‘Chaos’ follows veto of funds for AB 3632
Programs serve students with emotional problems
Published: November 8, 2010
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger put more than 20,000 California children with severe emotional disabilities in jeopardy when he cut $133 million for essential mental health services mandated under Assembly Bill 3632 out of the new state budget. Going further, he sparked a constitutional controversy, according to the head of CSBA’s Education Legal Alliance, by declaring the AB 3632 mandate suspended.
“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. “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.
Suspension may be 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—and possibly 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 state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell. O’Connell has also condemned the outgoing governor’s vetoes of funding for other programs, including 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.
“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.
Legal action
Others are not waiting for legislative action. Civil rights groups filed a federal class action suit in Los Angeles last month seeking continuation of the AB 3632 services, regardless of how they are funded. State Superintendent O’Connell released federal funds to maintain the services temporarily, clearing the way for 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 legal action to challenge the governor’s declared “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.