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The Emily enigma: Let a 19-year-old have another year, or save taxpayers' funds – Daily Montanan

['More From Author', 'April', 'Mary Moe']

Date: 2022-04-05 00:00:00

“There are more things in heaven and earth,” Hamlet told his science-minded friend Horatio, “than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Someone should tell the community of Billings the same thing about changing School Board Policy 2050.

Policy 2050 establishes a clear line: Students who turn 19 before September 10 of the coming school year will not be admitted. Full and unequivocal stop.

Emily Pennington is one of those students, and her compelling case for an exception has gone viral.

Illnesses delayed her school start. She has Down Syndrome. She wants desperately to graduate with her class in 2023. Her classmates want that too. But from the public policy and taxpayer support perspectives, graduating with her class is not the most important thing. The most important thing is that she would benefit greatly from programming easing the transition from school to adult life. The 2021 legislature recently passed a bill, House Bill 233, that would appear to fund the costs of the additional one or two years.

There are more things in heaven and earth, though, than this student’s story. The line of kids with compelling stories stretches far beyond Emily — the child with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome whose father is in prison and whose mom is dead; the girl who survived a car wreck but lost a year of her life to its injuries; the ne-er-do-well who has no “special need,” just the ordinary one of trying to navigate adolescence and is, finally, belatedly, doing just that.

HB 233 isn’t designed to help all those dreams come true. It only helps a narrow slice of the special ed population who are on a plan to transition into adult life, projected at 24 students statewide in 2022-23. The new law allows districts to count that handful of students in enrollment-based state funding, but the funding it provides is also a narrow slice – less than 25% of the actual costs of serving these students. Recognizing the impacts on local districts, the legislature left it to school districts to decide whether the dream is worth the price tag.

Much could be said about what’s gone wrong in Billings. Much could be said about the fact that HB 233 in some form came to the legislature five times and was supported by every Democrat every time but was killed the first four times by Republican legislators, former and current, who are now acting like they just invented sliced bread. And much should be said by the new anti-equity movement that is now all about adjusting timelines and curricula to give all students an equal chance at success. But let’s cut to the chase: Should the Billings School Board align School Board Policy 2050 with HB 233?

Fiscally, it doesn’t pencil. Seventeen Billings students would qualify in 2022-23 and another 22 the following year. The price to keep them on for full transition is $1.7 million in staffing costs alone. State and other funding would cover less than 25% of that amount. The remainder would fall to local taxpayers.

Legally, it’s risky. Why should 39 Billings students get to develop their full educational potential when other 19-year-olds, with and without recognized special needs, do not?

Pragmatically, aligning Policy 2050 with HB 233 may not even address Emily’s situation. To qualify, the student needs to have begun an educational plan for transition, typically at age 16, and be working on that plan now. It is not clear that Emily did that or is doing that.

So, Billings trustees, you have many prudent reasons not to change Policy 2050. Do it anyway.

You may need to include language to “grandfather in” Emily and students like her who, back when the door was closed, chose to stay where they were. Do it.

A grandfathering clause may still not make these students eligible for HB 233 funds, so the local price tag will be higher, perhaps significantly so. Do it anyway. Evidence on the value of this transitional programming is compelling. Parents of developmentally disabled students have been telling Montana legislators for a decade now that, with this transitional programming, their children acclimate to adult life, get jobs, thrive. Without it, they fall through the cracks.

Even with these changes, the new policy won’t give all kids the opportunity Emily will have. Some don’t have the label that qualifies them and some have no label at all. Save the community of Billings a lawsuit and let those kids enroll too. Great Falls has been letting 19-year-olds, labeled and otherwise, enroll on a case-by-case basis for years. The legislature won’t fund them, despite repeated requests. Great Falls does it anyway – at taxpayer expense.

So should you. Not because of one compelling story, but because of all the things in heaven and earth no policy can anticipate. And because in Montana, reaching your educational potential, even if it takes a little more time, is what dreams are made of.

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