Bill to aid limited english speakers, poverty kids to cost North Platte $1.2 million

from Kearney Hub

By JOHN LINDENBERGER, The North Platte Telegraph

Local school officials continue to hold out hope that the state legislature will take steps to correct a bill targeted at providing services to poverty students and Limited English Language Proficiency (LEP) students.

In the meantime, the district is taking the necessary steps to comply with LB 641, which was approved by the state legislature last year. On Monday, the North Platte Board of Education approved the plans mandated by LB 641.

The Poverty Plan and LEP Plan, which had to be submitted by Nov. 1, outline the amount of money the district plans to spend on these programs and how the district plans to serve the students in each program.

"The whole idea behind LB 641 now is to put together a plan to show what you're going to do with these kids, and an accountability plan to show that the money we're actually getting for these kids is going back into that program," said North Platte Superintendent Paul Brochtrup.

However, Brochtrup has noted at prior school board meetings that the cost to follow through on these plans may be higher than the additional money the school district will receive in the form of state aid.

At the Oct. 23 school board meeting, Brochtrup noted the poverty plan has a stipulation that class sizes must be between 10 and 20. Yet some of the classes in the district have 24 to 26 students.

Based on current enrollment, he estimated an additional 28 teachers would have to be hired to create the necessary classes. This would add between $1.2 million and $1.7 million to the budget.

On the other hand, the district will only receive about $732,000 by implementing the poverty and LEP programs. That is why they are hoping the legislature will address the issue before the 2008-09 school year.

On Monday, Brochtrup said LEP and poverty students are weighted in the state aid formula. Instead of being counted as one student, these students may be counted as a 1.25 equivalency or more.

"In other words, they're counted as more than just one student so it will generate more dollars for that student," Brochtrup said.

He expressed his appreciation to Julie Barger of Educational Service Unit 16 for putting together the template that the school districts could use in putting together these complex plans.

"It is going to be kind of interesting to see who's going to read all these plans that are coming in because they're rather lengthy," Brochtrup said. "If anybody's going to read them at all."