Legislature(2021 - 2022)ADAMS 519
04/19/2021 01:30 PM House FINANCE
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| Audio | Topic |
|---|---|
| Start | |
| HB169 | |
| SB19 | |
| HB169 | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
| += | HB 169 | TELECONFERENCED | |
| + | SB 19 | TELECONFERENCED | |
| + | TELECONFERENCED |
CS FOR SENATE BILL NO. 19(FIN)
"An Act relating to allocations for the special
education service agency; extending the special
education service agency; and providing for an
effective date."
1:55:28 PM
TIM LAMKIN, STAFF, SENATOR GARY STEVENS, introduced the
legislation. He communicated Senator Stevens' appreciation
of the bill hearing. He shared that the bill was an
opportunity to recognize an agency that did a large amount
with very little. He explained that the Special Education
Service Agency (SESA) was a community of people providing a
unique set of services for severely disadvantaged youth. He
stated there was trust and respect for the agency's work
that involved helping many schools, students, and families.
He noted the subject area was fairly sensitive and required
significant compassion, patience, grace, and love. The bill
would extend the SESA sunset to 2029 and adjusted the
agency's funding formula to keep it whole over the next
eight years. He reported that the latest audit was
constructive and illuminated SESA's success and efficacy.
He detailed that the SESA director was available online and
the legislature's auditor was available in person to speak
about the findings.
Mr. Lamkin reviewed the sectional analysis (copy on file):
Section 1: AS 14.30.650 is amended to increase the
funding component for SESA, from an existing rate of
$18.65 to $23.13 times the number of students in the
state in average daily membership.
Section 2: AS 44.66.010(a)(6) Extends the sunset date
for SESA to June 30, 2029.
Section 3: Provides for a retroactive effective date
in the event the bill doesn't pass before June 30,
2021.
Section 4: Makes the funding component described in
Section 1 effective July 1, 2021.
Section 5: Provides for an immediate effective date
upon its passage.
1:58:04 PM
Representative Carpenter asked why there was a change from
the existing rate from $18.65 to $23.13.
Mr. Lamkin answered that SESA's caseload had increased
substantially with flat funding and flat staffing levels.
He relayed that an upcoming PowerPoint presentation would
explain the issue more thoroughly.
Representative LeBon asked if the rate had been locked at
$18.65 for quite some time.
Mr. Lamkin replied that the rate had been set at $18.65 at
the time of the last audit in 2013. Prior to that it had
been 15 years since the last increase.
1:59:25 PM
PATRICK PILLAI, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SPECIAL EDUCATION
SERVICE AGENCY (via teleconference), provided a PowerPoint
presentation titled "SESA: Special Education Service Agency
Introduction" (copy on file). He shared that he had joined
SESA in 1994 as a deaf education specialist. He reviewed
the presentation with prepared remarks beginning on slide
2:
This is the homepage of SESA's website. It provides
online access to program services and resources, a
lending library, online professional development, e-
modules, and an easy process for school districts to
submit online referrals for SESA service. The agency's
mission reflects a focus on addressing the unique
special education needs of students, parents, and
teachers across Alaska's 54 school districts.
Mr. Pillai moved to slide 3:
The statute establishing SESA addresses technical
assistance and service to students with low incidence
disabilities. Low incidence disabilities are defined
as occurring in less than one percent of the total
population. The rarity of the disability often means
specialized services are not normally available in the
school district. SESA affords such sites access to a
specialist with an endorsement in a particular
disability area in addition to other resources.
2:01:05 PM
Mr. Pillai turned to slide 4:
SESA's logic model captures the design of process to
deliver specialized services to parents, schools, and
school districts. The intent is to address the gap via
solutions that promote availability of SESA's service
through on-site and distance support. This approach
creates broad participant training to address staff
turnover and promises collaboration and networking
amongst teachers and paraprofessionals. This in turn
reduces isolation and ultimately provides retention of
teachers especially in rural remote areas of the
state.
Mr. Pillai addressed technical assistance on slide 5:
The continuum of services includes observations,
assessments, educational interventions, modeling of
educational strategies, in-service training, assistive
technology, and many more pertinent activities based
on requests from the child's educational team members.
Specialists also work with vendors to troubleshoot
assistive technology when teachers call with
complaints of device non-functionality.
Mr. Pillai turned to slides 6 and 7:
In addition to specialist evaluation, the SESA
management system is designed to collect data on
various aspects of agency activity. Metrics focus on
mission-centric activities such as site travel,
creation of educational materials, training and in-
services, and writing of student service reports. Data
is analyzed to understand variables impacting service
and the SESA budget.
SESA's database allows us to run reports of agency
productivity. The slide captures activities of
technical assistance, number of schools and districts
served, number of trainings conducted on-site and via
distance delivery, and an analysis of expenses.
2:03:08 PM
Mr. Pillai advanced to slide 8 and spoke about the
customized management system:
This slide is a visual example of the customized
management system SESA designed to ensure data-driven
decision making. Individual reports provide data on
specialist activity allowing for measurement of
productivity; number of reports completed with an
agency timeframe of 10 working days; schools and sites
requesting service; active student caseloads by
district, location, and school etcetera.
Mr. Pillai reviewed slide 9:
Legislative audits and the program component of annual
public audits run tests of compliance with regard to
process and procedure. This section of the database
was created in response for specific data and with
feedback from auditors. Following a recommendation of
the SESA board to go green, SESA management worked to
eliminate paper files. All of SESA's student record
keeping is now electronic. The compliance element of
the SESA database drives quarterly compliance reviews.
Mr. Pillai turned to slide 10:
Slide 10 captures in red the number of students
attending Alaska's schools in any given year between
2011 and 2020. The solid blue line captures the
steadily increasing number of students on SESA's low
incidence caseload. High turnover of staff in many
districts often drives the need for repeated trainings
for new staff, especially first-year teachers who may
be encountering any given disability for the first
time.
Mr. Pillai moved to slide 11:
Slide 11 is a history of SESA fund balance from 2013
and projected to 2023. The cycle captures low funds at
the end of a sunset cycle, in this case 2013, higher
funds at the middle of the cycle, and trending to
lower fund balance at the end of the cycle as a result
of the increase in cost. SESA's last funding increase
was in 2013. At the end of [FY] 22, factoring for cost
increase, we anticipate using $578,000 from fund
balance. This is a result of the impact of the CPI
index increase of 6.3 percent over the last eight
years.
Mr. Pillai looked at the fund balance on slide 12:
Slide 12 illustrates SESA's projected withdrawals from
fund balance in fiscal year 2022 moving into complete
deficit in fiscal year 2025. SESA utilizes a cashflow
of roughly $400,000 for day-to-day expenses. SESA
revenues, annual support grant, and LID activity
occurring between the initial grant award and
disbursement of funds at a later date. Grants operate
with an initial upfront award of roughly 25 percent of
the grant total and thereafter are reimbursed upon
submission of receipts for qualified grant expenditure
post the activity.
Mr. Pillai moved to slide 13 and discussed a proposed 24
percent funding increase:
Slide 13 is the projection of the 24 percent proposed
increase to SESA funding through Senate Bill 19. The
bill would increase the current $18.65 times the
number of students in the average daily membership in
the prior fiscal year to $23.13. This would
effectively fund SESA without interruption of services
to families and school districts through June 30,
2029, the end of the period of reauthorization.
Mr. Pillai addressed the recently completed legislative
audit on slide 14:
The recently completed legislative audit concurs that
SESA meets the needs of students with low incidence
disabilities, provides professional development
opportunities to teachers and paraprofessionals,
provides special education resources to parents and
school districts, and concludes with the
recommendation for an eight-year legislative
reauthorization.
Mr. Pillai relayed that he was happy to answer any
questions.
Co-Chair Merrick thanked Mr. Pillai for SESA's hard work
with special needs students.
2:07:51 PM
Co-Chair Merrick asked to hear a review of the recent
legislative audit.
KRIS CURTIS, LEGISLATIVE AUDITOR, ALASKA DIVISION OF
LEGISLATIVE AUDIT, reported that the Division of
Legislative Audit conducted a review of SESA dated April
2020 (copy on file). She began the presentation with the
background information section on page 5 of the audit. She
read from prepared remarks:
SESA was created to help Alaskan school districts
provide special education services to individuals with
a low incidence disability. A low incidence disability
occurs in less than 1 percent of the national school-
aged population and the disabilities are more severe
in nature and require specialized education
intervention. SESA was established as a nonprofit
organization whose governing board is the Governor's
Council on Disabilities and Special Education, which
is organizationally housed within the Department of
Health and Social Services; however, its primary
service, its low incidence outreach program is
budgeted and funded through the Department of
Education and Early Development. This funding is
independent of the intensive needs funding that a
district may otherwise receive. SESA's funding
provides additional financial support to help ensure
students affected by low incidence disabilities
receive a free and appropriate public education that
is required by state and federal laws.
SESA's services are available to districts whose low
incidence special education needs occur infrequently,
making it difficult for the district to serve the low
number of students in need of a particular service.
SESA recruits, trains, and retains education
specialists to provide technical assistance and
training to parents, students, and district staff
without regard to the state. The number and location
of students served by SESA you will see in a map on
page 8. That shows that as of February 2020 there were
335 students served in 48 school districts. You will
also see that information broken out on page 27 in a
separate table, which breaks out the number of
students served by a low incidence disability
category.
Report conclusions begin on page 11. Overall, the
audit concludes that SESA served the public's interest
by assisting school districts and providing students
affected by low incidence disabilities an education to
meet the children's unique needs and by providing
opportunities to enhance school district teachers' and
paraprofessionals' capabilities and by providing
resources. We are recommending an eight-year
extension, which is the maximum allowed for in
statute. As part of the audit, we did send a survey to
school district special education directors in all 51
school districts. We received a 59 percent response
rate and in general the school district special
education directors viewed SESA services, staff
availability and their expertise favorably. Those
questions and responses can be found in Appendix C to
the audit.
As already discussed, on page 13 we do discuss their
statutory funding formula and how it is $18.65
multiplied by the states average daily membership,
again, set in 2013. Before that it was set 14 years
earlier. That has not changed; however, the caseload
has increased by 63 percent during the last 8 years.
We did find that SESA's education specialists serving
certain categories were experiencing high caseloads
and as of February 2020 the agency had three education
specialist vacancies.
2:11:45 PM
Ms. Curtis shared that the agency had one recommendation
beginning on page 18. The audit recommended SESA's
executive director implement written procedures to ensure
the reclassification of a student's referred disability was
adequately supported and communicated to school district
personnel. She detailed auditors reviewed 40 case files and
found five students' disabilities as identified in the
referral form from the school districts had been
reclassified by an education specialist and had not found
any documentation in the file regarding the reason for
reclassification. Additionally, in four of the five cases
there had been no visible communication back to the school
district about the reclassification. Auditors believed a
simple administrative fix should not be too much trouble to
accomplish. She relayed that the board chair and the DHSS
and DEED commissioners agreed with the report conclusions
and the recommendation.
2:12:43 PM
Representative Wool looked at the map on page 8 showing
school districts and number of students. He listed
Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau and asked if the program
did not serve large school districts by design.
Ms. Curtis replied in the affirmative. She detailed there
was a threshold. When a school district reached ten in a
specific category, SESA worked with the district to
transition away from SESA services to make sure the
district hired its own specialists given SESA's limited
resources. She added that there were some students in those
categories, but much fewer than in other locations.
Representative Wool asked if statute designated that SESA
serve school districts with less than ten students [in a
particular category] requiring intervention.
Ms. Curtis answered that there was no statutory guidance.
The prior sunset audit had found that some type of criteria
was needed to specify when school districts needed to
absorb students. She explained that school districts
received special education intensive needs funding. She
elaborated that SESA was in place to serve districts with
needs in such a low number that the district did not have
the services in place to address them.
2:14:27 PM
Representative Rasmussen referenced page 8 and asked if
multiple disabilities was a combination of one of the other
six listed disabilities. She asked if there were any
unlisted disabilities.
2:15:18 PM
AT EASE
2:16:14 PM
RECONVENED
Ms. Curtis pointed to the definition of multiple
disabilities on page 7; the definition listed out the
different combinations that qualified a person for the
classification.
HEIDI TESHNER, DIRECTOR, FINANCE AND SUPPORT SERVICES,
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND EARLY DEVELOPMENT (via
teleconference), was available to present the fiscal note,
OMB Component Number 2735. She stated that the bill would
increase SESA's funding multiplier from $18.65 to $23.13
multiplied by the average daily membership (ADM) from the
prior fiscal year. She elaborated that the governor's FY 22
budget request included a $2.4 million projected grant for
SESA based on the statutory calculation. She detailed it
had been determined by multiplying the FY 21 projected ADM
of 128,923.91 times the $18.65. Based on the increased
multiplier and the final FY 21 ADM count finalized in March
2021, the amended FY 22 SESA grant was $2,937,900
(determined by multiplying the final ADM of 127,015.30
times $23.13). The bill reflected an increase of $533,500.
She noted the extension would carry out through June 2029
and DEED would adjust the budget annually based on the
statutory calculation.
SB 19 was HEARD and HELD in committee for further
consideration.
2:19:48 PM
AT EASE
2:19:56 PM
RECONVENED