My Son
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Bullying: The Bullied - Lee's Summit Tribune - Lee's Summit News
Bullying: The Bullied - Lee's Summit Tribune - Lee's Summit News
“Adults can talk to the bully but that doesn’t help, they just become sneakier. The person being bullied needs to take care of themselves,” Sally Sabata, Lee’s Summit High School counselor, said.
It is important to never bully back. This will only aggravate the bully and cause more problems.
“Sometimes, people are just real jerks and you have to ignore them,” Sabata said.
The sad truth is, there is not a magical formula for getting rid of a bully.
“Bullies only stick with people they know they affect,” Sabata said.
When the bully is ignored, they lose their power. They won’t leave the victim alone right away. The bully will persist and it will become more and more difficult to simply walk away.
“The ones who let it beat them down don’t have someone they can turn to talk about it,” Sabata said
A victim of bullying must understand that they don’t deserve this treatment and surround themselves with support. Let family members, friends, and trusted adults know what is going on. The support gives them somewhere to go when it gets tough.
“Unfortunately, the work has to come from you,” Sabata said.
“Adults can talk to the bully but that doesn’t help, they just become sneakier. The person being bullied needs to take care of themselves,” Sally Sabata, Lee’s Summit High School counselor, said.
It is important to never bully back. This will only aggravate the bully and cause more problems.
“Sometimes, people are just real jerks and you have to ignore them,” Sabata said.
The sad truth is, there is not a magical formula for getting rid of a bully.
“Bullies only stick with people they know they affect,” Sabata said.
When the bully is ignored, they lose their power. They won’t leave the victim alone right away. The bully will persist and it will become more and more difficult to simply walk away.
“The ones who let it beat them down don’t have someone they can turn to talk about it,” Sabata said
A victim of bullying must understand that they don’t deserve this treatment and surround themselves with support. Let family members, friends, and trusted adults know what is going on. The support gives them somewhere to go when it gets tough.
“Unfortunately, the work has to come from you,” Sabata said.
OC Families Face Fierce Fight for Special Ed Services - Voice of OC | Orange County's Nonprofit Investigative News Agency: OC Central
OC Families Face Fierce Fight for Special Ed Services - Voice of OC | Orange County's Nonprofit Investigative News Agency: OC Central
The Rights and Costs of Special-Needs Children
Under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA] and state law, districts are required to provide a free appropriate public education to youths with disabilities from birth to 21 years of age. And though districts and families are often at odds over what assistance is needed, it can include specialized instruction; daily or weekly speech, occupational or psychological therapies; or special schools for those with severe emotional issues.
The cost of providing these services can easily spiral, with districts spending tens of millions of dollars a year on special education, depending on the number of eligible students. District general funds are also tapped to augment state and federal dollars, which for years have not kept pace with needs.
But even when taking these realities into account, special education experts say resistance to paying for services is so ingrained among school districts that they will spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on attorney fees — amounts that in some cases dwarf the costs of the services sought — to deny or not reimburse families for the educational needs.
And though special education disputes are common throughout California and the nation, family attorneys and special education advocates say district legal resistance in Orange County is among the fiercest in the country.
“There is room for problem solving and compromise" when districts seek a balance, said Irvine-based Maureen Graves, a family attorney and founder of the California Association for Parent-Child Advocates.
“When school districts become obsessed with defending their original instructional plans, discrediting families and keeping parents in the dark, disputes escalate. Schools and families suffer,” she said.
Graves and other advocates say districts direct streams of funds to a small cadre of attorneys to fight families seeking special education services, which vary from tests costing a few thousand dollars to individual class aides to residential placement in highly sophisticated, out-of-state facilities.
Additionally, some local districts, including Garden Grove Unified, have refused to publicly disclose the costs, which an open-government expert says is a violation of state law.
Given that Baquerizo estimates her legal bills over the past five years alone were about $350,000, the district’s are likely far higher. The most recent battle was over about $14,000 in services annually and prior skirmishes have topped $50,000 in annual costs.
School attendance 'scrubbing' incidents on rise : Abilene Reporter-News
School attendance 'scrubbing' incidents on rise : Abilene Reporter-News
School attendance 'scrubbing' incidents on rise : Abilene Reporter-News
School attendance 'scrubbing' incidents on rise : Abilene Reporter-News
School attendance 'scrubbing' incidents on rise
Tests, funds drive some educators to extreme actions
By Julie Carr Smyth Associated Press
Sunday, February 24, 2013
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A former superintendent went to prison in Texas for conspiring to remove low-performing students from classrooms to boost average test scores. Principals in Oklahoma and Missouri are out of their jobs after attendance-related scandals.
In Ohio, a recent state audit uncovered nine districts that withdrew students retroactively or improperly reported they were attending alternative programs. In one instance, Auditor Dave Yost said, a district ignored state rules “because they didn’t like them.”
It’s all part of a percolating national saga in which grown-ups — not kids — are the ones accused of cheating. Temptations to “scrubbing,” the process of improperly fixing enrollment or attendance data to somehow improve a building’s situation, can include rosier district report cards, added state or federal funding and employee bonuses.
“I think it is influenced by the high-stakes accountability environment that we’re in right now. It’s raised the stakes,” said Gary Crow, a professor of educational leadership at Indiana University. “It used to be when you take a standardized test and your students did well or didn’t do well, it influenced your teaching, of course, but it didn’t get connected directly to your pay, or your job security, or those kinds of things. Well, now, in a lot of places it does.”
It is also easier to identify such cases in the increasingly data-driven world of education, although they remain isolated.
An added factor, Crow said, is that educators and policymakers are often at odds over the effectiveness of standardized tests and other performance measures.
States’ reactions range from tolerant to tough. Some cite evolving record-keeping technology and reporting requirements. Others pursue prosecutions. That has meant mixed messages for administrators on a staple of the school day: who shows up, and where.
Some educators have fought back, citing the onslaught of tracking questions brought on by school choice as well as rapidly changing state and federal rules.
In Columbus, a student’s father alleges in a lawsuit that a series of improper withdrawals of low-performing students caused his daughter’s home school to rise in academic status, making her ineligible for a state voucher that allows students in failing institutions to attend better schools.
Losing the voucher meant that 15-year-old Kailey Beard’s $9,000 tuition to a nearby private school was no longer covered — and that she couldn’t play sports. Having a voucher allows the yearlong waiting period imposed on transferring athletes to be waived. It was a bitter blow to Kailey, who had dreamed of being a basketball star since she was 6.
“It’s just been a really hard couple of years,” said Kailey, whose family is springing for her tuition but who can’t play basketball for now. “I go to the games, I practice with the team, but I mean, it was hard because the coach put the players in who were actually going to be playing. So I sat on the sidelines a lot of times during practice.”
East High, Kailey’s home school, is part of the Columbus City Schools, which is under investigation by state and federal authorities for the alleged attendance scrubbing. Her father, Jon Beard, has filed one of two parent lawsuits over the matter.
In the district’s defense, spokesman Jeff Warner noted Columbus is a populous urban district with a high rate of student mobility and many charter schools for students to move to and from. The “sheer volume” makes tracking difficult, he said, and state and federal attendance reporting rules at times contradict.
Law enforcers predict criminal prosecutions. The district’s former accountability director and a regional executive director, both figures in the probe, are retiring. Superintendent Gene Harris also is leaving at the end of the school year, in a decision she and her supporters say is unrelated.
In a Missouri case, Esperansa Veal, the principal of Patrick Henry Downtown Academy in St. Louis, Mo., was placed on administrative leave after a state auditor’s investigation was launched into attendance practices in 2011.
The audit found the elementary school appeared to have altered data to boost attendance figures, which determine the school’s state funding allotment.
Veal’s employment with the district ended in September 2011, two days after Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich released his report.
A district spokesman declined to say why Veal’s employment ended, citing confidentiality of personnel records. Veal was not criminally charged, according to Missouri’s online court records.
After the incident, Schweich ordered attendance records included in future routine reviews. A spokesman said that’s not turned up any further irregularities.
With a Texas scandal involving the El Paso Independent School District, attendance manipulation turned criminal.
In October, former Superintendent Lorenzo Garcia was sentenced to 42 months in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of fraud in a scheme to bolster standardized test scores by getting rid of students likely to fail.
Garcia helped orchestrate a scheme that prevented low-performing students from taking the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills exam in the 10th grade because its results counted toward state and federal ratings.
Some students were held back in the ninth grade or pressured to drop out and take the GED elsewhere. Others were threatened with fines for living outside the district.
The FBI continues to investigate, with six other people implicated so far in the scandal. State education officials have placed the district on probation and named a new district board of trustees.
After allegations of grade tampering at Douglass Mid-High School, the Oklahoma City Public Schools asked an investigator to explore “whether grade tampering and attendance inflation occurred with the intent of fraudulently obtaining additional funding or personal incentives.”
Inaccurate attendance records were found, but no fraud aimed at financial gain.
The probe did cite “extreme measures” taken by building leaders to cover up unethical practices, including manipulation of enrollment and attendance records to reflect students had completed courses that they hadn’t. Douglass Principal Brian Staples was placed on administrative leave and later resigned.
When Arizona Auditor General Debbie Davenport’s “limited reviews” uncovered inaccuracies in attendance data reporting in 2006, she recommended a system to ensure data accuracy followed by adjustments to local district payments from the $5 billion in federal and state dollars the department controlled. No one was accused of wrongdoing.
In Ohio, a recent state audit uncovered nine districts that withdrew students retroactively or improperly reported they were attending alternative programs. In one instance, Auditor Dave Yost said, a district ignored state rules “because they didn’t like them.”
It’s all part of a percolating national saga in which grown-ups — not kids — are the ones accused of cheating. Temptations to “scrubbing,” the process of improperly fixing enrollment or attendance data to somehow improve a building’s situation, can include rosier district report cards, added state or federal funding and employee bonuses.
“I think it is influenced by the high-stakes accountability environment that we’re in right now. It’s raised the stakes,” said Gary Crow, a professor of educational leadership at Indiana University. “It used to be when you take a standardized test and your students did well or didn’t do well, it influenced your teaching, of course, but it didn’t get connected directly to your pay, or your job security, or those kinds of things. Well, now, in a lot of places it does.”
It is also easier to identify such cases in the increasingly data-driven world of education, although they remain isolated.
An added factor, Crow said, is that educators and policymakers are often at odds over the effectiveness of standardized tests and other performance measures.
States’ reactions range from tolerant to tough. Some cite evolving record-keeping technology and reporting requirements. Others pursue prosecutions. That has meant mixed messages for administrators on a staple of the school day: who shows up, and where.
Some educators have fought back, citing the onslaught of tracking questions brought on by school choice as well as rapidly changing state and federal rules.
In Columbus, a student’s father alleges in a lawsuit that a series of improper withdrawals of low-performing students caused his daughter’s home school to rise in academic status, making her ineligible for a state voucher that allows students in failing institutions to attend better schools.
Losing the voucher meant that 15-year-old Kailey Beard’s $9,000 tuition to a nearby private school was no longer covered — and that she couldn’t play sports. Having a voucher allows the yearlong waiting period imposed on transferring athletes to be waived. It was a bitter blow to Kailey, who had dreamed of being a basketball star since she was 6.
“It’s just been a really hard couple of years,” said Kailey, whose family is springing for her tuition but who can’t play basketball for now. “I go to the games, I practice with the team, but I mean, it was hard because the coach put the players in who were actually going to be playing. So I sat on the sidelines a lot of times during practice.”
East High, Kailey’s home school, is part of the Columbus City Schools, which is under investigation by state and federal authorities for the alleged attendance scrubbing. Her father, Jon Beard, has filed one of two parent lawsuits over the matter.
In the district’s defense, spokesman Jeff Warner noted Columbus is a populous urban district with a high rate of student mobility and many charter schools for students to move to and from. The “sheer volume” makes tracking difficult, he said, and state and federal attendance reporting rules at times contradict.
Law enforcers predict criminal prosecutions. The district’s former accountability director and a regional executive director, both figures in the probe, are retiring. Superintendent Gene Harris also is leaving at the end of the school year, in a decision she and her supporters say is unrelated.
In a Missouri case, Esperansa Veal, the principal of Patrick Henry Downtown Academy in St. Louis, Mo., was placed on administrative leave after a state auditor’s investigation was launched into attendance practices in 2011.
The audit found the elementary school appeared to have altered data to boost attendance figures, which determine the school’s state funding allotment.
Veal’s employment with the district ended in September 2011, two days after Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich released his report.
A district spokesman declined to say why Veal’s employment ended, citing confidentiality of personnel records. Veal was not criminally charged, according to Missouri’s online court records.
After the incident, Schweich ordered attendance records included in future routine reviews. A spokesman said that’s not turned up any further irregularities.
With a Texas scandal involving the El Paso Independent School District, attendance manipulation turned criminal.
In October, former Superintendent Lorenzo Garcia was sentenced to 42 months in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of fraud in a scheme to bolster standardized test scores by getting rid of students likely to fail.
Garcia helped orchestrate a scheme that prevented low-performing students from taking the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills exam in the 10th grade because its results counted toward state and federal ratings.
Some students were held back in the ninth grade or pressured to drop out and take the GED elsewhere. Others were threatened with fines for living outside the district.
The FBI continues to investigate, with six other people implicated so far in the scandal. State education officials have placed the district on probation and named a new district board of trustees.
After allegations of grade tampering at Douglass Mid-High School, the Oklahoma City Public Schools asked an investigator to explore “whether grade tampering and attendance inflation occurred with the intent of fraudulently obtaining additional funding or personal incentives.”
Inaccurate attendance records were found, but no fraud aimed at financial gain.
The probe did cite “extreme measures” taken by building leaders to cover up unethical practices, including manipulation of enrollment and attendance records to reflect students had completed courses that they hadn’t. Douglass Principal Brian Staples was placed on administrative leave and later resigned.
When Arizona Auditor General Debbie Davenport’s “limited reviews” uncovered inaccuracies in attendance data reporting in 2006, she recommended a system to ensure data accuracy followed by adjustments to local district payments from the $5 billion in federal and state dollars the department controlled. No one was accused of wrongdoing.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Supreme Court Rules Special Ed Litigation Costs Are Public - Voice of OC | Orange County's Nonprofit Investigative News Agency: Health News
Supreme Court Rules Special Ed Litigation Costs Are Public - Voice of OC | Orange County's Nonprofit Investigative News Agency: Health News
Supreme Court Rules Special Ed Litigation Costs Are Public
California Supreme Court justices speak in San Francisco earlier this year. (Photo by: Shawn Calhoun/University of San Francisco)
Related Documents
Posted: Monday, March 11, 2013 7:15 am | Updated: 11:26 am, Fri Mar 22, 2013.
The California Supreme Court has cleared the way for public disclosure of governmental legal costs in ongoing lawsuits where school districts, cities or other public agencies refuse to reveal the bills before litigation is complete.
In Orange County and other jurisdictions, governmental agencies have frequently declined to disclose the costs of ongoing litigation, contending such legal bills are exempt under the California Public Records Act.
But in its Feb. 20 ruling on a Los Angeles lawsuit, the court affirmed a published appellate decision in which judges decided that legal fees can be disclosed when a public records request is made during active litigation.
Terry Franke, an attorney for Californians Aware, an open-access organization in Sacramento, said, “This case properly ends an abuse too often employed to conceal from the public just how much of its money is being spent by lawyers.”
The court decision removes a ploy used by the Orange County Department of Education and a number of the county's 28 school districts to deny disclosure of litigation costs when fighting cases against families seeking special education for youths with disabilities under federal and state laws.
Last year, Voice of OC ran a series of articles showing how school districts were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight families over services that sometimes cost only a few thousand dollars. Such legal battles also created enormous hardships for families and limited options for children with autism and other serious developmental disabilities.
For instance, the Orange Unified School District, working with county education department attorneys, refused last year to release the district’s legal costs after the district sued a family in federal court to prevent paying about $3,400 a year for a preschool for the family's autistic child. The youngster is known only as C.K. in court records.
Recently released Orange Unified records show the district’s legal costs to fight the family totaled at least $236,000. These costs were for an administrative hearing, where the family won service funding, and to sue the family in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana.
Orange Unified paid a Costa Mesa law firm headed by S. Daniel Harbottle about $83,000 of that total, according to invoices provided by the school district. And because the family of the child defeated the school district’s lawsuit, the federal judge ordered the district to pay their Long Beach attorney, Bruce Bothwell, his court-approved attorney fees of $153,000.
In another case involving an 18-year-old autistic youth in the Garden Grove Unified School District, the school district and county’s attorneys have refused to release the district’s costs in a contentious legal battle that has gone on since 2008.
The youth's guardian aunt has fought for services in five administrative hearings and filed several federal lawsuits against the district for declining to pay for or provide special education services. The family’s litigation costs are in excess of $350,000, they say.
The Garden Grove district's aggressive legal stance was designed to drive the boy out of the school district, alleged the aunt, Alexis Baquerizo. The school district has denied the charge in court.
A spokesman for the Garden Grove district declined comment on the legal ruling. He referred the inquiry to the county education department.
Lysa M. Saltzman, a county education department counsel, declined to address specific questions about the disclosure ruling, writing in an email that any new requests under the California Public Records Act for legal costs in the case will be evaluated based on the recent Supreme Court decision.
School district and county attorneys have argued that cost disclosures could compromise the school district’s legal position and should be treated like legal strategies, which remain exempt from disclosure during continuing litigation.
But last Nov. 16, the California Court of Appeal for the 2nd District ruled that legal fees in continuing cases were disclosable. It was this decision that the Supreme Court let stand while also affirming that the ruling should remain published, thereby serving as a statewide precedent.
“Government officials are not paying for litigation or other legal services out of their own pockets, so there’s no independent check on their spending, which can grow very large very quickly if taxpayers have no way of learning how the bills are piling up,” said CalAware’s Franke.
The decision arose from a civil lawsuit filed by a Bellflower couple in 1999 after they allegedly were improperly held and harassed by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies during a 1998 auto theft investigation.
In a recent interview, Donald W. Cook of Los Angeles, attorney for the couple, said the case easily could have been settled more than a decade ago but the Los Angeles county counsel’s office engages private law firms to litigate seemingly forever as a tactic to discourage plaintiffs.
The couple’s original claim for damages has bounced up and down the court system during the 13 years. Furious over delays, Cook engaged an attorney to sue Los Angeles County for legal costs, which he estimated at about $1 million.
Cook said that certain governmental agencies like Los Angeles County “don’t want the taxpayer to know they are wasting money. The strategy here is to hire a private firm, which milks the case for all it's worth and then bills the taxpayer.”
A spokesman for the Los Angeles County counsel’s office declined comment.
In Orange County, families, child advocates and family attorneys have contended that school district have employed similar tactics for years to avoid providing services required by the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
A handful of law firms represents the county’s school districts, who look to them as buffers against substantial costs that some special education cases can require. District superintendents claim they must take a hard line to control costs.
The stakes are so high over the issue that Cook suspects governmental agencies may seek legislation in Sacramento in an attempt to amend the state Public Records Act to again block legal fee disclosures.
Expressing concern about the impact of the appellate decision, the League of California Cities filed a letter Jan. 24 urging the state Supreme Court to accept and hear arguments on Cook's case. The league, a Sacramento-based organization of 469 municipalities, fears being swamped by requests for disclosures.
A league attorney, Koreen Kelleher, said she was unaware of any such legislation effort.
Rex Dalton is a San Diego-based journalist who has worked for the San Diego Union-Tribune and the journal Nature. You can reach him directly at rexdalton@aol.com.
New Common Core State Standards
New Common Core State Standards
WEBB CITY, MO.--- The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is introducing a new set of academic guidelines. It's the new "Common Core State Standards." The program is to better prepare students for college and the workforce. It is expected to lower re-mediating rates, promote critical thinking and increase college completion.
"Nearly one third of all Missouri students need to take some sort of remedial class or a class designed for mediation when they go to a college or a university. (42% of Lee's Summit graduates, that attend community college, need to take remedial classes) That's alarming and we really think that that's an indication that we can prepare our students better," said Trey Moeller, Webb City Assistant Superintendent.
The State Board of Education approved the program in 2010, but it's now being fine tuned. The new plan would focus the students skills in math and English. The guidelines were created by a team of parents, educators, administrators and researchers.
"They're seeing those needs. I think it was really through the years it has been well done, and they've gathered so many different perspectives that they can meet the needs better of our students," said Moeller.
School administrators say the new academic expectations will help students succeed in a globalized job market.
"To have to compete for jobs and to having to support themselves and be productive citizens, the Common Core really took that to the next step and started bridging the gap from the old standards to the new standards that we think will help our students be successful," said Moeller.
The standards have been adopted by more than 40 states. The guidelines do not require school districts to use specific curriculum. Teachers and administrators will continue to form their own at the local level. The new standards will be adopted in all Missouri public schools by the 2014-20-5 school year.
WEBB CITY, MO.--- The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is introducing a new set of academic guidelines. It's the new "Common Core State Standards." The program is to better prepare students for college and the workforce. It is expected to lower re-mediating rates, promote critical thinking and increase college completion.
"Nearly one third of all Missouri students need to take some sort of remedial class or a class designed for mediation when they go to a college or a university. (42% of Lee's Summit graduates, that attend community college, need to take remedial classes) That's alarming and we really think that that's an indication that we can prepare our students better," said Trey Moeller, Webb City Assistant Superintendent.
The State Board of Education approved the program in 2010, but it's now being fine tuned. The new plan would focus the students skills in math and English. The guidelines were created by a team of parents, educators, administrators and researchers.
"They're seeing those needs. I think it was really through the years it has been well done, and they've gathered so many different perspectives that they can meet the needs better of our students," said Moeller.
School administrators say the new academic expectations will help students succeed in a globalized job market.
"To have to compete for jobs and to having to support themselves and be productive citizens, the Common Core really took that to the next step and started bridging the gap from the old standards to the new standards that we think will help our students be successful," said Moeller.
The standards have been adopted by more than 40 states. The guidelines do not require school districts to use specific curriculum. Teachers and administrators will continue to form their own at the local level. The new standards will be adopted in all Missouri public schools by the 2014-20-5 school year.
Mo. lawmakers pass budget increasing reimbursements to schools for special needs students
Mo. lawmakers pass budget increasing reimbursements to schools for special needs students
JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri — Missouri lawmakers have approved additional spending authority for the current fiscal year, including a $14 million increase for a fund that reimburses schools for the cost of educating children with special needs.
The "High Needs" fund reimburses school districts for special needs students who cost more than three times the amount of a typical student. If the typical student in a school district costs $10,000 a year, that same district would qualify for state reimbursement for students costing more than $30,000 annually.
State education officials said the growth in the fund is a result of more children with special needs and an increase in the costs of specialized instruction.
In fiscal year 2010, Missouri school districts collected reimbursements from the fund for 2,177 students but last fiscal year that number rose to more than 2,700 students. Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education spokeswoman Sarah Potter said the fund typically increases by about 10 percent every year. But between 2012 and 2013, the fund's cost jumped by 18 percent, which she described as "unusual."
The cost increase isn't only because there are more kids with special needs. School districts have also been getting better at documenting high-cost students and collecting the reimbursement money.
"Much of our increase in the last five years has been due to our efforts to maximize our reimbursement," said Dave Wilson, the administration supervisor of special services at Columbia Public Schools.
Other school districts have gotten better at collecting reimbursements, too. In 2009 the state paid $26 million total to schools for special needs students, but in the current fiscal year Missouri districts are projected to get over $40 million from the fund.
Wilson attributes part of his district's increase to a change in state regulations about how schools are reimbursed for students requiring 24-hour nursing care. Missouri recently began requiring districts to bill the cost of nursing care for students while they are at school to Medicaid.
"Unfortunately it also means we had more costs overall and we never recoup them all since the High Needs fund only reimburses for the costs beyond three times typical students," Wilson said.
Between 2010 and 2011, Columbia's reimbursement through the High Needs fund doubled from $600,000 to more than $1.2 million.
Some of the fund increase approved by lawmakers will be used to pay off schools for bills left over from 2012.
Some lawmakers have cited the growth in the fund as a reason not to spend every dollar the state is projected to take in during a given fiscal year. Gov. Jay Nixon's budget plan does not include any money for a supplemental budget like the one passed this week replenishing the needs fund. Luebbering said state departments have asked for enough money in next year's budget to avoid a supplemental, but some lawmakers remain skeptical.
"This didn't work last year," said Rep. Chris Kelly, D-Columbia.
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