Special education funding has special status

The power of special-education advocates is clear in how the state Board of Education redistributed $25 million worth of budget cuts affecting Hawaii’s public schools.

The board rejected the Department of Education’s recommendation to cut $9.5 million that had been set aside but not spent on special-education positions that are perennially hard to fill. Instead, the board roughly halved that restriction and redistributed the cuts to a broad array of programs and services. Most galling was a $3.9 million restriction in per-pupil funding. That’s money schools had been counting on — not vacant positions.