and ask some questions about the special education budget, some of the same questions i asked last week. again, by my numbers, a little repetitious -- as i understand it, what we are talking about is increasing the general fund support to special education by $8.40 million. i would kind of like to know why. we discussed this at the committee as a whole, but i do think for budget purposes i want to know what we are spending that on. i think we should, for the public and ourselves, take note of the fact that education transportation from the general fund is reduced by $800,000 from last year, which is what we have been looking for. i am happy to hear about that. we have some reference in the

committee as a whole but were told these numbers were in flux. we should all -- the impending strokes we were all going to have when we heard the general fund encroachment was likely to grow by 20 million -- it is now less than half of that. but i would still like to know why that is growing in that way and if we think it is temporary and not going to keep on growing. we will all be in the hospital together otherwise. that is my question about that. i do not know if anybody wants to answer that before i ask another one. >> another assistant superintendent is joining us. as we said at last week's committee as a whole meeting, the single biggest reason why

that contribution is growing by that magnitude is the expiration of the idea era funds. that has represented about 6 by $5 million of funding. -- $6.50 million of funding. commissioner wynns: if we could see the sort of trajectory of the growth of general fund support for special ed and some information for why that is -- i am hoping, because our three was that by reorganizing we would be saving money, that we will eventually. if you could explain to us -- what i am hoping is that we are double funding things now by a kind of doing it the old way and hiring people to do it the new way. is that significant? will that change? when these things that will, what year? do you imagine it might change?

>> i will take a stab at that. you are correct that there are a number of things we are doing right now that are on top of the things that we eventually hope to not be doing. we hope to be reducing some of the expenditures that are less effective. you are correct in that. a few weeks ago, i did have something sent out that laid out specific ways i think we are going to be able to be more efficient in our spending as we move forward. i would be happy to try to recap some of that from memory and also to resend it. commissioner wynns: i am concerned because we have had a lot of good discussion that has been helpful to me about the kinds of changes we are making. we did have a discussion at the committee as a whole about

having to have at least temporarily more paraprofessionals for more conclusion -- more inclusion or less isolation of disabled kids, which is a good thing. i will tell you what i am most stumped about, what i know the least about. i would like to have come through a budget lens, somebody talk about the difference in the assignment of teachers. i do not mean the mechanism, although i am interested in that as well. what do we think could be the budget impact of not having so many special education classroom teachers, and when do we think such a change would happen? and do we think that is going to result in significant budget savings? these are structural things where for me there is a disconnect between what i know, which is limited, about the

kinds of structural and instructional changes we are making, and budget impact. this is all i get about the budget, which is just a whole bunch of numbers. for me, it is not very connected to the strategy and how that might come in the end, we hope -- not only hope, but believe, because of what we know, is going to result in better instruction, better outcomes, and savings. i am missing the savings peace, how it is related. >> in the audit report from the urban special education collaborative, they spent a lot of time on the topic of our programmatic approach to providing special education. the categorize children into programs. they asked us to move to a service-delivery orientation and a more integrated way of serving the kids.

as we do that, it will help. but we do have a couple of hurdles to overcome. our current labor relations, our teacher contract, is formulated in the programmatic model, with very rigid class size and program descriptions. that becomes something that needs to change. we need to agree on a new way to calculate workload. we all want to make sure special ed teachers do not have an unbearable workload. we need new ways to calculate that. that will help us greatly. it is going to take time for people to begin to use a different paradigm in how they think about laying out the services for children. but that will really help us in potentially freeing up staff to be used more flexibly.

at the same time, as we do professional development, staff will build their capacity to provide services. the work we are doing around improving instruction overall and the core curriculum is really going to help. the other recommendation in the audit report around implementing tier systems of intervention around academics and behavior will help. as we know as we look at that, that is called rti, focusing on the court, a solid frame and foundation of instruction. that is ultimately going to help all kids be successful. that will help us rely less heavily on paraprofessionals and help us integrate the services into our classrooms so we do not have rigid recommendations for many kids to be served in a self-contained model.

it is called inclusion because the kids would need heavier staffing. it is always good to come together, and it takes some time. commissioner wynns: this is what this budget made me think of. can you say to us -- i do not mean today, but could you give us something that looks at the changes in our paradigm, turning this battleship? if he said to me -- i read the report. i agree with all of those things. but there is not anywhere in that report that says we think a service model for this many kids with these many disabilities would look like this as far as staffing. now you have as many. you might have teacher is doing these things, this many. then you could, with help from our budget staff, tell us what that might cost in today's dollars, based on today's

contracts. all that we know today. then we would have some idea. for me and i think other members of the board, we were a bit taken aback. that is not what we believed would happen. we thought the first year we began to implement this change, the evolution to the service model, we would tremendously increased general fund support. i understand the issue of other funds we had before, but we did not have those a few years ago and were not spending $20 million more than we are now. do you understand what i am talking about? i do not want to get panicked over this and think we cannot afford it. in recent weeks, when i have been telling people how much our general fund is now, people are as panicked as i am. we obviously do not have enough information about how this might

work. >> i feel really lucky to be able to look, to some degree, from our budget back to the special ed budget i had in st. paul. it was similar. the same size child care. very similar demographics in terms of ethnicity, poverty, and things like that. i actually had more teachers and about the same number of paras, and the same size budget as this. we were spending less money on some other things. it is really some of those other things we are doing now that are going to take us a while to do differently. we can do them more cost effectively. but the change cannot happen as quickly as we would like it too. it is in those areas rather than the number of teachers.

we do not seem to have too many teachers. this is always its own issue. the other thing is maybe there is someone who has done a study of the general fund contributions to special lead across california districts. in minnesota, we had someone who did that kind of work on an annual basis. if we could get a hold of that, we could see if we are off track from other districts. it seems like a big number, and i do not know if it is. commissioner wynns: we should look at that. the last thing is i brought this up before and have been thinking about this since the committee as a hall meeting. i want to put this on the table for us as a structural budget issue. i think we need to get to a point where all the teachers to teach in classrooms, who were special ed teachers, should be

in the school budget, even if they are whatever -- the fact that we are the county office of education should not mean that we have to see all the special ed teachers in a centrally allocated budget. men because it distorts our own perception and the schools perception, and in fact, it reinforces the program, and the more they changed that, -- the more they change that, we need to find a way -- if somebody tells us we still have to be responsible for the county budget, that does not mean we

could not have something that recognizes that during your -- recognize that. that ought to be part of the model, to get all the people who worked at school sites recognized in the school site budget, so sometimes i hope somebody can explain how we can do that. >> that is an interesting idea. what was it a it gave school staffs? >> i heard the dog at the conference breyer -- conference.

>> it was a series of workshops and related to special ended, so people were talking about how they were able to move fivethatd part of the discussion was a round of powering the school -- around and powering the school, and i've brought it up when we started talking about inclusion.

we have special day questions, but is where it came from. >> i do not think we have the internal capacity to do that. five are with us but we begin by being able to know what we are spending -- i would ask we begin by being able to know what we are spending. all you can do is look in the special education budget, were you see a huge number of teachers. that is it. you do not know what schools they are in.

>> what i would like to see is actually a special education budget include all costs, so for the extended school year, we are mandated to do about, and the district pays for a portion of it, too, but we must provide the schools, and we do use some of them for recovery, but it is first generated because of our legal commitment to extend the school year and make sure those budgets are in place so we can see how much money does it cost to run special education in this district, and i also want to say we knew those were

temporary, so this is the kind of thing that frightens me. we knew it was temporary, yet we have no plans about how we were going to fill the gap. it would be easy to go there and keep spending the money, even though we knew the money -- there was time. we kept spending, not anticipate we were not going to have the money, especially because it was such a large contribution, and i have said many times about our state money, but a lot of people would do a lot of things with this money and we are not going to have it forever, so we cannot possibly take that money

out of our general fund and pay for that. the lack of planning has gotten us where we are curiosa a region where we are. i would almost say if this is the money it takes to educate our children in special education at a level of high excellence, then i would say the contribution is probably worth every penny, but when we are not, it is a waste of our money to not educate these children to the level they deserve, and i mentioned about transitional aged youth you're good -- use. i want to mention i do not have a handle on what does it cost to

run a special-education budget. it has been so inflated. it has been increasingly more expensive, and i think if we have all the numbers it takes, i appreciate said you are adding some of the suits, so that is why it is much larger. sometimes there are costs. i think i am under the wrong impression about that. >> the one i did want to respond to is that extended school year is in this budget moving forward, so now we can have accurate accounting for the

expenditures. goo>> we have one question. >> if we can ask superintendent garcia if they have any information about what percentage of general funds go to special education. they may not have the information, but it is worth asking even though it is nationwide. . >> i want to ask a follow-up question, witches and that there are some things we are not doing well but we are spending too much money on, and i was wondering if she could be more specific, but i also want to say

i really appreciate that effort, and i want to acknowledge that and say it is a more welcome move to transparency. >> thank you. only a few things. one is the we are working to increase meticals records.

we can really picked out of. there is something we really need to get more, something our school staff needs to really generate the dollars, so we are way under getting the revenue we are entitled to. we contract of two nurses to provide special services. we are piloting a couple of school program so we can begin to put some of the money to helping district-employed nurses. right now we do not have enough now employed, but they are able

to with the same training. american sign language interpreters, spanish and chinese interpreters, primarily for parents. we are beginning to work with parents engagement to higher our own. we are going to be scaling the up over the school year, so we are maxed out in terms of making those changes, and that will be slow because it involves working with h.r. and hiring the right people with the political will to change.

these things are slow, but these things stood out to me as places we could free up some money. get in some ways, i reduce expenditures already, but then we were able to free up some money, to add some curriculum to help boasts write better transitions -- to help write better transitions. we are taking baby steps. >> i appreciate your concerns. september is when we have the special education review, and what we have been doing in terms of looking at special education

services is this is years and years in the making, and we are months in the reform. this is going to be one of the priorities, and we look forward to coming back and showing the students are more successful, but i want to say this is going to take some time to reduce structural impediments, and it is going to involve labour negotiations. it is going to look of a comprehensive review of what we do for students with disabilities. get >> i want to add that i have already talked to the superintendent about doing an update one year after the review, so in september to take out as an opportunity to look

knackered where we are -- look back at where we are and the steps we have made. i think that is a good time. >> we have invited her to come back to the committee, so that would be great. >> we are back to the budget. goo>> i appreciate that we talk about their current situation when we talk about school closure days, and how about directly impacts all employees and also but unrepresented administrators are for five

days. gooi would like it in i am willg to support the, but i would like to also ask roger to give us a staff of state -- updates on our situation. thank you, mr. bushman. i know we originally sent out 420 layoff notices. >> i thought it was about 300.

>> i am going to start with that figure and let you take it from here. >> cert employees, there were 147 that we laid off, and we laid off 13 administrators, but 110 have been returned. >> we have been able to do about by cost savings and figuring out other ways we can reduce costs to hire these folks back. is that correct?

>> as well as positions, etc. to address your original question, but was the total amount of back in march, so the 147 is the number of may 15 certificate notices, and i was the language states, that number has been reduced because of the number of recalls but have taken place. >> can we talk about the other employees as well in? what about our other employees? >> 4 para educators, we had 138th. there are 48 of