Green Bay Reporter

According to several state and federal mandates, all public school districts are required to provide special education to everyone who needs it and Rep. Kristina Shelton has stood beside the increased funding for special education even though several Republican legislators don’t support it.

“When we fail to fully fund special ed, ALL of our students lose out," Shelton tweeted.

States pay some of the extra costs of special education, but anything not covered by the state must be covered by the school district. Last year in Green Bay, that difference was $30 million, which had to be transferred from the general education fund. This system creates conflict because anything districts have to allocate toward special education is being taken away from general education students. Wisconsin’s current level of reimbursement for those funds is only around 28%, but in his budget proposal, Gov. Tony Evers called for the reimbursement level to be raised to 60%. Wisconsin’s Republican legislators have called that “unrealistic.” Wisconsin’s Democrat legislators say that it is necessary.

There are 867,800 students in Wisconsin public schools. Around 14% of those students have disabilities and qualify for an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). The National Assessment of Education Progress released 2017 reading scores for fourth graders that showed Wisconsin fourth grade students with disabilities scored almost 10 points lower than the national average. Nearly half of parents of Wisconsin children with disabilities who responded to a survey said they felt their child’s school was not using their IEP in a way that helped the child make “meaningful progress.”

Federal funding for students with disabilities currently covers around 16% of special education services costs, although Congress originally pledged to cover 40%.