There is a face-off going on down in Olympia. The Governor v. the Legislature. The Governor v. her own Democrats. The Democrats v. the Republicans. The House v. the Senate. And caught right in the middle is funding for Highly Capable Programs in the supplemental budget.
It appears there will be a special session beginning Friday to consider the supplemental budget, provided the five parties to the discussions get their act together. We can’t wait to see if they do. We need you to take action immediately to make known your wishes regarding Highly Capable funding for 2009-2010.
The Governor made across-the-board cuts in November. That resulted in 6.3% cuts to Highly Capable Programs: $561,000 from categorical funding to districts, $11,000 from Centrum and $6,000 from FPS/DI, totaling $578,000 and leaving an appropriation of $8,628,000 for the year.
Now the Governor proposes to totally eliminate all highly capable funding retroactive to September 2010.
The House Democrats have published a detailed list of cuts which appears to include the already made across-the-board cuts the Governor made last month. Since no explanatory notes or material were released with the house democrat list, we are guessing that the cuts in it to HCP are the ones already made in the across-the-board cuts since they match to the dollar.
The House Republicans issued a statement saying “no retroactive cuts” so we are assuming that there will be no cuts to HCP such as proposed by the Governor, but since their proposal does not contain any detail, we are left up in the air as to whether or not there might be other cuts to HCP.
The detailed list of the Senate Republicans does not include any cuts to HCP.
The Senate Democrats are not yet ready to release their list of cuts but majority leader Lisa Brown did say “We must keep in mind that the education we provide to our young people represents their opportunity for their future.” Will this save HCP funds? Maybe.
Please, please, contact your legislators today and tell them you oppose any further cuts to Highly Capable Program funds. Appropriate services for highly capable learners are not a nice add-on we can fund when times are good and drop when times are lean. They are an essential component of a strong state economy, an investment in the state’s future. Some other points you can make are:
• Interrupting educational programs in mid year by defunding them as proposed by the Governor is disruptive to students and districts alike. Contracts have been signed, students are in programs, teachers are committed, some districts would need to either completely reorganize their activities or find local funds to continue them as they are now established.
• Eliminating HCPs for one year when they will become a mandated part of basic education in Sept. 2011 is counterproductive. It will cost more to reestablish these programs than will be saved by eliminating funding for the entire year.
Legislators are in Olympia this week for caucus meetings and some joint committee meetings. In order to contact them there, go to http://www.leg.wa.gov/LIC/Pages/hotline.aspx and follow the suggestions as to method. If you elect to use the Hotline, write out your short message in advance and read it to the operator so it says exactly what you want it to say. Operators will transcribe your oral message and send it on to the Legislator.
For the sake of our children, make contact today.
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Hello,
I think it would be helpful if you could help us (readers and parents) understand what effect retroactive elimination of HCP funding would cause. Although I have received several requests to contact the legistlature for HCP funding, none of the emails (to my recollection) clearly stated what was at stake (other than ‘funding of programs would be cut’). Without a clear outlining of what is at stake, and the current and expected consequences of funding reductions, it is difficult to understand or interpret the urgency of these requests. Kindly outline this information in future messages or blog posts.
Thanks for listening!
Thanks for your comment. It’s difficult to say exactly what the effects of eliminating funding will be for your particular district, because each district in Washington can make the choice to offer highly capable programming or not, and exactly what form of programming they will provide.
For some districts, eliminating all state funding would likely mean they would no longer be able to provide dedicated highly capable programming. For other districts, it might mean that they would turn to local levies to try to provide services, but that could leave districts in a budget bind until a local levy could be passed. If a district relied on pull-out programming, they could reduce the number of hours of instruction a student received, eliminate transportation, or cut back on the curriculum. If a district offered self-contained full-time classes, those might be eliminated and students divided up and placed in regular education classrooms. I could continue to list off the possibilities, but be assured that none of them are positive. The number of possible outcomes is almost equal to the number of districts offering programming.
When we provide our information, we have to be careful to ensure that all our possible audiences receive the message. If we warn that cuts may eliminate pull-out services, and your district only offers self-contained programming, you might interpret that to mean your local program was safe when in reality we just didn’t list that possible bad outcome.
As we enter the next legislative session, we will have some more specific programming that we can refer to, as we will be urging the legislature to adopt the recommendations of the Highly Capable Program Technical Working Group. The HCPTWG made some very specific recommendations, and had some very specific information about the value of different programming options. The HCPTWG also provided recommendations for better means of evaluating programs, which should allow us in the future to better define the exact risks of reducing or eliminating funding.