The state Senate is poised to vote on Wednesday on a bill that overhauls the way the state distributes special education funding to public schools.  The new formula distributes resources based on a three-tiered system of funding based on the cost of providing services to special education students and incidence of disability.  It moves away from a funding system that assumed all districts had 15 percent of their students with mild disabilities and 1 percent with severe disabilities to educate.  The proposed formula is the product of a bipartisan Special Education Funding Commission’s work and some last-minute negotiations to make adjustments to address charter schools’ concerns about how it treats their special education funding.

The Senate today voted 35-15 to accept an amendment offered by Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware County, to reflect the outcome of the negotiations over the formula’s treatment of charter schools.   Pileggi said the amendment’s intention is to implement the new formula “in a way that allows public charter schools to continue to grow and to thrive.”

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Source: www.pennlive.com, by Jan Murphy, Posted on June 17, 2014.