AFT-NH Testimony on HB 603
From Debrah Howes, President AFT-NH
Thank you, Chairman Ladd and Members of the House Education Funding Committee, for reading my testimony.
My name is Debrah Howes. I am the president of the American Federation of Teachers - NH.
AFT-NH represents 3,500 teachers, paraeducators and school support staff, public service employees and higher education staff across the Granite State. We work with close to 30,000 students in public schools across the state, all of them entitled to a robust public education, which is their constitutional right as Granite State citizens.
I am here today to express our support for HB 603.
AFT-NH absolutely supports increasing the amount of differentiated aid for students with special education needs. The current amount of $2142 per pupil is nowhere near the average cost districts are paying, which is approximately $29,000 per student.
School funding has become a contentious issue in many Granite State communities. Much of this is due to the fact that we rely on local property taxpayers to support 70 to 80 percent of the costs of providing our Granite State children with a public education. Local property taxpayers also fund 80 percent of special education costs. Of course, that has repeatedly been found unconstitutional because it is a State duty to fund the robust opportunity for public education that is the right of every Granite State child, but local districts, and local taxpayers do not have the option of downshifting the responsibility onto someone else.
Many communities are already facing contentious and divisive struggles over the cost of providing a public education to all students in the community. Property taxes are high, and many homeowners can’t dig any deeper into their pockets. Students with special learning needs have a legal right to support and services to access their public education. Everyone wants a robust public education for all students with small class sizes, learning support for any student who needs it, and a robust and challenging curriculum including art, music and sports. Without more financial support from the state, something has to give. Often it ends up being part of the general education program including teachers and support staff. This does not serve the best interests of students or the community.
Under the current system with the low level of State differentiated aid for students with special education needs here are some of the less than ideal situations we find due to the high cost and lack of funding from the State.
Some NH districts currently are contracting with Special Education teachers outside of the state to provide remote lessons to students who need highly specialized support because they cannot currently fill all their special education vacancies. These would be supporting students with learning needs that go beyond something that can be supported by differentiating lessons in the general education classroom. The students are missing out on live, in-person learning for this important instruction.
Some NH districts are unable to hire enough special education paraeducators to fill all their positions. They turn to placement agencies to fill those positions temporarily. This is not ideal for students, as having consistent support from someone who knows their learning needs and has developed good communication with the student is best for student learning. Frequently adjusting to a new support person who must learn how to work with the student wastes precious student learning time. It also is more expensive for districts because they are paying the rate for the labor plus a fee for the placement agency.
Current Special Education teachers are often entirely overloaded with far too many students, and far too much paperwork to coordinate, each with its own set of inflexible deadlines. It is hard to give proper attention to truly understanding what each student needs to so they can learn and thrive, working with parents and the school team to develop students Individualized Education Plan, provide ongoing support to students who need specialized curriculum and case manage all the paperwork if your case load is too large.
Paraeducators, including those assigned to students with special needs, are often temporarily reassigned within schools to cover absences or vacant positions. What this could look like is:
A teacher is out and no substitute teacher is available. The school reassigns a paraeducator to cover the class for part or all of the day. The student with special needs gets little to none of the learning support from the paraeducator that they need during that day.
A paraeducator is out, or reassigned to cover for a teacher absence. Finding substitute paraeducators is even more difficult than finding substitute teachers. School administrators have a second paraeducator’s combine the first paraeducator’s student roster with her own. All the students get less support for the day.
The district has a paraeducator vacancy it can’t fill even using a placement service. It has the other paraeducators in the program or grade level increase their workload and cover the student’s support need in addition to doing their regular roster. When this is done repeatedly, it not only hurts the student’s progress; it leads to burnout for the staff.
None of these are ideal solutions, but they are situations school districts have developed as they try to best meet the learning support needs of students with disabilities without adequate funding from the State.
Increasing special education differentiated aid to districts would allow school districts to do some important things including making sure they are paying competitive wages to fill existing vacancies as well as retain current staff. Filling vacancies would also make workloads more manageable and decrease educator burnout, a major reason teachers and paraeducators leave the field. Keeping knowledgeable, experienced staff also reduces training costs for districts. This would help students with special learning needs be better and more consistently supported and learn in our public schools.
For these reasons we urge you to find HB603 Ought to Pass.
Thank you,
Debrah Howes,
President, AFT-New Hampshire