Thursday, April 23, 1998 | 10:48 a.m.
Nevada may need a ground-breaking shift in how special education is funded in the state, according to some local educators and a panel of lawmakers who have been studying the issue.
The state money that trickles into classrooms is simply not keeping pace with the staggering cost of educating special needs children, said Charlene Green, who oversees special education in Clark County.
"It is costly," Green said. "It's federally mandated, but it's not funded."
The issue of funding is one being studied by a six-member committee of legislators who are examining a complex array of special education issues.
The panel met Wednesday and discussed some of the problems facing teachers in Clark County and the rest of the state. Among them: teacher training, teacher licensing, and even the growing number of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome students in classrooms.
"Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is an epidemic in the state of Nevada," said Colleen Morris, University of Nevada School of Medicine pediatrician, who estimates 1 percent of Nevada babies are born with the disease, among the highest percentage in the nation. "In all cases, alcohol kills the cells of the brain."
Officials say special education is becoming increasingly costly as more and more students are identified with special needs. About 10 percent of the district's nearly 200,000 students are now designated special education.
Officials say it costs about $9,000 a year average -- up to $80,000 in extreme cases -- to educate a special education student, compared to about $4,000 for a non-special education student.
Green said the state provided only about $52 million of a needed $84 million to pay special education teacher salaries. The district has to scrape the rest of the money together from the general fund. The state also does not pay for about 1,000 special education aides employed by the district.
This year, 42 special education teaching positions went unfilled, partly due to a lack of qualified applicants.
Committee chairwoman Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, said the state should consider alternate funding mechanisms for special education. Instead of allocating money by teacher, as the state does now, the state could consider doling out money by student head count, she said.
"Yes, it's going to cost more to educate a kid with disabilities," Giunchigliani, a Las Vegas middle school special education teacher, said. "But then that kid is going to be a functioning, contributing member of society, who pays taxes."
The committee meets again June 2 in Carson City to develop recommendations for special education laws for next year's session.
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