‘Chaos’ follows governor’s veto of funding for AB 3632 services
Programs serve students with severe emotional problems
Published: November 2, 2010
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger put more than 20,000 California children with severe emotional disabilities in jeopardy and sparked a constitutional controversy when, on Oct 8, he used his line-item veto power to cut funding for essential mental health services, according to comments from state and local education leaders and the head of CSBA’s Education Legal Alliance. The governor's veto cut $133 million from the long-overdue 2010-11 state budget for mental health services mandated under Assembly Bill 3632 and suspended that mandate.
“The governor’s action sets aside over 25 years of standard operating procedure put in place by the provisions of AB 3632,” Alliance Director Richard Hamilton said last week. “The result has been chaos. Many county mental health agencies have informed local educational agencies that due to the governor’s actions they are immediately ceasing to provide the services unless LEAs contract and pay for the services out of their own funding.”
Adopted in 1984, AB 3632 authorizes and funds agreements between county mental health departments and LEAs’ Special Education Local Plan Areas to provide counseling and other services that have helped a generation of students with severe emotional issues stay in school, among other objectives.
AB 3632 veto unconstitutional?
Under AB 3632, funding is appropriated for county mental health departments to provide therapy and counseling, day treatment, medication management and other specialized services that SELPAs generally lack the expertise, capacity and even legal authority to deliver on their own. Commonly called “AB 3632 services,” they are regarded as entitlements that are typically part of the individualized education programs required under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Employing an unusual—probably illegal—tactic, Schwarzenegger declared in his veto message that he was suspending the mandate to provide the services. Legal experts, state officials and others promptly questioned the constitutionality of the governor’s move.
“That authority expressly lies only with the Legislature, which specifically rejected the governor’s proposal to suspend AB 3632 that he made in his May Revision” to the budget he’d proposed last January, Alliance Director Hamilton noted.
“After underfunding public education by more than $21 billion over the last three budgets, it is unconscionable that the governor would take away this funding for critically needed mental health services to severely disabled students,” said Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell. O’Connell has also condemned the outgoing governor’s vetoes of funding for the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System and the California Longitudinal Teacher Integrated Data Education System, two problematic but crucial components of the state’s efforts to ramp up data on student performance and LEA accountability, and other programs.
“The governor’s vetoes were misguided, cruel, unnecessary and preventable,” state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said, striking a tone similar to O’Connell’s. “These vetoes will place more children in harm's way, force working parents to forfeit their jobs by eliminating critical child care programs, and force more Californians who did not create our economic crisis to bear the brunt of its consequences.”
Steinberg has called overturning the vetoes “a first order of business” when the new Legislature convenes in December.
Others are not waiting for legislative action. Civil rights groups filed a federal class action suit in Los Angeles last week alleging the governor’s action has resulted in “mass confusion of crisis proportions throughout the state, causing irreparable harm and the likelihood of additional harm” to all students receiving these mental health services under the IDEA. The suit names the governor, state and local agencies as well as the Los Angeles Unified School District and Torrance Unified School District as defendants. Leaving the legal challenge of the governor’s authority to others, the plaintiffs seek to ensure continuation of mental health services without a court determination of specifically who must pay for their continuance. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell released federal funding last Friday, prompting the plaintiffs and defendants in the lawsuit to agree on a temporary restraining order under which mental health services will continue in Los Angeles County until the county’s share of that released funding is exhausted.
Hamilton said CSBA’s Education Legal Alliance is also considering a legal action to challenge the governor’s “suspension” of the mental health mandate as unconstitutional and to void his veto of the funds.
“The governor has grossly abused his authority, and his actions are unconstitutional,” Hamilton said, adding the Alliance would consider all possible means of relief for all school districts and SELPAs.