the index."
4 When you use the statewide average, you are
5 already getting some regional effects in those things.
6 You're using something that already has some form of
7 regional adjustment in it based on the discretionary
8 decisions of the administrators in those areas. And now
9 you're using the WCLI to dump something else on top of it.
10 And my sense is that if the true adjustment
11 that's required is this kind of U-shaped thing, the
12 current salary offers are being made in the necessary
13 direction you're offering more people in remote places
14 more money, you're offering people in resort areas more
15 money, and the WCLI is actually offsetting those efforts
16 if you impose that on top of it.
17 And so this is what I would call an
18 unintentional double counting of factors. And when you
19 start taking apart a comprehensive model and monkeying
20 with the bits and sticking it back together, bolting them
21 back on, it is possible that you're going to undermine the
22 reasonableness of the model because the base assumptions
23 that were used to set up the whole thing are being
24 eliminated so you can get what you want when you take it
25 into little pieces.
269
1 So I'm concerned about that. I don't know where
2 that's going to go, and possibly MAP and Jim Smith can
3 talk about that. But it is something that should be
4 considered as people start making not just this adjustment
5 but other adjustments across the board.
6 And with that, I guess I'm finished.
7 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: That was a lot to
8 process.
9 Thoughts, comments?
10 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, more
11 interesting, we have got to do something specific one way
12 or the other. You've looked at all of these issues and
13 thought about it quite a bit. What do you recommend that
14 we do?
15 DR. GODBY: I'm going to have to take the
16 Fifth on that because right now I can't say that. I
17 haven't been able to estimate the other things. I don't
18 know how acceptable they're going to be to the Court. You
19 put some hold harmless legislation into this.
20 What I'm going to suggest you do is minimally
21 start looking at how the WCLI should be adjusted or at
22 least how you use it. What I didn't think was -- what I
23 thought was probably a red herring, something to
24 demonstrate characteristics of this method, it seems that
25 you're interested in; the take Teton out, compute, 41
270
1 percent added on. It is not very expensive.
2 I didn't really dream of that -- and in fact,
3 Mary only thought of that a few days ago when I asked for
4 only 25 percent increase just to see how things worked.
5 Is that the simple magic bullet? I don't know.
6 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Scott.
7 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I suspect
8 there isn't a magic bullet, but what I'm starting to think
9 is I think this parabola, this last diagram you gave us,
10 makes a lot of sense in terms of explaining the reality of
11 what is going on here.
12 And what I'm starting to do is say, okay, how
13 can we adjust the way we use this thing to get a funding
14 system that is closer to approximating the parabola than
15 the WCLI. And I suspicion the one that cuts Jackson
16 back -- and I think we're really talking about Jackson. I
17 don't think we see that much effect in the other so-called
18 resort areas in the state. 90 percent of what we're
19 talking about is Jackson here.
20 If we cut them back we will run into trouble
21 with the Court. But bringing the other side of it up, the
22 Niobraras and the other districts up to something that
23 really is a better approximation of their costs, is
24 something we ought to be able to do. And that's why I was
25 particularly interested in the throw Teton County out or
271
1 do it two different ways and take the better of them,
2 something like that as a better approximation of what the
3 real costs are.
4 DR. GODBY: And again, you could make that
5 argument, if you were to argue that Jackson is the outlier
6 and really doesn't belong in the set, and so you take the
7 statewide average from the other 22 counties because
8 they're much more alike and then we make an adjustment for
9 Jackson separately.
10 It makes sense to me, and it probably makes
11 sense to you, and likely hopefully not, but you could end
12 up in court and hopefully you can convince a judge that it
13 makes sense to him as well.
14 If in the intervening period some statistics are
15 done as backup evidence to say this is a pretty good deal
16 for Jackson and this is what we need to do for the other
17 places, for example, some statistical estimations or just
18 testimony from the principals involved, the people that
19 make the hiring decisions and they say, "This is what we
20 need. This is what we have to do. I'm not just giving
21 these guys a boatload of money because I'm a generous
22 guy," that might back up our argument.
23 And so like I said, there is the second part of
24 the report that will be done hopefully in June. Assuming
25 the data is available, you will get something that might
272
1 provide that evidence.
2 So I suppose if you were willing to go that
3 route, you know, basically what the take Jackson out,
4 readjust the index, throw Jackson back in at 41 percent
5 does is it holds Jackson harmless and it boosts everybody
6 else up, and then there's a few people in there held
7 harmless as well relative to the current funding.
8 It would be interesting to see how it will play
9 out with the other adjustments you're already considering.
10 I mean, you know, this is a comprehensive package and all
11 of these adjustments are going to end up at the end of the
12 day with one big number for each district.
13 So again, this is part of the problem of
14 monkeying around with one and not really considering what
15 it is doing with the others. So that's something that
16 needs to be considered in a more comprehensive way.
17 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Scott.
18 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I'm
19 beginning to think -- we're talking about the way we ought
20 to go here. But I do think, for instance, your hedonic
21 method you talked about, if you were practical, might
22 produce something that was a closer approximation to the
23 real cost curve, but, my God, talking about complexity,
24 you know, I think that -- and problems of not enough data
25 due to our small numbers, I think that was considered
273
1 previously and probably rejected for good reason as just
2 not being practical given our circumstances.
3 So -- and, Madam Chairman, I think we ought to
4 be very careful. His point on how it fits in with the
5 rest of the model is well taken, because with the
6 complexity of this thing and the ability of it to produce
7 unexpected and unintended consequences, I think you have
8 to look at all of the adjustments as a package and say,
9 okay, does it seem to make sense, what it is doing?
10 That's one of the reasons we're in trouble now, we hadn't
11 done that.
12 So I would urge us to take a look at the throw
13 Jackson out as an outlier, compute it without them and put
14 them back in at the higher number and maybe do some of
15 that -- there's a couple other counties on the high side,
16 although they're not in Jackson's league. I think that's
17 much more productive than trying to do a whole new method
18 of working.
19 DR. GODBY: Well, while you did that I
20 would -- I mean, to be honest with you, you also would
21 have to give Mary Byrnes a raise because she was the
22 person who thought of that.
23 The one thing about the adjustment, when you
24 said we might have to put some other stuff in the index,
25 they're not really higher than the statewide base and, in
274
1 fact, they're as high above it as the others are. So I
2 would argue you don't need to do that. And, in fact, if
3 there's any outliers left in the set, they're down at the
4 bottom and not near the middle.
5 With respect to the hedonics and how that might
6 play out, I was talking to a few other people today and I
7 was talking to them about it before. What I would see
8 that happening, probably about two years from now I would
9 be called to testify on behalf of the State, you would get
10 another expert on behalf of the State to say this method
11 was great and there would be the plaintiffs with their
12 experts saying this method is garbage and then it would be
13 up to the judge again to decide this.
14 They wouldn't be able to say this isn't cost
15 based because they're all using cost data, I would bet.
16 I'm not a legal expert, by any means, but at the same time
17 we're back to what happened with the WCLI and the judgment
18 that housing should be included; somebody who maybe is an
19 expert in that area was asked to make a decision about it
20 and they did and now we're left to pick up the pieces.
21 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman, I
22 was just going to make the statement, Madam Chairman, that
23 with the parabola we have the same situation. I mean,
24 Niobrara up in this area, that's not cost based.
25 DR. GODBY: I'm sorry?
275
1 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: The court
2 wouldn't determine that was cost based if you go with the
3 parabola.
4 DR. GODBY: Unless you develop some data
5 that that's the true nature of the costs, and that's where
6 the statistical estimation might be.
7 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: It may or may not
8 play out that way.
9 DR. GODBY: You're right. You also talk
10 to the people involved. When the statewide average is
11 higher than what is considered the competitive market, it
12 is not because they're paying everybody in Jackson more
13 and they're paying everybody else less.
14 The counties with index numbers lower than 1
15 outnumber the counties with index numbers higher than 1,
16 so it looks like in practice there is an additional amount
17 being paid on salaries to attract people to otherwise less
18 attractive places. And so maybe that's your evidence.
19 I'm not sure.
20 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Dr. Godby, this is a lot
21 to process, but let me ask you this: If we were to move
22 in this direction and perhaps proceed with the discussion
23 you've been having where you would take Teton out, compute
24 the rest, put Teton back in at 141, that gives us a basis
25 at this point in time.
276
1 But how do we move forward with that? Is this a
2 fluid or dynamic sort of measurement that we must adjust
3 in the future and do we have a way of doing that or does
4 it become a base? I'm having trouble visualizing how we
5 move forward, then, through the next ten years.
6 DR. GODBY: Well, let's imagine that we
7 then do more WCLIs in the future and we find out that
8 Teton gets up to 150. Using the same methodology, you
9 could say take Teton out, compute the average, give
10 everybody a number, give Teton not 141 percent more but
11 150 percent more. I mean, that could be the stated
12 method, that you're going to hold Teton harmless and work
13 with everybody else. And that would be based on the most
14 current estimates using the WCLI.
15 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And if we were to do
16 that, would you recommend that the refinements that you've
17 outlined in this -- in these slides or this presentation
18 need to happen to the WCLI?
19 DR. GODBY: I think they need to happen
20 regardless. I think that that data is just too important
21 to not clean it up and to get as close to the truth with
22 it as you can.
23 That's what you use when you take the incomes
24 across the state to try to figure out regional development
25 questions. That's what you use to figure out how far a
277
1 dollar goes in Laramie versus Jackson, and if you have a
2 misestimate of that, you're not quite getting at what you
3 really want to know.
4 So regional development policy is going to
5 require good data, and I would say that this is, you know,
6 the one half of the essential data you need. The other
7 half is the wealth and income numbers that you get in
8 different areas.
9 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Do we have any estimates
10 what the cost figure would be to improve that -- to make
11 these changes to the WCLI?
12 MR. MCVEIGH: Madam Chairman, to add the
13 town of Afton to the survey, very minimal. That would
14 entail just hiring an enumerator in that area. We would
15 figure probably to the maximum, maybe 1500 per year.
16 The other improvements, the automobile sample, I
17 don't know. That, again, we would have to look into that
18 because that would be extensive. We wouldn't know really
19 how we would go about pricing used and new automobiles and
20 getting some type of consistency across the board so it is
21 something we would have to look into and report back.
22 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Those were two of the
23 issues.
24 MR. MCVEIGH: Two of the issues, right.
25 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Representative McOmie.
278
1 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman,
2 last fall when we were hearing the presentation of MAP on
3 their -- when they were gathering all of the information,
4 they didn't have the spreadsheets done, I brought up this
5 issue of Jackson as the outlier at that time and the
6 state's lead attorney came over during the break and told
7 me that we probably should pursue that but we never got
8 the opportunity to go beyond that because they were going
9 to do these studies and things.
10 I don't know if that carries any weight or not,
11 but I always thought that this is reasonable and I always
12 thought Courts were probably reasonable, although
13 sometimes given the court decisions we weren't sure.
14 If, in fact, Jackson is held harmless and we
15 could have got away with that with 2 million bucks four
16 years ago, and the other districts feel that it is -- the
17 method is reasonable, I don't know who would raise the
18 issue. You think the Court is going to review everything
19 we do or is somebody going to have to take it to court?
20 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: They have remained --
21 they have held jurisdiction. I guess I'm not necessarily
22 the one to answer that legal question, but they have held
23 jurisdiction to look at those pieces. I assume someone
24 must file, but that could be as small as one citizen, is
25 that correct, being a constitutional issue.
279
1 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
2 believe the Court said that if need be they would appoint
3 a special master such as they've done in the water suits
4 and some things like that. They are usually people known
5 for their ability to bring people together and do things,
6 so I don't know whether that would be good or bad, but
7 we've got to do something.
8 MR. MCVEIGH: Excuse me, Madam Chairman.
9 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Did you have another
10 comment on this before I took another question?
11 MR. MCVEIGH: I did, yes, ma'am.
12 Regarding the consumer expenditure survey that
13 Dr. Godby has recommended, I would agree wholeheartedly
14 with that. Again, coming up with an expenditure for doing
15 such, what that basically would entail would be somebody
16 taking a sample of people and they would carry around
17 basically a diary so there you have to probably look into
18 some form of compensation for the respondents. And I
19 wouldn't begin to have a guess on that, but I do think
20 that Wyoming's consumer expenditure patterns, if we agree
21 that the cost of living in Wyoming is different from what
22 the CPI measures, then we're using CPI measures actually
23 as far as the consumer expenditure weights go.
24 So I think to be consistent we do need to have
25 our own.
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1 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Representative Lockhart.
2 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
3 we have two experts here and I have a very fundamental
4 question and I think it will help us understand the
5 parabola here.
6 And that is, whatever we're paying in the
7 community with the least amenities, if they're filling
8 jobs, that's the cost of filling that job because I recall
9 they'll vote with their feet, they'll go somewhere else.
10 And the same is true in Jackson where if we don't pay them
11 a certain amount they're not going to be there.
12 So I think there's a way of establishing a cost
13 to full employment in the school system based on what we
14 have right now. We've got vacancies there and can't get
15 them. Isn't that in your expert opinion the real cost of
16 valuing all of these things? Everybody talks about the
17 mountains, but I happen to be a goose hunter and I would
18 love to live in Hawk Springs so I could go out every
19 morning and shoot goose. So I don't think we can measure
20 those amenities.
21 But we can -- we can't fill the jobs -- know
22 what the costs are to fill them. If we have vacancies,
23 we're not paying enough. If we've got them full, at least
24 that's an indication of that.
25 Then back to the cost of living adjustments, I
281
1 think we can do something there. What I got from the
2 Supreme Court decision, we had to look at housing and
3 medical, but it doesn't mean 100 percent of housing and
4 medical, because this parabola is taking care of the real
5 cost to fill the jobs.
6 Now that's -- my first question is if we've got
7 jobs to fill, isn't that the cost of filling them, in the
8 parabola?
9 And then the second one is do we have to use 100
10 percent factor on two adders that came from the Supreme
11 Court decision, medical and housing? And maybe there
12 you've got a percentage to be applied, a 10 percent as
13 opposed to 100 percent of those adders.
14 DR. GODBY: Let me answer your first
15 question. It is certainly the cost now, but if you
16 mandate that that's the way you measure it, you're going
17 to create a lot of incentives that you don't want to know
18 about. That might be what the person needs today and
19 those decisions were made without any kind of strategic
20 idea of how that's going to change things in the future.
21 But all of a sudden they start saying I'm making this
22 decision today and not only does it get me this person, it
23 also gets me some more stuff down the road, you might
24 start to create incentive effects you don't want to think
25 about.
282
1 Secondly, the price of that person today may not
2 necessarily be the price of the person you need tomorrow
3 because it is going to be somebody different who is voting
4 with their feet. When you take an average population and
5 you look at it, you're making a prediction about what we
6 could reasonably expect given past data.
7 And that's kind of what the hedonic method gets
8 at. It says taking all of the decisions in the past, can
9 we kind of estimate what it takes to get somebody in a
10 certain place. Hopefully that answers your first
11 question.
12 You're right, the data is where the answer is.
13 The question is how do you torture it to get the truth,
14 and then how do you implement that so you don't mess the
15 data up in the future? Because people realize they can
16 influence the data to their advantage.
17 Your suspected point about the weights in the
18 index, we've got two extreme cases right now. We have the
19 weight that the CPI uses and MAP's recommendation was
20 stick it at zero basically. Basically. They also
21 rejigged it to keep the proportions the same.
22 What you're suggesting is there a weight in the
23 middle? And one of the ways to get to that, for example,
24 is finding out what people actually spend on average for
25 housing in Wyoming. Do they spend more than 41 percent or
283
1 do they spend on average something else? And again, that
2 would be the consumer expenditure survey.
3 If you do anything other than that, then I guess
4 we're probably going to get into the position of so how
5 did you decide on that number and if it is not cost based,
6 then I guess somebody is going to have to defend it in a
7 way that's still reasonable.
8 So that's exactly what we're getting at is if
9 you use the WCLI, how are you going to weight it? And
10 when you think about these quality adjustments, that's
11 another kind of form of weighting. I mean, if the Jackson
12 place that's driving the market prices through the roof is
13 gigantic, it is a palace -- I'm not saying they are, but
14 what if it is compared to the place you're looking at in
15 Lusk, then it is, you know, despite the fact that there's
16 mountains out the front window and everything, you still
17 would pay more. Even if that house was in Lusk you would
18 pay more.
19 So that's an issue that would also be gotten at
20 if we -- and in a sense it would be kind of reweighting
21 the basket as well just by making sure we're not weighting
22 apples and oranges. We're actually looking at apples and
23 apples.
24 So I guess both of those issues come back to
25 looking at the WCLI more carefully and seeing where the
284
1 shortcomings are and saying how can we make this a better
2 set of data.
3 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: So where do you need to
4 go from here? What is the timeline? What kind of
5 direction do you need? What kind of decisions do you
6 need?
7 DR. GODBY: Well, you will get a report on
8 November 1st. I've already made a request for additional
9 data to start mucking around and see if we can come up
10 with estimates using alternative methods, or at least if
11 data exists to do it, whether you use a hedonic approach
12 or something else, just some sense of where prices are.
13 And I've asked for that and it looks like we're doing our
14 best to find it. So all of that said, that's probably
15 done.
16 The other thing I need to know, if you need to
17 know the costing of all of this stuff, that's not
18 necessarily to say WCLI recommendations, that's not
19 necessarily something I can answer right away. It is
20 something, though, we could probably come up with pretty
21 quickly. For example, there's a place -- Michigan State,
22 I believe, University does a lot of this sort of analysis
23 and it might even be as much as a phone call to them
24 saying, "What do you pay a respondent to do a similar
25 survey?" And then it is just a matter of doing a little
285
1 bit of statistics to figure out what a reasonably sized
2 sample is to answer the question that you want to ask.
3 And so those aren't really hard questions.
4 They're likely something that's doable and hopefully, I
5 think, pretty quickly.
6 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: I would assume, Committee
7 and Staff, that's a piece at some point in time we're
8 going to have to have to know what we're asking.
9 So that report will come November 1st. Other
10 pieces that you haven't commented on or have questions on
11 that -- and will you attempt to in that report add
12 anything to the statistical piece that would defend any of
13 that or is that a whole separate piece of work?
14 DR. GODBY: That's going to be the part
15 that's coming after the fact, and hopefully -- I mean,
16 given the amount of time that -- the report that you're
17 getting is just defending the assumptions and making some
18 suggestions that would regardless help us understand what
19 the true -- get a better idea of maybe what the true
20 numbers are.
21 With respect to that, you know, if the data were
22 to come tomorrow, I could likely put something together
23 for you the day after I finish writing the report which
24 might be November 2nd. It is already pretty lengthy, so
25 if you're looking for bedtime reading to put you to sleep,
286
1 this will probably do it.
2 SENATOR SCOTT: We're well supplied.
3 DR. GODBY: Yeah, I bet. But, you know,
4 those sorts of immediate estimates, I mean, they're not
5 something you take to the bank right away but just some
6 ideas, some tables of what the data says would be
7 interesting to see. And, you know, I'm not exactly -- I'm
8 probably covering ground that MAP did already. And I
9 don't know if that's the case either. I would have to
10 talk to Dr. Smith then and other people that were involved
11 in the report to see if this is the case.
12 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Committee, are you
13 comfortable to proceed with getting this report and moving
14 along this way?
15 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Can I make a
16 statement?
17 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Please.
18 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman,
19 one of the things that concerns me with the hedonic
20 approach is it takes it at a point in time. And one of
21 the issues we have in Teton County is we have folks move
22 there often because the mountains are beautiful, skiing is
23 great, folks are nice and love to party and in three years
24 they're gone because, you know, they couldn't find the
25 right guy, didn't want to live with three people --
287
1 talking about schoolteachers -- and every guy they dated
2 was a drunk and they wanted to move to a school in
3 Pennsylvania.
4 It works fine for a point in time, but what's
5 the longevity? There's a great deal of turnover because
6 of the lifestyle and I think they need to take that into
7 account also. I think they do, but I would certainly want
8 to see that taken into account.
9 DR. GODBY: In that sense, I mean, hedonic
10 method, especially using a sample size as small as Wyoming
11 would get a lot of bashing from people in the business of
12 looking at this stuff. I mean, in fact, if you read some
13 of the academic articles and also some of the
14 practitioners' articles about the different methodologies,
15 I mean, the arguments are pretty vicious.
16 In fact, there was a study -- actually it wasn't
17 a study, it was an overview that came from the National
18 Center for Education Statistics where there's like a book
19 that's about this thick as a primer on how to do regional
20 adjustments. And in the final conclusions the first thing
21 he says is that we've been way too vicious to each other,
22 it is almost as if there's something personal on the line,
23 and maybe there is because some of these people consult.
24 But I guarantee there would be somebody who would take
25 offense to an hedonic approach, especially given the data
288
1 limitations and the size of the sample in Wyoming. Even
2 the people who invented it suggest it has to be done with
3 a national sample and no such sample exists. It might
4 give you an informal sense of what the minimum number is.
5 You might want to put a confidence interval around it.
6 But if that number ends up coming in well above the WCLI,
7 then I'm wrong and that picture is wrong.
8 What I'm suggesting is that it likely comes in
9 somewhere below and that would just be one piece of
10 evidence that you could actually just ask, we have got the
11 data, why don't we just see if you're right about the
12 longevity of that estimate. You would have to do it again
13 and again and again to update those estimates. And of
14 course as soon as you start using Wyoming data, then the
15 whole incentive thing I talked about about strategically
16 making discretionary decisions starts to come into play
17 and so you could be in big trouble that way.
18 But it might be a way to go about defending a
19 decision, for example, like drop the outlier, compute the
20 base, get the numbers, hold them harmless. That's how I
21 would use it.
22 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Thank you.
23 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Dr. Godby, I would
24 certainly hate to subject this committee to vicious
25 arguments. We're just not accustomed to that at all, any
289
1 more than controversial issues.
2 Dr. Smith, I would like to take a 15-minute
3 break so I can get the blood sugar of this group back up
4 and have some snacks. Would that still work for you to do
5 your two --
6 DR. SMITH: Mine are going to take --
7 unless there's a lot of questions I don't anticipate, mine
8 will take ten minutes because I don't have a whole lot to
9 report.
10 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Okay. With that, let's
11 take a good 15-minute stretch.
12 (Recess taken 5:40 p.m. until 6:00 p.m.)
13 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Dr. Smith, if you would
14 bring us up to date on the reading assessment and
15 intervention piece, number 6 on our agenda, and where we
16 are on that, we would appreciate it.
17 DR. SMITH: Madam Chairman, members of the
18 committee, as I mentioned earlier, I really don't have a
19 lot to report. On the reading assessment intervention we
20 only really got started yesterday when we convened a group
21 of Wyoming principals and reading specialists from around
22 the state via teleconference and asked them a series of
23 questions about implementation of the program and the
24 costs associated thereof.
25 And although we had a fair amount of technical
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1 difficulty with the teleconferencing, I think from our
2 perspective we think it was quite successful.
3 At one level we got a lot of information. At
4 another level it added a certain amount of complexity to
5 what seemed like a fairly straightforward cast.
6 But I can sort of summarize for you kind of
7 where we are, our thinking at this point. It turns out
8 that there are lots of different reading approaches that
9 school districts are taking, but there's really only
10 about -- there's two that I will be able to tell you
11 exactly because the department knows. But right now this
12 is based on hearsay.
13 There are two types of reading approaches that
14 probably account for the bulk of the programs that school
15 districts are implementing and then there's probably
16 another two that will account for about half of the rest,
17 and then there's a whole bunch of homegrown and other
18 kinds of varieties that we can account for.
19 But the two that seemed to be the most prevalent
20 are Reading Recovery and CLIP, C L I P, and then there's a
21 third and maybe a fourth that are cousins to these. And
22 these are all based on variants of Reading Recovery. They
23 have a little bit different philosophy, a little bit
24 different approach, but the basic methodology comes from a
25 reading guru in New Zealand, Mary Claye, I believe, and
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1 all of these are variants of those.
2 So at some level that simplifies our task and
3 now we have a better idea of how districts are going about
4 assessing and intervening. The primary costs are
5 assessment which won't be that hard to quantify. It takes
6 about 20 minutes to -- on an average of 20 to 25 minutes
7 to assess kids to see where they are in their reading, and
8 apparently the methodology for that is pretty well
9 documented and there's a fair amount of research behind it
10 and most of them are using the same sorts of approaches.
11 The second is professional development, and here
12 there's some variability in who gets trained and how much
13 training, but it is a fairly expensive element in that it
14 takes a fair amount of training for teachers to implement
15 these programs.
16 The difference -- this I've gleaned from
17 conversations yesterday. The big differences in --
18 between, take Reading Recovery and CLIP is that Reading
19 Recovery, the pure version, the New Zealand version, it
20 requires -- it is very structured and it requires reading
21 specialists who deal almost solely with kids one on one or
22 one and small group.
23 CLIP uses specialists but also trains all of the
24 teachers in a school in the methodology. So it is a
25 little bit different. And the cost structure of the
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1 training is a little bit different. But I think, you
2 know, we'll be able to account for those.
3 Where the complexity comes in is -- let me just
4 say first that almost every person that we talked with was
5 very enthusiastic about the Enrolled Act 69 program. They
6 felt that they have been able to make some marked
7 improvement in their reading programs. Probably fairly
8 typical was what the folks from Laramie Number 1 told us
9 is that they several years ago, six years ago, I believe,
10 began implementing the CLIP program, but they could only
11 do it with Title I money so they were restricted to doing
12 it in Title I schools.
13 They are now with the state reading program able
14 to expand it to virtually all of their elementary schools.
15 But the complication in costing this out is how much of it
16 is paid for by other funding sources, and there's a whole
17 variety of funding sources, how much of it is paid for by
18 the -- is necessary to be paid for by the reading act --
19 the Enrolled Act 69 funding.
20 And then sort of the unanswerable question that
21 we asked districts is, well, if you had more money, what
22 would you do? And the answer is, well, we would involve
23 more kids, but the answer -- the question that we're not
24 going to be able to answer is how many more kids do you
25 really need to involve in intensive reading intervention.
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1 Reading Recovery, for example, says deal with the bottom
2 20 percent. There's always a bottom 20 percent.
3 So I guess, just in summary, that we're just
4 beginning on this -- well, I guess I could add another
5 thing. We are getting from -- we've asked each of the
6 districts to give us their cost estimates that -- the
7 question I asked them, when you decided to implement the
8 program you implemented, you went to somebody and looked
9 at programs and you asked them how much does it cost, and
10 in most cases they will have that from like the folks at
11 Reading Recovery, they will tell you here's the commitment
12 for teachers, here's the commitment for specialists,
13 here's the commitment for professional development. Here
14 are the materials cost and so forth. We can then apply
15 Wyoming cost factors to those and cost each of those out.
16 So in the end what I think we will be able to
17 give you is here's the range of interventions, here are
18 the range of costs and here's some average statistics, and
19 give you our best advice of whether the funds you have
20 provided through Enrolled Act 69, whether they're
21 adequate, if you need more, what more would buy. I mean,
22 that's our goal is what it will get.
23 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chairman.
24 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Yes.
25 SENATOR PECK: Is CLIP an acronym for
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1 words?
2 DR. SMITH: Let's see if I can remember.
3 Project is P, but I don't remember -- and L is literacy
4 and I is intervention, but I don't know what C is. There
5 was another one I heard yesterday is CELL, C E L L,
6 California something Literacy something -- I don't
7 remember -- but when you talk with a group of educators it
8 is all in acronyms and we write those all down and then go
9 out and do what you try to do is find somebody to
10 translate for us.
11 SENATOR PECK: Comprehensive or critical?
12 DR. SMITH: Any of the above. I'm not
13 sure. I'm sorry. I don't know.
14 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Was there any concern in
15 the group you spoke with that if this were funded in the
16 block grant that districts would not continue the reading
17 program or do you think there is sufficient language in
18 statute to ensure it will continue?
19 DR. SMITH: Madam Chairman, we did not ask
20 that question specifically, and that's -- that would be a
21 good one for us to follow up with. As you recall, our
22 recommendation initially was that you keep the
23 requirements, the assessment requirements, the reporting
24 requirements, the follow-up requirements and put the
25 funding into the block grant.
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1 The reason that we make that argument is that it
2 really in a way reflects reality because in the reading
3 programs they are spending local district money, they're
4 spending federal money, they're spending the Enrolled Act
5 69 money, and that's exactly what you want them to do.
6 And to require them to account for that separately is just
7 an added burden.
8 Now, I think on the other side people will argue
9 if you don't make them account for it separately, they'll
10 spend it somewhere else. My opinion is there's sufficient
11 language in the bill that tells you what you have to do
12 and as long as you track that, you don't -- they're going
13 to spend more almost always because what else do you do
14 in -- I mean, that's the primary business you're in so I
15 don't think you have to worry about it.
16 But there are other people that have a different
17 opinion. I know some of the department people would
18 prefer to have that and I would not characterize their
19 argument for them. I would let you ask them.
20 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Scott.
21 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, and let me
22 say, I do agree with that philosophy that they're going to
23 draw from quite a mixture of sources and what we provide
24 in this particular line item and formula, and that's what
25 it ought to be, I think, is item in the formula is only
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1 going to cover part of the cost because so much of it is
2 the basic job they're in.
3 The question you raised about how many kids,
4 what would happen if we set the objective there as saying
5 the kids that need this and should benefit from it are the
6 ones that in our WyCAS at the fourth grade level show up
7 in the lowest category, basically the failing category,
8 those are the kids that need the service and we need to
9 reach that whole group. Does that kind of philosophy help
10 you as you cost things out?
11 DR. SMITH: Madam Chairman, Senator Scott,
12 fourth grade is too late.
13 SENATOR SCOTT: I know it is too late.
14 DR. SMITH: There are -- the assessments
15 that they do will array the kids from -- I'm not sure of
16 the right terminology, but basically for kids who are not
17 reading ready, there's readiness skills, to those who are
18 poor readers on up to fluent readers.
19 So I think that we can make some judgments at
20 some point. I think the point about how many kids don't
21 get served is sort of a basic educational philosophy.
22 Everybody says, well, even the kid who is a fluent reader,
23 I can help him one to one if I have the resources to do
24 that. It is an infinite need.
25 But I think your advice, fourth grade WyCAS
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1 might not be the measure, but some assessment that they're
2 doing that they have data on.
3 SENATOR SCOTT: And, Madam Chairman, I
4 mentioned fourth grade WyCAS because that's what we've
5 got. It is clearly -- and as you can see from the way we
6 wrote that legislation, it is clearly too late and we know
7 it. But I think it does give us some objective to shoot
8 for that we want to get all of those kids out of that
9 bottom category there.
10 DR. SMITH: Madam Chairman, Senator Scott,
11 without thinking it through right now, I think let us take
12 a look and see how we can use that, but I think there's --
13 it is in the right direction and I think that we can make
14 some inferences. It is all inferences, but we can do
15 better.
16 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Sessions.
17 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, I think
18 the thing about the WyCAS, the WyCAS as we know it is only
19 going to be given and in existence this next year and goes
20 to the grade level tests as defined by the No Child Left
21 Behind and that's third through whatever.
22 But I think the State of Wyoming has made the
23 decision that they're going to try to do the standards and
24 have been working on them, you know, in reading for the
25 first, you know, kindergarten through second grade, too,
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1 as long as they're doing them.
2 So I think that that grade level assessment
3 grade by grade, I think the benefit of that, hopefully, is
4 going to be that you're going to be able to look at
5 children and see the progress from one grade to another
6 instead of that one shot in fourth grade and then, you
7 know, all of a sudden you have this -- your stomach sinks
8 because you look at number of children that are not
9 reading as well as you would like.
10 So I think this will maybe work into that.
11 Certainly we should see some progress if we're doing the
12 one-on-one programs like that. I know in Laramie 1,
13 Cheyenne, in our one Title I school, those little guys
14 over there have just got a beautiful job being at grade
15 level where before they were behind.
16 You know, so I think we'll have that snapshot
17 and hopefully we won't have to wait until fourth grade to
18 get it.
19 DR. SMITH: Madam Chairman, Senator
20 Sessions, one of the questions we did ask them was are you
21 seeing evidence of declining need as a result of these and
22 a couple of interesting and I guess predictable answers is
23 yes, they're seeing the kids in the program -- and these
24 programs work. It is one of the few things in education,
25 but these reading programs actually work. If you have a
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1 systematic reading program, there's a lot of things that
2 work, they actually comment that they work.
3 But the other was that they are -- that there's
4 a group of -- that transient kids that haven't been in the
5 program coming from other states, from other districts,
6 wherever, that are -- that present need, second grade,
7 third grade, fourth grade on up, and I think that's
8 reasonable and inevitable. There's not much you can do
9 about that.
10 You triggered something in my mind. This is a
11 little bit off topic, since you have been fed you're not
12 as eager to get out of the door, but when Mrs. Scott today
13 talked about Neverstreaming in Casper schools, I'm
14 actually familiar with that program. It started in
15 California in Elk Grove Unified School District and it has
16 a fabulous track record.
17 And they went to the State -- the way it got
18 started, they went to the State and they said will you
19 give us the same amount of special ed money and just not
20 make us spend it on identified kids and let us use it for
21 early intervention. And the State did this as a -- on a
22 pilot test basis.
23 And in seven years -- to me the most fascinating
24 statistics, in seven years they've had one fair hearing.
25 One parent has complained. This is a school district of
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1 50,000 kids.
2 They have huge numbers of poor and minority
3 kids. Their test scores have gone up. Their special ed
4 identification rate is about half of what it was before
5 they started doing this, and they did it with no
6 additional money but it is just they redeployed the money
7 in a smarter, more cost-effective way.
8 So that was a little commercial for
9 Neverstreaming. But I'm a big fan of this district
10 because they've just done a fantastic job.
11 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Scott.
12 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I think
13 that may be a very instructive suggestion in our special
14 ed. Suppose we were to say, school districts, you have
15 the option of taking a special ed block grant that will
16 vary only on the total number of students and doesn't have
17 the restrictions? Is that going to be enough cost based
18 to get by the court?
19 DR. SMITH: Madam Chairman, Senator Scott,
20 it seems to me that that's perfectly cost based. I think
21 that the proposal generally was very thoughtful and moving
22 in a direction that is the one that sounded like something
23 MAP would do, being cost based and being block grant.
24 But -- in fact, I was a little bit surprised
25 when the answer to Mrs. Scott, will it affect our waiver,
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1 I think the answer is you won't need a waiver. If you
2 have a block grant, you can use the money virtually any
3 way you want and the advantage of the block grant is that
4 you can use it for preventative services.
5 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Madam Chairman,
6 what was the name of that California program again?
7 DR. SMITH: Neverstreaming.
8 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Neverstreaming?
9 DR. SMITH: It is a pun on mainstreaming
10 and it is Elk Grove Unified School District.
11 SENATOR PECK: Dr. Smith, in your talking
12 and evaluating these various reading enhancement programs
13 you're not making any judgment as to which one is better
14 or are you assuming they're all of equal value and
15 effectiveness?
16 DR. SMITH: Senator Peck, Madam Chairman,
17 we -- we are not making that judgment. In one way it is
18 beyond our purview to do that, and the other is that the
19 State chose, consciously or unconsciously, to leave it up
20 to local districts to make those choices about which
21 programs that they would implement.
22 And we can give you an idea of the costs, and I
23 think it is probably premature to really tell which are
24 the most cost effective. I can tell you which is the most
25 costly. Reading Recovery is the most costly. It may not
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1 be the most cost effective, but it gets very good results.
2 But you would have to take a look at over time what kind
3 of outcomes it produces compared to, say, CLIP, which is a
4 variant of Reading Recovery.
5 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And it may be an unfair
6 question to the department people who are here without
7 Scott Marion who I think worked closely with the
8 districts, but vaguely in my recollection there was a
9 committee that came together and said these are effective
10 programs, you need to choose from them. But I'm not sure
11 of that.
12 MS. HILL: Madam Chairman, the way that
13 works is the statute requires a research-based assessment
14 of each of those children and then an intervention program
15 which stems from the identification through the
16 assessment, so what Scott has done with his group is
17 extrapolate that your research-based assessment must be
18 connected then to a program that will correct the
19 deficiencies.
20 So we don't have a list of approved programs.
21 We really have -- the department has no authority in terms
22 of providing districts a list from which they may choose.
23 We do have some authority in their assessment tool and
24 that has been somewhat effective with some districts.
25 Though, as Dr. Smith says, there's a full range of
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1 programs deployed by the districts with varying degrees of
2 results.
3 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Other questions on this?
4 Then I think we'll move to the classified
5 personnel adjustment.
6 DR. SMITH: Madam Chairman, as you recall,
7 the Court required that classified salaries be adjusted in
8 a fashion similar to teacher salaries, and we described
9 some proposed methodology in our January report on school
10 district employee compensation.
11 We made a data request to the department who
12 then sent it on to the school districts, and as is often
13 the case whenever you have a new request for data, what
14 you get is not what you wanted. Some districts showed
15 some number of employees with no seniority, some of them
16 had some employees with zero full-time equivalents, FTE.
17 I think 182 employees had missing salary data. So
18 basically the data were unusable.
19 The department has gone back to the districts,
20 asked for the data to be resubmitted, clean up those where
21 clearly the response was nonresponsive, and I believe that
22 those data are due November 8th. So in effect we're
23 not -- haven't done anything until -- we've done some
24 background stuff, but we can't run any data until -- any
25 formulas or anything until we get data.
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1 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And I understand in some
2 cases a portion of that is due to the fact that there just
3 have not been records kept.
4 DR. SMITH: Madam Chairman, I was actually
5 surprised to find that out, but I talked to a business
6 manager and a superintendent yesterday or day before
7 yesterday, I guess, and many of the districts apparently
8 keep these records in notebooks and are unable to tell how
9 long -- you know, an employee may have been in the
10 district for 20 years, but they drove a bus for a while
11 and they were a teacher aide for a while, and so they have
12 no way other than asking the employee to reconstruct their
13 employment record to be able to put this -- to be able to
14 provide these data.
15 Now, obviously some of the larger districts have
16 automated data systems and are able to produce it, but
17 some of the medium and smaller districts apparently have
18 struggled providing the data.
19 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman.
20 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Yes, Senator Sessions.
21 SENATOR SESSIONS: Why can't you just go
22 to the retirement system because that -- you know, your
23 school district, all of your employees participate in the
24 retirement system. They certainly -- you know, that
25 system has a record of their seniority for each district
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1 under each person's name. I mean, we get printouts from
2 the retirement system, or we did.
3 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: And I don't know, does
4 that apply to those who are not -- who are less than half
5 time?
6 MS. BYRNES: Madam Chairman, I don't know
7 the situation on that. I'm not certain that that would be
8 a complete record for what Dr. Smith and MAP require for
9 this, what kind of job was being held, the duration of it,
10 the salary.
11 SENATOR SESSIONS: It would just give you
12 a deposit, I guess, total number of quarters and your
13 total number of contributions.
14 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Maybe have to become the
15 fallback plan, but hopefully not.
16 DR. SMITH: Madam Chairman, Senator
17 Sessions, we have actually not tried from the retirement
18 system. I doubt if they would be able to give us the
19 salary data and exact job classifications and so forth.
20 It is my belief that the districts -- I can't imagine them
21 not having this data, not readily, but can't imagine them
22 not having them but of course in the future they will need
23 to keep track of these like they do with teachers and
24 administrators.
25 And I just hasten to add that this was not
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1 something that we had recommended. This came from the
2 Court and we're doing it in response to that.
3 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Senator Peck.
4 SENATOR PECK: Chairman, I would
5 appreciate a quick definition of classified and certified.
6 DR. SMITH: Madam Chairman, Senator Peck,
7 it is a classified -- a certified employee is the easiest.
8 Certified employee is one for which the State requires a
9 credential or license, so a superintendent, principal,
10 teacher, these are all people that the state professional
11 teaching board requires that they have a credential.
12 Certified is everybody else -- classified is
13 everybody else. Classified is everybody else.
14 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: Other questions?
15 Okay. Now, I have not double-checked the
16 agenda, but today I believe that that will finish your
17 time. Will you be here tomorrow?
18 DR. SMITH: Madam Chairman, yes, I will be
19 here tomorrow. I was asked to stick around because of voc
20 ed and Jeffreys Act and some of the others in case there
21 were questions, so I will be here for the duration.
22 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: As you can see, we are
23 scheduled to begin at 8:30 tomorrow morning and on
24 Friday -- I will just announce this twice and I see Keith
25 is gone, so can somebody help remind me to catch Keith
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1 tomorrow, probably all of us -- on Friday we would like to
2 start at 8:00, correct, and that's partly the request of
3 the university but it is partly our request, too, so that
4 we have a very good likelihood of being able to finish so
5 that people can travel home on Friday.
6 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, but we
7 still start at 8:30 tomorrow morning?
8 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: That is the plan. And I
9 don't expect it to be as long as today.
10 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: We certainly hope
11 so.
12 CHAIRMAN DEVIN: I apologize. I figure
13 you're fresher your first day to have to do this, and two
14 and a half or three days is long enough for a meeting as
15 it is.
16 Our tour of the charter school is scheduled at
17 7:00. That is east on Grand, across the street from the
18 Bank of Laramie. What you will see, it is the old
19 Wal-Mart store prior to the building of the new Super
20 Wal-Mart. So if you get to the new Super Wal-Mart, you've
21 gone too far to the east.
22 What you see near the street will be a small
23 building called Express Pharmacy and then this building is
24 kind of set back. It may still have the old Wal-Mart
25 signs on it, but I'm not sure.
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1 There will be a group of parents there this
2 evening and that was coincidental. They had scheduled
3 something about how you help children with reading before
4 we were scheduled to be there. So they will be there.
5 Any questions on that? We will see you there at
6 7:00, then.
7 (Meeting proceedings recessed
8 6:35 p.m., October 23, 2002.)
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7 I, JANET DEW-HARRIS, a Registered Professional
8 Reporter, and Federal Certified Realtime Reporter, do
9 hereby certify that I reported by machine shorthand the
10 foregoing proceedings contained herein, constituting a
11 full, true and correct transcript.
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13 Dated this ___ day of _________, 200__.
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19 _____________________________
20 JANET DEW-HARRIS
Registered Professional Reporter
21 Federal Certified Realtime Reporter
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