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An ancient Sage valued himself upon this, that tho’ he could not fiddle, he knew how to make a great City of a little one. The plan that I, a modern Simpleton, am about to communicate is the very reverse.

I address myself to the Special Education Administrators. You are tasked with making a small budget out of a great one. Follow my simple steps to keep your budgets small, and still leave yourself plenty of time to fiddle.

1. Relax. There are no penalties for providing an insufficient program. As long as you smile and hold a team meeting you can’t really fail.
2. Time is on your side. The special needs child in your district may not be there tomorrow. Disabilities are hell on a family. The longer you wait the more likely it is they will split up. When that happens you have a 50% chance that it will be some other districts problem.
3. Procrastination pays off right now (any maybe later). Don’t be swayed by arguments that services can solve a problem now, and save the district money in the future. Avoid the service now because it’s easy and doesn’t hurt (see rule 1). Later the services may not be necessary at all (see rule 2).
4. Avoid, never deny a service. A flat refusal to provide a service is far too direct a route, and risks a quick trip to mediation or worse a hearing. Be ready with alternative suggestions. Claim that services provided already cover a service requested. If all else fails agree to the service and see rule #5.
5. An hour not provided is an hour avoided. Parents are not there to keep track of the hours. Avoid hours by simply not providing whats on the IEP. Obviously you can’t avoid all the hours, but a little bit goes a long way. For example, if you routinely shave just 15min per session from a 5 times weekly speech program, you have saved 25% on just one type of therapy! No one audits the hours anyway*.
6. Work the terms! There are all sorts of well worn chestnuts in the special education lexicon that you can rely on. One of my favorites “Least Restrictive Environment”. In the good old days schools were free to stick the weird kids next the the boiler room or ship them off to a “facility” in east pigs knuckle. Times changed, and now there are many [expensive] outplacement programs that special needs students can attend. Fortunately, you can always find something about these programs that seems restrictive (too far, not enough integration, ugly drapes) and use this term to avoid the placement.
7. Talk is cheap. In fact it’s free. Spend a lot of time in IEP meetings empathizing with the parents and trading anecdotes about the child. Time spent talking is time not spend filling in a services grid.
8. An expert opinion is just an opinion. Don’t be intimidated by reports from outside doctors, or PhDs outlining services that a child needs. Ignore them with impunity. Conduct your own evaluations and make your own recommendations. You’ll find that your recommendations will always fit better with whatever you wanted to do in the first place.
9. Never mention the Elephant in the room. Elephants are an endangered species, you can’t hunt them. In an IEP meeting you can’t even mention them. Your primary concern is keeping the budget as low as possible, but you can’t say it. Keeping money out of the discussion when it is so obviously your motivation will drive the opposition mad.
10. A rose by any other name is whatever you want to call it. Redefine reality to fit your needs. If you run a 2 sessions of a half day pre-school program you can send a special needs student to both sections and call it an extended day!
11. Make your goals vague, and your progress reports sparkly. The parents are not at the school every day, and not all skills translate to the home environment. It can take years for a parent to realize a total lack of progress. When caught, hold a meeting, and throw a few more hours on the services grid.
12. Having to accept all special education students is a blessing not a curse. The high teach/student ratios and complex programs of private specialized programs are a logistical nightmare. Adding the capacity to accept a new student can take months to arrange. Frequently there is a waiting list for these programs. Your public program takes all comers, and as a result there is not too much scrutiny on why you can accept any number of students without really adding to your program.
13. The I in IEP is for individual. It can be hard to tailor a program to fit an Individual student’s needs, in fact for the most expensive students it can be impossible. Why not tailor the needs to fit the program (see rule 8)? When that gets difficult tailor the description of the program to match the Individual students needs (rule 10).
14. Relax. Don’t stress about any damage you might be doing to special needs children. People don’t go into special education to get rich. You’re a good person. It’s not your fault that insurance doesn’t cover anything that is considered educational. It’s not your fault that special education budgets compete with the traditional education budget. It’s not your fault that special education is built on a series of unfunded mandates. You’re part of a system that makes people feel that something is being done for special needs students. And really isn’t that what counts?

* If the DOE ever starts to add up the hours on the IEP service grids this one is going to get tough. A simple calculation will reveal that the staff can’t possibly provide all the hours that are alloted on the IEPs.