The Evanston CASE board is deeply concerned by District 65’s decision to attribute its significant, multi-year financial deficits to special education services. Blaming this shortfall on our most vulnerable population is unfair and may be completely inaccurate.
Superintendent Angel Turner’s initial announcement — the email “FY24 Budget Update” sent on July 29 — introduced a $10 million budget deficit incurred in fiscal year 2024 and stated that “the variance almost exclusively occurred within the transportation and special education budgets” (emphasis hers). By introducing this shortfall and then, in the very following sentence, attributing it to special education, Superintendent Turner and District 65 established a narrative in the community that unfairly and inaccurately places the district’s repeated budget woes on some of the district’s most vulnerable children.
Superintendent Turner’s subsequent deficit reduction plan message lists five priority areas. Only one priority area targets a specific student demographic: students with disabilities.
This raises the question: why is special education being targeted for, as the Chicago Tribune put it in a Sept. 23 article, “cheaper solutions”? District 65’s achievement gap between non-disabled and disabled children has grown since 2021. Moreover, Black and Latinx students with individualized education programs (IEPs) perform even lower than white students with IEPs. Our experiences through family coaching and advocacy show repeated district failures in adequately supporting students entitled to services under federal law.
Seeking to cut special education is a stance toward inequity. Such an approach aims to reduce resources to a legally protected class of students whose needs require specific and different services to achieve outcomes comparable to those of non-disabled students. Proposed cuts undermine a core concept of equity, which recognizes that people may require different levels of support to reach their potential and that resources must be allocated to promote equal opportunity.
Applying budget cuts to programs for students with disabilities also threatens to compromise the district’s legal obligation under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to meet the unique needs of students with disabilities and provide them with a free appropriate public education (FAPE).
The budget shortfall does not exist because children with disabilities exist. It is a reality that children and adults with disabilities live all around us and contribute greatly to society; special education services are not “surprise” line items.
In FY23, the district ended the year with the first of three consecutive roughly $10 million deficits, which have been extensively covered. For FY23, the year with the most recent published financials, the total spending in the “Educational Fund Directly Related to Special Education” was $22.4 million against a budget of $20.1 million. This $2.3 million budget variance related to special education accounts for only 24% of the entire district’s deficit for that fiscal year.
A closer look shows board oversight and management failures, including failing to account for known six-figure expenses. In FY23, the three major “Special Education Program” line items had a budget of $20.10 million and actuals of $20.18 million — a difference of just $79,354, or 0.3%.
A fourth category, “Payments for Special Education Programs – Tuition In-State (to other govt units),” had an expense of $2.2 million against a budget of $0. In FY22, this item accounted for $1.5 million in spending. The fact that the district failed to budget for this expense does not justify a simplistic narrative that “special education” caused the budget shortfalls. How does an organization incur a $1.5 million expense and then budget $0 for the next fiscal year? How does this same item then incur a surprise $2.2 million expense?
The lumping together of special education and transportation connects special education with the district’s mismanagement of transportation costs over the past several years. As has been extensively covered, the district repeatedly forecast future yearly transportation savings of $3.2 million or more, which were to be realized as soon as the current school year. Instead of decreasing from the typical $5 million annual cost, transportation costs ballooned, going from $5.8 million in FY22 to $9.7 million in FY23, to a budgeted $10.15 million in FY24 and a tentative budget of $11.8 million in FY25.
Transportation costs encompass many student needs, including magnet school placement, bullying and safety concerns, and continued transportation to ETHS for accelerated programming (a little discussed but ongoing program that is offered to few students). How much of this cost is attributed to the transportation of special education students? Of these students, how many are going to Park School, and how many must attend a school outside our community because District 65 is not providing a continuum of services as dictated by federal law?
By combining transportation with special education, the district implies a narrative that much of the budget shortfall is due to the transportation and education of students with disabilities, rather than mismanagement or priorities that have not prioritized our most marginalized students.
In this context of serious, multi-year institutional problems, repeatedly mentioning special education services has been an unjust attempt to distract from mismanagement and to pin some of the district’s most significant problems on a community that is often drained mentally and economically by constantly having to advocate for educational and societal opportunities.
For more than 15 years, Evanston CASE has advocated for District 65 to fulfill its vision of truly equitable schools. This could include advocating for a full continuum of special education support, breaking up de facto segregated resource rooms, investing in the ability of general education teachers to better support students with IEPs and 504 plans, supporting teachers in enacting special education plans or promoting inclusive, culturally responsive teaching practices. It could also involve ensuring access to engaging curricula, discontinuing the over-identification of Black and Brown students in disciplinary action due to insufficient, culturally unresponsive Tier One intervention approaches and preventing overly restrictive placements without meaningful inclusion.
We are deeply concerned that services may be on the chopping block. We believe that budget cuts that reduce special education services and special educators could be short-sighted. These reductions may result in short-term savings, but they could lead to students requiring more intensive services over time. Our experience shows that cuts often prompt families to seek educational advocates and attorneys, increasing inequalities, as well as the district’s legal fees and exposure.
Those in power should understand that inaccurate, “preliminary” messaging like this supports ableist attitudes inside and outside of schools. The district administration and board should take fuller responsibility for their repeated budget shortfalls. Our community, our families and our students — all of them — deserve it.
Sincerely,
Kate Noble, Evanston CASE executive director
The Evanston CASE board
Evanston CASE’s mission is “to provide Community, Advocacy, Support, and Education services to improve the lives of Evanston families impacted by disability.”
Letter to the editor: Don’t blame special education for District 65 budget woes is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.