Now imagine if someone were to criticize your spending on heat based on that statistic, a statistic that actually highlights that you spend less than your neighbors on other parts of your household budget. You would rightly dismiss that claim as inaccurate. You need to know that those who claim that our school district is spending too much money on special education services are making this same kind of erroneous argument.
Some who say that Shrewsbury spends too much on special education are citing a particular statistic as supposed evidence for this inaccurate claim. The statistic, reported by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, is the percentage of overall school spending allocated to special education costs. For Fiscal Year 2013, this statistic shows that Shrewsbury spent about 25% of its total education budget on special education, while the state average is about 20%. At first glance, someone might take this to mean that we are spending 5% more on special education than a typical district, but that is not what this shows. What it actually shows is that Shrewsbury spends about the same as an average school district on mandated special education costs, but spends a whole lot less on other parts of its educational program, which makes the proportional share spent on special education higher.
The fact is that Shrewsbury spends millions of dollars below the state average on teachers, administrators, textbooks, and technology. The fact is that Shrewsbury has been ranked in the bottom 11% of all Massachusetts school districts in overall per pupil spending, and in the bottom 2% for textbooks, instructional materials and technology. The fact is that the percentage of students receiving special education services in Shrewsbury is slightly below the state average (15% vs. 17%). The fact is that if Shrewsbury were spending at the state average for non-special education categories, special education costs would only be 20% of the whole, exactly in line with the state average. The two pie charts above demonstrate that difference.
Years ago, before our district was forced to make drastic cuts in non-special education categories due to resource limitations, the ratio of spending for special education was more in line with the sate average. Over time, as relative spending on non-special education costs has shrunk, it only makes sense that the share of the whole represented by special education costs has grown. The truth is that our school district has done a cost effective job of providing special education programming (please see my budget message to Town Meeting here for more details).
If someone tries to tell you that Shrewsbury spends too much on special education because it spends a larger percentage of its total budget on that category, you can explain how the facts show that this claim is bogus. I am confident that our community has enough common sense to recognize a false argument like this one.
