$75,000 to Go Toward Special Education

The Cypress School District’s Board of Trustees voted Tuesday to allocate $75,000 to help pay for special-education programs.

The move was in response to the federal government’s failure to help with special-education program costs, said Supt. William D. Eller.

During the meeting, the board voted unanimously to take the money from the general fund.

It will be used to help pay the balance of the 1999-2000 school year’s special-education budget, as well as the cost of providing services for students who attend programs outside the Cypress area.

The district now provides three special-education programs: a special day class for students needing remedial help; a resource specialist, who also offers remedial help to students; and speech therapy.

Each program satisfies a state and federal law that requires students with special needs be provided individual attention.

Thirty-one Cypress students use--along with the district’s programs--special-education services of the Los Alamitos, Magnolia and Centralia school districts.

Those services, including a program for the hearing-impaired and students with autism, are not provided by the Cypress district.

Funding for the school district has been compromised because the federal government has failed to keep its promise of funding 40% of the special-education programs, Eller said.

He said that during the past three years, federal funding of these programs has averaged 8%.

Small class size and individual attention that children receive make special-education classes popular with parents, Eller said, and future funding will be a major issue.

“This year we’ve had more requests for services than at any other time,” he said. “And we expect requests to continue to rise.”

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Andre Briscoe can be reached at (714) 966-5848.