Posted on: Friday, November 19, 2004

School board to ask for $12M in emergency funding

By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau

HILO, Hawai'i — The state Board of Education will ask lawmakers for emergency funding of nearly $12 million to pay for behavioral health services for children and to care for growing numbers of students who are being identified as autistic.

Gov. Linda Lingle's administration earlier this year rejected a request for emergency funding for autism services, forcing the Department of Education to delay payments to contractors who had been providing services to students, according to a report to the state Board of Education last night.

To cover the cost of the services that were provided last school year, the department used $7 million from the budgets for behavioral health and autism for this year. That tactic kept the program going, but left the department with a large shortfall this year, board members were told.

"We are going to be faced with a major problem if we don't get the emergency appropriation," said board member Karen Knudsen.

The number of students identified with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, has grown from 835 two years ago to 1,056 today. That is in keeping with a nationwide trend toward more frequent diagnoses of students with ASD, according to the report presented to the BOE at its meeting in Hilo last night.

The department expects to spend nearly $75 million on the autism and behavioral health programs this year, including $33.7 million this year on contracts to have autistic students treated, and another $20.1 million on contracts for school-based behavioral health services.

DOE officials contend the school-based behavioral health program was already underfunded when it was transferred from the state Department of Health to the Department of Education.

Since then, the cost of the federally mandated program has escalated, with students requiring more intensive services, and contract costs growing each year, board members were told.

The emergency request for $11,672,564 now goes to the Lingle administration, which will decide whether to ask for the money in the 2005 session of the state Legislature.

In other business, the board deferred action on a request that it endorse a proposed amendment to the state Constitution that would give the student member of the board a vote on all issues other than budget and personnel matters.

The student member on the 13-member board does not have a vote. Students have been lobbying for a vote for the student member since 1988.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 935-3916.