Texas School Districts Hopeful Lawmakers Will Help Plug $1.7 Billion Gap in Special Education Funding

By Pavan Acharya, The Texas Tribune

  East Chambers ISD Superintendent responded to The Seabreeze Beacon’s request for number of students within the ECISD that are considered “special needs” and the funding needs for such students. “There are many categories for identifying students who have special needs some of which require specialized services.  If you are thinking specifically about special education as defined by students who are on an individual education plan, then we have about 225-250 students who enter and some who exit the program yearly.  Those students may require and receive additional services and therefore generate more funding for those services during the year.  This usually requires more staffing, lower ratios such as in Lifeskills or adaptive behavior where additional special ed certified teachers are required.  We also utilize in-house and outside counselors, physical therapists, occupational therapists, deaf and hard of hearing specialists, orientation and mobility therapists, diagnosticians, speech pathologists, among others.  Specialized services can be costly, and additional funding is meant to offset some or all of those costs.  In some cases, the cost is offset, in others, expenditures can exceed the revenues, but it’s on a case-by-case basis.  The level of care is designed to meet their needs according to their Individual Education Plan (IEP) to ensure they receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE).”  – Gloria Way

  Texas school districts are hoping changes under consideration at the Texas Legislature will help them keep up with the rising number of Texas students in special education programs — and the costs to support them. Education advocates and school administrators say the proposals would help narrow the large funding gap between what Texas and the federal government provide schools for special education services and what public school districts have to pay themselves. That gap stands at about $1.7 billion, according to the Texas Education Agency. Under changes proposed in the Texas House and Senate, the amount of funding a school receives for special education for each student would be based on students’ individual needs. That approach would be a significant departure from the current system, which directs special education funding to schools based on how much time a student spends in a particular setting. For example, two students who are placed in the same classroom but require different levels of support receive the same dollars under the current settings-based funding model.

   Proponents say the new system would better serve special education students with widely varying needs — a deaf student, for example, may require a different level of support than a student with attention deficit disorder or dyslexia — and provide schools more funding to pay for those services. In some states that already have a “tier-based” funding system for special education, schools receive more money to support students who require one-on-one instruction than for children who need more periodic help. Other changes in the bills include giving partial reimbursements to schools when they initially evaluate students’ special education needs, which can sometimes cost school districts thousands of dollars per student. The demand for initial special education evaluations has skyrocketed in recent years. In addition, House Bill 2 — the Texas House’s priority school finance bill this session — would include an additional $615 million in special education funding for the 2025-26 school year. Senate Bill 568, a more narrow special education funding bill advancing in the Senate, does not outline similar additional funding.

  District leaders welcome the potential changes, which they say are much needed to provide relief to Texas schools that have been increasingly burdened with budget deficits and inflation-related cost hikes. Schools in Texas and across the country are required by law to provide special education services to students who need them. They often have to pull money away from other programs if they don’t receive enough funding from the state and federal government.

  The number of Texas students receiving special education services has grown rapidly in the past decade. During the 2014-15 school year, 8.6% of all Texas public school students participated in these programs. Almost 10 years later, that figure has gone up to about 14%, representing close to 800,000 Texas children last school year. Much of that growth occurred after 2017, when the Texas Legislature ended an unofficial TEA policy that effectively prevented schools from providing special education services to more than 8.5% of their students. In Fort Bend ISD, just southwest of Houston, the number of students in special education programs has more than doubled since the 2014-15 school year, according to a 2023 report by the Texas Council of Administrators of Special Education. Last year, more than 11,000 students in the district were enrolled in special education programs, representing almost 14% of all students and a more than 6,500-student increase from almost a decade ago.