One of the biggies is Special Ed. (This is NOT an anti-Special Ed thread, so just save it!)
Special Ed is the queen of the unfunded mandates. If a district has a good school system - usually a bluestate phenomenon - it attracts people anxious to get the best for their student.
Each one of those students costs bigtime, and the fed/state pays squat!
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Special ed attracts students, deficit
Growing enrollment strains budget
By DEBORAH BACH P-I REPORTER
On any given day, Sara Woolverton might get a call from parents living in a town along the Interstate 5 corridor or in a state halfway across the country, asking about enrolling their children in Seattle schools. They all have one thing in common: a desire to get the best special education and medical services for their children.
"They get a diagnosis of autism in Wichita and call us up and say, 'We're moving to Seattle next month,' " she said. "You build it and they will come -- that is part of our problem." The problem Woolverton refers to is a multimillion-dollar budget deficit projected for several years, prompting district officials to consider closing some schools, reducing bus service, trimming the central office payroll and making other cuts. One service that can't be cut is special education, which gets one out of every nine dollars the district spends.
For Seattle, that factor contributes to a gap of about $18 million between what the 47,000- student district spends on special education and the money it receives from the state and federal government -- about $31 million a year. The cost of providing special education to children varies tremendously, with the most expensive students costing upward of $60,000.
The district provides some level of special-education services for nearly 150 students attending private schools -- from assessments to transportation -- at a cost of about $800,000 to $1 million. Districts also are charged with finding and evaluating all children within their boundaries who need special education, regardless of whether they attend public or private school.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/259303_specialed13.html