The newly proposed Washington State Senate Bill 5315 could put support for developmentally challenged children at risk. It’s all due to misinformation and a lack of understanding of how the system works. It could impact your family. Here’s what you need to know about it before it heads to law.
What Is Senate Bill 5315?
Senate Bill 5315, a new bill brought by the Office of the Superintendent of Education for Washington State and Senator Claire Wilson on January 12, 2023, effectively shutters Specialized Special Education Schools that educate and care for the most at-risk and vulnerable children in our community. This law puts in place numerous restrictions and rules that make it nearly impossible for people to help children with disabilities. To be clear, the law would make it financially difficult and even illegal for special education schools to continue to support vulnerable children.
Let’s explain. Three days prior to the release of information about this bill, the superintendent’s annual State of the School address provided clear information that there is a shortfall in budgeting, and this is the avenue they have decided to take to improve the budget.
Also notable, on January 6, 2023, the OSPI superintendent stated that the state’s public schools have “a shortage of support for students with disabilities.” The state has about 3,000 special needs children in these private schools. And the number is growing.
How could this happen? For the average Washington resident who may not understand the process or how a bill like this could be a “bad” thing, consider how it actually works.
A Desperate Need
Specialized Special Education Schools have provided services throughout the community for over 46 years, working in close connection with local school districts and their special education departments, which often lack the capacity and resources to meet the needs of these children.
School districts typically do not have the staffing, flexibility, or ability to meet the unique challenges these students face daily.
Legally, the state must ensure they are meeting the requirements of the Federal special education law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which states every student must be placed in their Least Restrictive Environment (LRE). In this location, the student’s needs are best met, including their ability to learn and engage with curriculum programming. When students cannot achieve LRE within their school district buildings, they turn to Special Education schools to meet those needs.
Parents are directly impacted. One anonymous parent shared, “We were hopeless and out of options. This school was our last resort, and it has been a lifesaver.”
A Bill That Cripples
The proposed changes to the way these schools can build and work with public schools could carry with them disastrous outcomes. Senate Bill 5315 has an incredibly negative potential impact on these schools in numerous ways:
- Prevent special needs students from getting the immediate and appropriate support they are entitled to under federal law
- Complicate the provision of special education services in Washington ● Shift the decision-making abilities from school districts, schools, parents, and students who are directly impacted
- Create new and untenable administrative burdens for the superintendent ● Force redundant measures on non-public agencies (NPAs)
- Add confounding ambiguity to the laws governing NPAs
- Impede the ability of NPAs to serve Washington students in an effective manner
Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction, Chris Reykdal states, “In a state that is home to some of the most successful companies in the world, we have an opportunity to be a national leader in how we support and prepare both our students and educators with equitable access.” Yet, while making this all-important claim, he backs a more difficult process to provide these students with the help they need.
The Role of NPAs
Non-public agency facilities are approved providers. It is common for public and private partnerships to work together to meet the needs of students. This designation allows school districts to contract out services to the organization.
However, this bill assumes that NPAs lack oversight, a system that is already in place. The bill also infers that all NPAs have been guilty of negligent or malicious conduct.
Why are NPAs being labeled unfairly?
The Seattle Times recently published an article about Therapeutic Agency, an organization that refers to itself as a school but is in no way providing school-equivalent services and has not been approved by the state as such. Rather, this company, owned by a billion-dollar healthcare provider, was able to achieve NPA designation.
The Seattle Times article infers that all NPA-approved private schools are doing a horrible job and hurting children. The article stated that Therapeutic Agency had numerous problems but also opined that this must be occurring at other NPAs.
The article fails to mention that all state-approved schools (a designation that is not freely given) must go through a comprehensive approval process. This includes ongoing monitoring by the school district and meeting highly specialized national accreditation standards. The organization mentioned in the article does not have this designation and, therefore, is not held to these standards.
NPAs have decades of experience meeting the needs of children
These organizations provide critical support to some of the highest at-risk and vulnerable students, including those who are at a high rate of risk for:
- Dropping out
- Substance abuse
- Homelessness
- Imprisonment
- Suicide
We have heard from many people facing these obstacles. Consider one anonymous graduate from an NPA school who shared, “I was caught at my public school getting ready to jump off the roof. My NPA saved my life, literally. Today, I am in college and doing great.”
NPAs unselfishly work to meet the needs of children with special needs. The hundreds of staff members that dedicated their lives to marginalized children and have done so for decades through long-lasting partnerships with school districts will be unable to continue to meet this need going forward.
One special education teacher at a public school stated, “I know there is a shortage of special education teachers, but I will leave the field if they take away this resource from us. We just don’t have the staffing and ability to meet this population of students’ needs.”
Stripping Funding Impedes Student Needs
The superintendent’s intention through Senate Bill 3515 is to position layers of state bureaucracy on specialized schools. This will make it far more difficult and time-consuming to enroll and address the very important and life-changing needs of the state’s most vulnerable students.
These organizations will be unable to maintain operations. They will close.
The state has openly shared that there is a lack of adequate support for these children, as noted in the January 6 statement. The superintendent recognizes that public schools do not have the means to support the unique needs of these children, and yet he plans to make it nearly impossible for state-approved schools recognized as NPAs to provide the resources these children desperately need.
SB 5315 would unintentionally hurt students who are already marginalized. The requirement of these new hurdles would not improve the oversight of NPAs, as it intends. Rather, it would impose cumbersome, costly, and unnecessary regulations that could delay access to the services students need and deserve.
Core Components of SB 5315 That Fail Special Need Students
To better provide insight into what will happen should SB 5315 be put into place, consider these specific sections:
- 1.6
This section requires OSPI approval of contracts between NPAs and school districts. It does not provide clarity on whether that approval would be for individual contracts for students or individual districts to work with a specific NPA or approval for all districts to contract with the NPA.
The bill does not clarify funding or procedures for this type of approval process.
Under the current process, districts and NPAs enter into agreements designed specifically to meet the needs of the children who will attend the NPA. This provides essential flexibility to meet the specific needs of that child.
- 2.2
This section proposes contract requirements that all school districts and NPAs already have in place. This includes the provision of educational services, practices related to financial
record-keeping, and reporting requirements. This is redundant since NPAs already must provide in-depth financial audits and staff reporting audits on an annual basis.
It also requires credentialing that public school personnel are required to have. The bill creates standards that are not met in public schools right now.
This section also mandates that NPAs comply with all state and federal laws applicable to the school district. It fails to provide any clarification on what is relevant.
- 3
This section of the proposed bill requires inspections of all NPA sites prior to contract awarding. There is no clarification of when or how this will occur. Districts already perform site visits. It does not provide any funding or staffing for these types of visits either, which could mean that such visits may not be able to happen quickly enough to meet the needs of students who need care.
The bill delays access to the program students need, especially students in crisis. It also does not take into account that an NPA approval and oversight process is already in place. Private schools that are NPAs must have State Board of Education approval. Additionally, the bill does not recognize that many private schools are accredited, which requires an extensive process and site visit.
