His Excellency Governor Mitt Romney
State House Room 360
Boston, MA 02133

Dear Honorable Governor Romney:

We write to you today regarding the extreme urgency for you to take action on fully funding the special education circuit breaker in the immediate future.

We are deeply distressed that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is not keeping its obligation to properly educate our special needs students in our public schools and that recent actions of the Department of Education will unnecessarily hamper the educational progress of many of our students.

We should all be proud that we enacted the Special Education Circuit Breaker Law in the FY2003 budget. We should also be proud that we appropriated $121,600,262 to fund the Special Education Circuit Breaker program this year in a particularly difficult budget year. It was the intent of the Legislature that by properly funding that program, we would begin to address the financial impact of special education costs on our public school districts and that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts would begin to share the financial burden of educating special needs students. It was the clear intent of the Legislature that the Commonwealth would pay seventy-five percent of the education costs above the cost of four times the “foundation” level. When you reduced the amount the Legislature appropriated by $6,500,000, in your line-item veto, we re-affirmed our commitment to the special education students and to the school districts by overriding your veto and re-appropriating the $6,500,000.

It is therefore with deep distress that we learned that the Department of Education is presently only reimbursing the school districts at a rate of 27.6 percent rather than at the rate of seventy-five percent which was the clear intent of the Legislature. We cannot understand how the Department of Education arrived at that reimbursement level, nor can we understand how they could make such a significant policy change without any notification to the Legislature.
We call upon your administration to immediately address this funding crisis by doing the following:

1. Provide full documentation to the Legislature and to the public school districts as to how the current reimbursement rate was calculated; and

2. File a request with the Legislature for a supplemental appropriation if there are not sufficient funds in the Special Education Circuit Breaker account to meet the Commonwealth’s obligations.

We have an obligation to every public school student in the Commonwealth to provide the necessary funds to meet their educational needs. Those students depend on us to look after their needs. Please do not let them down in this matter of most importance.
We thank you for your time and consideration into this matter, and if you have any comments, questions or concerns regarding this urgent situation, please do not hesitate to contact us directly.

Sincerely,
David P. Linsky
State Representative
Fifth Middlesex District

October 24, 2003

The Honorable Members of the House of Representatives
Massachusetts State House
Boston, Massachusetts 02133

Dear Colleague,

In response to a letter sent by Representative David Linsky and other members of the House regarding the Special Education Circuit Breaker Law, I write to clarify some misconceptions about this issue and question the exclusive burden being placed upon the Governor to fix a problem clearly resulting from a lack of appropriated funds.

As you may know, the implementation of the Special Education Circuit Breaker Law represented a significant change to the way special education is funded in this state. Previously, under the “50/50” program only certain placements were eligible for reimbursement, which involved 1,300 students. Now, any placement with a cost above the threshold of $29,320 is eligible for the higher reimbursement rate. These statutory changes have resulted in claims by school districts to the Department of Education for over 10,000 students. This represents an increase of 669% for the number of pupils eligible to receive Special Education Funding.

Despite this extraordinary jump in involvement due to the circuit breaker law, the Conference Committee Budget submitted to Governor Romney by the legislature only increased funding to this program by 72% from $70.8 million to $121.6 million. Clearly this was not enough money to compensate for the statutory changes. In fact, the legislature had the foresight to recognize the potential for such a deficiency as the language to line item 7061-0012 states, in part, the following: “reimbursements shall be pro-rated such that expenses of this line item do not exceed the amount appropriated herein.” The implication is clear that the amount contained within the appropriation may likely be insufficient to meet the level of need based upon the law.

Contrary to the beliefs of the signatories to the letter sent to Governor Romney on Wednesday, the Department of Education has not made a policy change. Rather, the department is following the law, as those who took the time to read the budget would know. Furthermore, the department recognized in July that this program was under-funded when, in its FY04 State Budget Update it stated, “circuit breaker reimbursements are subject to appropriations, and it does not appear that the available funding will be sufficient to cover the full 75% reimbursement rate.” The fact that this program is grossly under-funded compared to expectations based upon the statutory requirements is, at a minimum, equally the fault of the legislature—particularly those legislators in positions of leadership.

Logic and further inspection of the work of the legislature provides a reasonable explanation as to why the preliminary reimbursement rate has been set at 27.6%; however, I have no doubt the Department of Education will fully comply with the request submitted by some members on Wednesday. To their credit, Ways & Means Chair John Rogers and Education Chair Marie St. Fleur have been distributing information designed to generate light as opposed to heat.
As for the request of Governor Romney to file a supplemental appropriation to correct this deficiency, I suggest the author of the letter and the other members requesting an immediate resolution to this problem are equally obligated to file an appropriation recommendation. Likewise those signatories should, with equal fervor and speed of action, seek a time frame when such a supplemental request would be considered by the House. Many legislators in this building are quick to point the finger at the corner office, grandstand, and blame the Governor but are shy to question, let alone defy, the budgetary and legislative course charted by the powers that be in the House of Representatives. Given that the Governor followed the law as passed by the majority, then a quick look in the mirror when trying to assign blame seems equally justified.

In agreement with the words sent to the Governor on Wednesday, we should be proud of the Special Education Circuit Breaker law; we do have an undeniable obligation to provide the children in the Commonwealth with the best education that money can buy. I also believe it is disingenuous to set unreasonable expectations and/or grossly under-fund budgetary items which clearly require more resources than allocated. Furthermore, it is irresponsible to condemn the Romney Administration for a weak budgetary allocation over which we, as legislators, have full control. Finger pointing will only exacerbate this problem.
I am ready to seek solutions and I offer my full support, and that of my leadership team, to all of my colleagues to try and find a way to ensure we do whatever is necessary to meet the expectations of special education in Massachusetts.

Sincerely,
Brad Jones
Bradley H. Jones, Jr.
Minority Leader