Financiamento da educação especial no município de Imperatriz – MA (2018-2021)

Abstract

In Brazil, the financing of special education is permeated by the contradictions that emerge from the disputes fought by class society and through which we follow the dialectical movement of the State, which sometimes positions itself in favor of the particularistic interests of the dominant class, and sometimes seeks to ensure social control and capital accumulation by meeting the demands of the dominated class. Based on this understanding, we elaborated the question that guided our research: How is the public budget used to finance special education in the municipal public education system of Imperatriz – MA? To answer the question, we defined the general objective: analyze the destination of financial resources to special education, including the undersized values in the stages of the Imperatriz – MA municipal public school network, in the period from 2018 to 2021. To this end, we listed the respective specific objectives: a) understand the role of the State in financing basic education in Brazil, as the main responsible for ensuring the right to education; b) reflect on the Special Education Policy and its implementation in the municipality of Imperatriz, in the context of financing basic education and national guidelines, which determine the school inclusion of its target audience; c) investigate the financing of special education in the municipality of Imperatriz, considering the management of the budget allocation approved in the planning instruments and the amount of financial resources allocated to this modality in the period 2018 to 2021, including the undersized values in the stages of basic education; and, d) discuss about the strategies adopted by the Imperatriz Municipal Education Secretary, within the limits and the possibilities of the educational financing policy, to ensure the school inclusion of the special education target audience. We elected Marx's historical-dialectical materialism (1985) as the critical-dialectical method of analysis and interpretation of the research phenomenon, and analytical/methodological categories (praxis, totality, mediation, contradiction, historicity, reproduction, hegemony, labor, State, civil society, and bureaucracy) and empirical/content categories (financing, public budget, special education, school inclusion/exclusion, and public-private partnerships), to carry out the documentary research and apply the online questionnaires. The accounting, budgetary and fiscal documents that were produced between 2018 and 2021 and, analyzed in the research, were forwarded by SEMED's Accounting sector (including data from SICONFI/National Treasury) and, searched in the online portals of the Imperatriz City Hall and SIOPE/FNDE. The research findings revealed that between 2019 and November 2021, the total expenses paid in the Inclusive Education Program exceeded the budget allocation provided for the costing of its actions. Except for the year 2018, when the values of expense student-year in early childhood and elementary education and the EJA were higher than those of special education, between 2019 and November 2021, the values recorded in the stages and EJA were lower than those presented by special education. Public-private partnerships are a strategy used by the municipality to offer education. We also found difficulties in accessing the researched data; divergent values; lack of social control over budget planning and; deficiencies in the publicity of Municipal Executive Branch's acts, which compromise the investigation on the financing of special education, and distance us from a transforming praxis.