Pursuant to Act 59 of the Second Extraordinary Session of 2003 and the State Board of Education’s authority under A.C.A.6-41-207 to promulgate rules covering programs for students with disabilities, Section 24.00, Catastrophic Occurrences, of the document Special Education and Related Services: Procedural Requirements and Program Standards, ADE 2000, has been revised. The rule change went into effect on July 17, 2004. The new rule will not be distributed in hard copy form. District staff will need to replace shelf copies of the old rule with the newly-adopted rule.
A.C.A. 6-20-2003(20) defines special education catastrophic occurrences as individual cases where special education and related services required by the individualized education program of a particular student with disabilities are unduly expensive, extraordinary, or beyond the routine and normal costs associated with special education and related services provided by a school district.
The revised Rule includes the following substantive changes:
1. The threshold for claiming reimbursement has been lowered to $15,000 per occurrence.
2. The percentages for calculating reimbursement have been adjusted.
3. Documentation requirements have been changed to allow consideration of other revenue offsets prior to claiming reimbursement.
4. The provision for considering non-child-specific aggregated costs has been eliminated.
5. The provision limiting the amount of funds for which a district is eligible has been eliminated.
Districts may request reimbursements from the Catastrophic Occurrence fund for student-specific costs the district is incurring solely as a result of the provision of special education and related services. Examples include private duty nursing services, special transportation aides, specialized equipment, specific staff development, occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech-language pathology, personal care assistance, extended school year services, the pro-rata share of the costs of a teacher whose primary assignment is the student, and Medicaid match.
Although Catastrophic Occurrence reimbursement requests for FY 2004-05 will not be submitted until May 1, 2005, districts are urged to begin now to identify those students with disabilities whose program costs could make the district eligible for funds accessed through this Rule change.