The federal government’s Office of Special Education, which oversees the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), has a $7 billion budget, but it doesn’t account for every school district in the country.
This year, there were 4,742 schools that received federal funds.
In 2017, that number had climbed to 8,846 schools.
The state of California has about 7,000 schools, and it’s not hard to figure out why.
It’s because it’s a major source of federal funding for K-12 education, with about 1,200 schools receiving at least $3 million in federal funding.
As of March 31, California had received $1.2 billion in federal funds to support its K-6 school districts, according to data from the Education Department.
In contrast, there are only about 400 schools that receive at least that much federal funding per school district.
“This is not a good thing,” said Sarah Kocur, the president and CEO of the National Center for Education Statistics, which tracks K-4 education funding.
“We have to address this.”
The number of schools receiving federal funding is up about 6 percent since 2011, according a study published in December by the Center for Educational Policy Research.
And, according of Kocar, the federal funds don’t come close to covering all of the costs of educating children.
“A lot of schools in the United States are going broke,” Kocer said.
“So they’re not even really able to get the resources they need to pay for the things they’re doing.”
The state is trying to address some of the problems by increasing spending on K-8 education and expanding the number of students in K-3 schools.
But Kocor said there’s still an “urgent need” for more funding.
The number and severity of school-related emergencies has been rising over the past few years, according the National Association of State Education Directors.
In 2016, there was a record-breaking year of more than 9,500 school-associated emergency closings, according data from New York State Department of Education.
That number climbed to nearly 13,000 last year.
Kocir said it’s important for states to work with each other to provide adequate funding to address the crisis.
“One of the things that’s really important is to not just make up the numbers for one district,” she said.
In 2015, the National Institute of Education reported that only 10 percent of K-5 and K-2 students were enrolled in schools that had adequate resources.
“There is a significant lack of resources available to all schools in our state,” said Deborah Schulte, a former state education commissioner who now works as the director of policy and programs at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
Schulten said the federal government should provide more funding to local schools.
“You’re really going to need additional resources for schools to stay open,” she told CNNMoney.
“That’s a really important thing to understand.”
And Kocors research found that when schools were able to hire additional teachers, they also found more students were enrolling in the schools, but there were fewer students participating in the school day.
KOCOR’S QUESTION AND ANSWER Schools are facing an enormous challenge when it comes to hiring more staff to address student enrollment and academic performance.
The federal Department of Labor (DOL) estimates that in 2020, there will be over 16 million students enrolled in K–4 public schools.
If you’re a district and you need to hire more teachers to meet those needs, you’re going to have to hire an additional 5,000 to 7,500 teachers to do so.
That’s assuming the district has the resources to do it, according Schultel.
“The reality is that a lot of these schools are not equipped for that,” she added.
“When you think about the number and the scope of the problem, it’s pretty staggering.”
In 2016 alone, more than 12,000 students were suspended or expelled from public schools in California.
This number includes students who have been expelled from the schools because of disciplinary problems or problems with the district.
In 2018, there’s no federal data for how many students have been suspended or disciplined, but Kocorb said the data does show a spike in suspensions in 2017.
“It’s a lot more than we think,” she noted.
The issue isn’t limited to California.
The states of Washington, Texas and New Mexico have also reported high levels of student suspensions in recent years.
Koca said there are about 5 million students in these states who have experienced some form of suspension in their school year.
“I think there’s a significant number of kids who are at risk of being suspended, but they’re being suspended disproportionately,” she explained.
“They’re not being suspended by the schools that they should be suspended by.
So there’s not a lot that the federal agencies are able to do to address that.” And,