SAN DIEGO UNIFIED (KGTV) \u2014 San Diego Unified School District leaders traveled to Sacramento to push state lawmakers for increased special education funding as the district faces a significant budget deficit.<\/p>\n
Special education takes up about a quarter of the district’s budget, and with a large deficit, San Diego Unified needs help from the state to avoid cuts that could impact students.<\/p>\n
“We have a large special education student population, but that is continuing to grow,” said Sabrina Bazzo, vice president of the San Diego Unified School Board.<\/p>\n
Almost 25% of San Diego Unified’s budget is spent on special education, but the state only covers about 30% of those costs.<\/p>\n
“The state is only putting in about 30% right now, so much of our budget deficit is because we have shortages in the area of special education,” Bazzo said.<\/p>\n
The district currently faces a roughly $50 million budget deficit. Around this time last year, the deficit was $186 million.<\/p>\n
“I mean, we’ll find places to cut, I’m sure,” Bazzo said. “But ultimately, they need more support.”<\/p>\n
Bazzo says some of the funding shortfall comes from federal sources, specifically IDEA funding, but the majority stems from insufficient state funding.<\/p>\n
“If we could have Sacramento paying their fair share to help support us in our special education area, we wouldn’t have an issue with the deficit at this point,” Bazzo said.<\/p>\n
The district is also calling on the state to release more funds that are currently being held.<\/p>\n
If San Diego Unified receives additional funding, officials plan to focus on three key areas:<\/p>\n
Professional development for transitional kindergarten teachersA support system designed to give students help before special education referrals are madeProviding students with behavioral and emotional support early on<\/p>\n
The early intervention approach aims to address student needs before they require more intensive special education services.<\/p>\n
“It just seems to be a constant battle to get what really our students really deserve better,” Bazzo said.<\/p>\n
The district’s advocacy efforts come as special education enrollment continues to grow, putting additional strain on already limited resources.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO UNIFIED (KGTV) \u2014 San Diego Unified School District leaders traveled to Sacramento to push state lawmakers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75,75906,37318,50069],"class_list":["post-174917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-unified","tag-school-district","tag-sdusd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}