Palo Alto Unified School District

Community Advisory Committee
for Special Education

Terms

Funding Terms

Mandate: Congress has created several mandates, or legal directives, to protect disabled students, including Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Unfunded mandate: Section 504 and ADA are unfunded mandates. IDEA, despite what you may have heard, does provide funds for special education, albeit a paltry amount, much less than pledged when it was enacted.
Full funding: Confusion abounds over this term. Full funding does not mean 100% of the total cost of special education, and in fact, it does not even mean 40% of the total cost. The amount pledged by IDEA is 40% of the excess cost of special education.
Excess cost: Every child brings the same amount of money to the district from federal, state, and local sources. In PAUSD, this amount is over $10K per child. It is expected that a child's special education will cost some amount in excess of the average for general education. Thus, if the cost of educating a special ed student is $14K, the excess cost is $4K.
Encroachment: Refers to the portion of funding that comes from the school district-about $4.4 million in 2001-02. Funds also come from federal, state, and county sources-about $6.4 million last year. It is the district's share of the excess cost that is said to be an encroachment on the total budget, which exceeds $100 million.

Other Terms

Appropriate: Able to meet a need; suitable or fitting; in special education, it usually means the most normal setting possible.
Differentiated Instruction: When teachers attempt to understand what each student needs and provide students with multiple options for taking in information, making sense of ideas and expressing what they learn. When applied to the entire class, with everone doing different assignments or taking different types of tests, students are less likely to feel singled out because he is doing different work.

Alphabet Soup

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

AB - assembly bill (= state law)

ADL - activities for daily living

AMESLAN - American Sign Language

AFOs - ankle-foot orthotics

AUT - autism: a disability demonstrated by characteristics such as withdrawal, communication difficulties and behaviors such as ritualistic behaviors, hand flicking and/or compulsive need for sameness.

BIP - behavior intervention plan

BSP - behavior support plan

CCS - California Children's Services

CLS - communication language & speech

COE - County Office of Education

CP - cerebral palsy

CSP - Consumer Service Plan: a service plan developed by families and professionals from the regional center

D - deafness

DB - deaf-blindness

DD - developmental disabilities

D/HH - deaf & hard of hearing

FBA - functional behavior assessment

HI - health impaired or hearing impaired

HOH - hard of hearing

IDEA - Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (PL 94-142)

IEP - Individualized Education Program: a written document for children ages 3 through 22 that states a child's current level of education performance, specifies annual goals and objectives and identifies appropriate services needed to meet the goals.

LD - learning disability

LEA - local education area (= school district)

LRE - least restrictive environment: an educational setting or program that provides a student with a disability the chance to work and learn to the best of his or her ability. It also provides the student with as much contact as possible with children without disabilities, while meeting all of the child's learning needs and physical requirements.

MH - multiple disabilities

MR - mental retardation

OI - orthopedically impaired

OHI - other health impaired

O/M - orientation/mobility

OT - occupational therapy

PHN - public health nurse

PHP - Parents Helping Parents

PL - public law (= federal law)

PT - physical therapy

RSP - resource specialist

SARC - San Andreas Regional Center

SDC - special day class

SED - serious emotional disturbance

SEE - Signing Exact English

SELPA - special education local plan area

SLD - specific learning disability

SLI - speech or language disability

SPHC - specialized physical health care

SSI - supplemental security income

TBI - traumatic brain injury

TTD - telecommuncations device for the deaf

TTY - teletype