Even as many Pennsylvania school districts struggled to tame rising pension costs and deal with stagnant tax revenues, the state also saddled them with shouldering the rising cost of educating students living with disabilities — without giving them the financial assistance to handle it, a new report concludes. The state’s 501 school districts boosted their special education spending by $2 billion between 2009 to 2019, but state aid during that same period grew by just $110 million, the report by the Education Law Center and PA Schools Work, concludes, citing the most recent state data.  According to the report, out of new dollars spent on special education over the last decade, school districts have provided 92 cents of that total, the analysis found. Pennsylvania has been a bottom-dweller nationally for what a low share of overall public education spending the state provides – just 38 percent,” Education Law Center Executive Director Deborah Gordon Klehr said in a statement. “For special education, the portion covered by the state is now only 22 percent, down from 32 percent a decade ago. When the state abdicates responsibility like this, students are harmed, especially in our lowest-wealth school districts that have the greatest difficulty generating more revenue to meet student needs.”

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Source: PA Capital Star By John L. Micek, Thursday Morning Coffee, December 3, 2020.