The District will spend an astonishing $11,568 per pupil this school year, including $261 million on special education services. Both those figures are expected to climb substantially in next year’s school budget, which is a proposed $1 billion. Moreover, as enrollment in public schools drops by the thousands and those students become absorbed, for the most part, by charter schools and voucher programs, a new funding conundrum develops.
Taxpayers are actually paying twice for students: Once when they are enrolled in a public school; and once when they are enrolled in charter schools. As Natwar Gandhi, the city’s chief financial officer, told us the other day, “The important issue for us is, as I look at the city budget as a whole … the double payment has to stop.”
The double payment isn’t all that troubles Mr. Gandhi, who is chiefly responsible for helping city officials stem overruns by the public school system: “The second, more troubling, issue is that special education is absorbing the lion’s share of the D.C. Pubic Schools budget, depriving general classrooms.” In fact, 34 percent of the school budget is allocated for the estimated 12,000 students receiving special education services. Of those students, about 2,600 attend private schools. It is the “most expensive piece of education you can find,” Mr. Gandhi said.
The District’s dirty little secrets about its per-pupil expenditures were confirmed last year by the U.S. Census, which reported that only New York and New Jersey spent more than the nation’s capital. As the D.C. Council begin querying school officials on their spending plans, lawmakers must ask the obvious questions: What is being done to stop the double payments and to curb the exorbitant costs of special education?
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