GF Officials Say Funding Bill Needs Attention

By Amanda Ricker, Grand Forks Herald, N.D.

Jan. 18–BISMARCK Grand Forks area education officials say they support a bill prescribed by the Governor’s Commission on Education to provide equitable school funding in North Dakota. But, they’d like to see a few tweaks in the distribution formula to areas such as special education and K-8 grade school districts.

The Senate education committee heard the bill Wednesday in a roughly four-hour session filled with testimony from legislators, educators and parents on both sides of the issue.

Mark Sanford, superintendent of the Grand Forks School District, was in Bismarck to observe the hearing.

Sanford said after the meeting that the Grand Forks School Board supports passage of the bill, but would like to see special education costs better accounted for.

“We find this to be a favorable interim answer on the way to adequacy,” he said.

The Governor’s Commission on Education plans to continue meeting over the next two years, before the 2009 Legislative session, to address what constitutes an adequate education in schools.

Special education funding, Sanford said, is an area of adequacy that needs to be addressed.

The bill proposes an additional $8 million in funds for special education across the state.

Taxpayers in the Grand Forks School District pay $7 million, or about 62 mills, for special education. Total special education costs to the district cost more than $10 million. The state pays $2.2 million, federal pays $1.8 million.

The state is supposed to pay 60 percent under federal mandates requiring special education services, Sanford said.

He suggested an upcoming bill that proposes the state pay 35 percent of the actual costs incurred by the school district for special education. That bill is sponsored by Sen. JoNell Bakke, D-Grand Forks, Sen. Joan Heckaman, D-New Rockford, Rep. Lois Delmore, D-Grand Forks, Rep. Louise “Weezie” Potter, D-Grand Forks, and others.

Following the hearing on the Governor’s Commission bill, Lt. Gov. Jack Dalrymple said the special education bill may have merit as long as school districts retain some accountability for the costs.

“I like your idea the best,” he told Sanford and Bakke. “As long as (schools) have costs in the game, we know that (they’re) going to try and hold the cost down. I think that is the best approach, but we couldn’t get there trying to first of all overhaul the whole thing and then jump back to a whole different concept.”

Bakke said that Dalrymple told her later Wednesday that if the special education bill passes both the state House of Representatives and Senate, he will look to attach it to the Governor’s Commission on Education bill.

Richard Ray, administrator at Manvel Public School, testified at Wednesday’s hearing that the bill doesn’t accurately identify payments for each child for K-8 schools, such as Manvel.

The school pays for services for high school students sent to schools in Grand Forks, but wouldn’t be properly reimbursed for them under the bill’s funding formula, he said.

“It does not accurately reflect the taxable valuation behind each child,” said Ray. “If they continue to not count a third of my students, then they’re using incorrect and incomplete data.”

Ray said Manvel school officials support passage of the bill, but the problem needs to be fixed.

It’s simple, he said, adding that he didn’t believe there was any disagreement among legislators that the problem existed.

“But there’s a political agenda,” said Ray. “To reduce numbers of schools and therefore bless one way that you do it and that is to starve them out. Nobody will come out and say that but underneath it that’s what it’s all about.”

Dalrymple said he’ll revisit the issue.

“We’ll have to go back to the drawing board and look at those K-8 high school kids again and see what all is happening,” he said. “They have other kinds of benefits that you have to kind of weigh against them.”

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Copyright (c) 2007, Grand Forks Herald, N.D.

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