Posted: | April 23, 2013 04:39 PM |
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From: | Senator Jay Costa |
To: | All Senate members |
Subject: | Private Residential Facilities for Adjudicated Youth |
In the near future, I will introduce legislation amending the Public School Code to authorize adequate reimbursement for educational services and boarding provided by Private Residential Facilities for adjudicated youth. These facilities are not Private Residential Rehabilitation Facilities (PRRI’s) that receive up to 150% of the host district tuition for the education and boarding of adjudicated youth. Private Residential Facilities known as non-PRRI entities are only reimbursed up to 100% of the host district tuition. This reimbursement issue was the subject of a Legislative Budget and Finance Committee Report issued in March, 2006 detailing the procedures that have been utilized by the Department of Education and school districts. Because of ambiguity in the statutes governing these payments, not all school districts send sufficient tuition payments for their students, as required. In addition, the school districts are only mandated to send payments equal to the tuition rate at the host school district. However, the actual costs to provide educational services to these students at a residential facility are higher than the costs to provide these services in a school district. As a result of previous work with the Department of Education by Senator Mary Jo White and me on this reimbursement issue we learned that the Department does not currently have the statutory authority to resolve the problem. This legislation will address this problem by doing the following:
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Introduced as SB951