By Katie Campbell | Arizona Capitol Times
rizona lawmakers have not adjusted the additional dollars allocated for students with special needs in at least a decade, and public schools have been left to make up the difference. District and charter schools are federally mandated to provide services to those students, and a lack of funding does not excuse them from that obligation.
The money has to come from somewhere.
“You take it out of somebody else’s program,” said Chuck Essigs, who was involved in legislation that led to the education funding formula created in 1980.
Essigs, director of government relations for the Arizona Association of School Business Officials, said the formula met the needs of schools at the time. Today, it does not.
