During a Senate Health Committee hearing in July, Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) asked Board Vice President of the San Diego Unified School District Richard Barrera about funding for special education IDEA grants.
00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you again to the witnesses. And Mr. Barrera, I want to follow up a little bit on your discussion about the diversion of taxpayer dollars, funds that were legally put forward by the members of Congress and the thought of because you've got two tracks.
00:27One is the dollars that were approved and appropriated and are being clawed back. And then there is the desire to shift funding. I'm a big believer in efficiency. I'm a big believer in outcomes. I want us to make sure that our kids are getting the best education possible.
00:49But I, too, am concerned. And so, first, I want to follow up on your comments about IDEA. You noted that our failure to fully fund it can be a barrier to our students reaching their full potential.
01:05How would fully funding IDEA enable districts to better support students with disabilities? I mean, we're shifting money potentially that could be going to fully funding IDEA.
01:17Absolutely. Thank you so much, Senator Blunt Rochester. And again, the $58 billion going into this tax credit private school scheme is four times the amount that the federal government is currently spending on special education.
01:29Were the federal government to meet its responsibility and fund 40% of the costs of special education, it would take an enormous burden off of our district and districts and around the country, states around the country that are picking up the tab.
01:46So we estimate in San Diego Unified that the federal government meeting its responsibility would result in over $50 million that we're right now spending out of our general fund that were that money available to us.
02:02Here's what we're going to do.
02:32That's what we're going to do.
03:02The concern, of course, is that if IDEA or the funding for special education, paltry as it is, that's coming from the federal government, were block granted to states, what is the guarantee that those states are going to actually meet the needs of students with disabilities?
03:19It would be a really easy thing to do for a state or a school district to say, you know, it's too hard to educate with students with disabilities.
03:27So we're going to use that money for something else.
03:29So if you don't ensure that that money is actually there to benefit students with disabilities, I think we're very likely to see a crisis in special education in the country.
03:42Earlier this month, former high-level officials from the Department of Education's Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services and the Office of Special Education Programs sent a letter to the Appropriations Committee urging Congress not to block grant IDEA, close the department, or transfer the department's responsibilities to the Department of Health and Human Services.
04:05This letter is a bipartisan plea to Congress and has been co-signed by officials from the administrations of President Biden, Trump, Obama, George W. Bush, George Herbert, Walker Bush, Ronald Reagan, Carter, Nixon, and Ford.
04:23Chair Talberville, I ask unanimous consent that this letter be entered into the record.
04:28I ask my colleagues also to consider this and to consider your comments as we move forward with FY 2026 appropriations bills.
04:39I have more questions for the record that I will submit to you, but I end my remarks as a parent whose children graduated from Delaware public schools.
04:56We've done many things in our state.
04:58We have many different options.
05:00We have public school choice, we have charters, we have, and I'm proud of the education they received.
05:07And I want more because I also have a granddaughter, my first grandchild, and I want our education system in this country to be the best.
05:16And so I hope that we can come together on this and not shift resources to places that don't need it when we have a lot of places in this country that do need the support.
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