Statement of Senator Jim Jeffords, Dodd Special Education Amendment

Mr. President, I want to thank my good friend Senator Dodd for bringing this very important amendment to the floor. This amendment is about making sure that all children have an opportunity to learn, and I want to urge my colleagues to support this very critical amendment. We must recognize that we cannot provide all of our children with the opportunity to achieve unless we support our children with adequate resources. The level of funding for education in this Omnibus Appropriations bill is unconscionable.

When I first arrived in Congress in 1975, one of the first legislative initiatives I worked on was the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, now known as IDEA. We wrote the legislation to ensure that children with disabilities receive the special education and related services they need and deserve. We also recognized, however, that educating children with disabilities would be very costly, and therefore promised that the Federal government would pay 40% of the excess cost of educating children with disabilities.

At that time, nearly half of all disabled children, approximately 2 million children, were not receiving a public education. Another 2 million children were placed in segregated, inadequate classrooms.

Today, IDEA serves approximately 6 million disabled children. IDEA has been very successful in providing the basic constitutional right of an education to our children with disabilities: dropout rates have decreased, graduation rates have increased, and the percentage of college freshmen with a disability has almost tripled. IDEA has helped individuals with disabilities become independent, wage-earning, tax-paying contributors to this nation.

The problem, however, is that we have not kept our promise of helping the states pay for the costs of educating children with disabilities. Although Congress has increased IDEA funding in recent years, it has woefully failed to meet its obligation to fully fund IDEA. Rather than contributing the 40% as promised, currently, we only pay about 17%. I would like to recognize Senators Harkin and Hagel for their unyielding commitment to our children and to our schools, and I look forward to continuing to work with them to fully fund IDEA.

The underlying appropriations bill only increases IDEA funding by $1 billion. At that rate, we're on course to fully fund IDEA in the year 2035. I know that the children of Vermont, and the children across this country, cannot wait another 32 years.

And yet, as we continue to underfund IDEA, the costs associated with educating children with disabilities continue to rise and absorb increasingly larger portions of school districts' budgets.

For example, in my state of Vermont, the special education costs have increased by 150% over the past 10 years, and the Federal underfunding leads to the state and local districts to spend approximately $20 million more from local sources than if Federal funding were provided at the maximum level. I know that these problems are not unique to Vermont; but rather, they are shared by states and school districts across the country.

And now, state governments are battling the worst fiscal conditions since World War II. According to the National Governors Association, budget shortfalls will be as high as $50 billion this year, and $60 to $70 billion next year. Accordingly, state education budgets throughout the country are facing severe cuts, and schools must take drastic measures just to make ends meet, no less meet the burdensome mandates of the No Child Left Behind law.

Mr. President, this amendment represents a significant step toward providing some relief to our schools, and I emphasize the word "some." We must recognize that we cannot provide all of our children with the opportunity to achieve unless we support our children with adequate resources. We must provide our schools with those desperately needed resources, and perhaps, then, we can ensure that indeed, none of our children are left behind.

This amendment brings us that much closer to fulfilling our obligation to America's children. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and vote yes.