FORT WAYNE -- A look inside Marcia Rayl's special education preschool classroom at Arcola Elementary School reveals a brightly decorated learning wonderland.\nIn one corner, eight chairs form a semicircle around a board plastered with a huge red apple and a calendar. Another corner is filled with wooden toy trucks, colored plastic blocks and toy model farms and dollhouses.\nEverything is designed to help preschool students move on to kindergarten and eventually to master the standardized tests they will face beginning in third grade. Those tests will determine whether a school is meeting state and federal laws to teach students hundreds of academic standards.\nIn her 10 years as a teacher with the Smith-Green West Allen Special Education Cooperative, Rayl said the co-op has never hesitated to give her the materials she needs for her classroom, such as a set of $150 flashcards.\nBut declining dollars for special education and rising enrollment have become a budgeting pain for many Indiana school districts.\nAccording to the Indiana Department of Education, the number of special education students grows by about 2 percent a year. With classes limited to only 10 students, even a small increase can be costly.\nYet since the preschool program was mandated by the state in 1991, the amount school districts can collect in local property taxes for the program has held steady at one-quarter to one-third of a cent tax per $100 of assessed value of properties in the district. The rate is set by the state and cannot be increased by school corporations.\nWith no new funding, school districts have to find the money somewhere else. Fort Wayne Community Schools, for example, will spend about $187,000 out of its general fund in 2005 to pay for the program, which serves about 425 children.\nNorthwest Allen County Schools will also use general funds to pay some of its costs, even though the special education preschool fund will generate $160,000 this year -- a $23,000 increase compared to last year. Since 2001, the district has taken more than $77,000 from its general fund to make up for shortages in its preschool fund.\nRussell Hodges, superintendent of Lakeland Schools, said his district might face more challenges if it weren't for the Northeast Indiana Special Education Cooperative. The cooperative is made up of most of the school corporations in DeKalb, Noble, LaGrange and Steuben counties.\nBut even the cooperatives are finding it difficult to make ends meet. Jackie Gruesbeck, director of the Smith-Green West Allen Special Education Cooperative, said every year the cooperative must shift some grant money earmarked for K-12 special education to cover costs for special education preschool. Last year, it cost the cooperative $500,000 to serve 136 students, with $350,000 coming from state grant money that was intended for K-12 special education services, Gruesbeck said.\n"When you take money from the grants, it takes away from the other (special education) kids," she said.\nEducators said they believe the program is vital to the success of special education students.\nIn Rayl's classroom at Arcola, students with developmental delays learn skills that typical preschoolers pick up in everyday exploration. Laminated cards with pictures of items such as a shirt or chair help students learn labeling and identification skills. Playing strengthens motor skills, and special chairs that have arms and footrests teach students body awareness.\nTheresa Oberley, Fort Wayne Community Schools director of special education, said the early intervention is critical to getting students with developmental delays and mild or moderate disabilities on the right path for learning.
"With all the accountability, with No Child Left Behind and all the other kinds of accountability issues, ISTEP and everything, it's very important," Oberley said. "It's giving each child what they need individually."\nWilliam Carnes, Whitley County Consolidated Schools superintendent, said he will do whatever it takes to make sure there is money for the program.\n"If I have to sell pencils at the corner of the bank to have enough money for that program, you'll see your superintendent selling pencils," Carnes said. "It's an issue of priorities. We really need to place that as a high priority for our school corporation, and then we try to respond accordingly"
