Last night I sat in a room full of hopeful, yet battle-weary parents. I felt completely at home. A couple hundred parents of special needs children had gathered to hear the Georgia Department of Education’s information on how they plan to implement the recently passed Senate Bill 10, Vouchers for Special Needs Students.
The line to ask questions of the “Associate Superintendent of Innovative Education” was a mile long. (Side note here: This gal has evidently recently been promoted from Director of Exceptional Students – a euphemism for Special Ed. Don’t you love the title? As if there was something “innovative” about what was happening in Georgia. Don’t get me started…)

The approaches varied and the questions were slightly different, but the parents had much in common. All were fatigued from prolonged frustrations and battles with their schools. All were looking for a better, more appropriate education for their special child. All wanted to be hopeful but were sure there was a “catch”. One mom even expressed that. “My son qualifies for the voucher,” she said, “and I’m thrilled. But I’m waiting for someone to tell me why he won’t receive it, for someone to tell me where the catch is.”

Sad isn’t it????

For some there is a catch. The voucher requires two things basically:

1. that the child have a current IEP in place.
2. that the child was enrolled and attending a Georgia public school during the 2006-2007 school year.

Attendance is determined by whether the child was counted on the “full-time equivalent” (FTE) counts taken in October and March of this past school year.

The amount of the voucher is equal to the amount of state funding a school receives for your child. This amount is based on the amount of special education your child receives. Those numbers are determined from the FTE counts. Children who only receive speech therapy once a week or so are likely not to have large voucher amounts. Those in self-contained special education classrooms with lots of services are likely to receive much larger vouchers. It is all based on the amount of state funds the school system draws down on a child’s behalf.

The first catch: those whose children attended special needs pre-school programs were said not to be eligible because the pre-school funding (although it’s state monies) comes from a different place. This means that those children, even though they’ve been attending a public school and have an IEP in place, will have to attend kindergarten in the public school to qualify.

This presents an interesting quagmire because many parents who have children in private preschools will enroll their children in public kindergarten and push for an IEP to qualify for the voucher. (Once qualified, the voucher can continue until the child is 21 or graduates high school.) What’s particularly interesting about this is that the districts have done away with “special needs kindergarten” classes except for the mostly severely disabled (moderate and severe intellectual disabilities, severe autism, etc.) This means that all children will be in large kindergarten classes, not the smaller, more supportive classes that many parents know is the right place for their child.

Second catch is that parents who agree to participate in the program and accept the vouchers sign away their child’s rights under IDEA. The child will no longer have the right to receive anything through the public school – no evaluations, no therapies. The parents can re-enroll their child in public school if they choose, but the child has to start all over becoming qualified for special education.

Then, for some, there is a lot of murky gray area about who qualifies because of this FTE count stipulation. There are children who didn’t receive their IEPs until after the FTE counts, children who missed being included one count or another because of illness, due process complaints or the timing of transfers from private to public schools. The Department of Education had no clear-cut answer for those folks last night. But they did make a list of these situations and will be discussing if there will be waivers to the qualifications that are clearly stated in the law as it’s written.

The good news for Georgia special needs students is that there will be vouchers available for the 2007-2008 school year.

Private schools wanting to participate in accepting the vouchers need to register at the Georgia DOE website. They will be notified in the coming days about filling out the required application. The application is due June 30, but is not yet available.

Parents wanting to find out their child’s approximate voucher amount and considering participating in the program need to register at the Georgia DOE website as well. After the DOE has a list of approved schools they will issue an application form for the children (likely around mid-July). Meanwhile, parents should check with the school of their choice to find out if they are going to participate and to apply to the school for acceptance.

There’s a lot to be done to have this in place by August…but that’s what is going to happen.

Here’s more information about the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship program.
Here’s information about the McKay Scholarship program in Florida. This program started in 1999 and was the model for Georgia’s voucher legislation.