Lawmakers Hear Push for District‑level Transparency on Special Education Costs and Placements

House Bill 388 would require each superintendent to produce a public report on special‑education statistics — including counts of students with IEPs and 504 plans, staffing, program costs, out‑of‑district placements, transportation and dispute‑resolution counts — and post it on the district website. Representative Susan Porcelli, the bill sponsor, told the committee the data already exist in state and federal reporting and that the bill’s aim is transparency about mounting special‑education costs.

"These federal mandates are very expensive to administer," Porcelli said, arguing that public officials and taxpayers need accessible information as special‑education spending grows. Supporters from the public said posting uniform and readable data would help budget deliberations and public understanding. Aubrey Freeman and other citizens testified that more accessible data would reduce repeated requests to superintendents and allow taxpayers to compare program details across districts.

But testimony from disability advocates, legal advocates and the state’s special‑education ombuds raised legal and ethical concerns. Karen Rosenberg of the Disability Rights Center told the committee that the bill, as drafted, risks violating federal privacy protections under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) in small districts where aggregated data could make students identifiable.

"A list of personal characteristics or other information that would make it possible to identify the child with reasonable certainty" falls within IDEA protections, Rosenberg said, adding that details about specialized services or out‑placement counts in a small community could point to an individual child. Kristen Montramani, the state’s Office of the Advocate for Special Education, also opposed the bill, saying that reporting on whether students are “making adequate progress toward IEP goals” would require case‑level data currently held at the IEP team level and that public disclosure risks harm.

School governance and school board representatives urged caution and said many districts already provide family‑school partnership reports or related materials. Becky Wilson of the School Boards Association said policies and practices vary widely; she asked for language that avoids unfunded costs for implementation and accounts for small districts that have no operating school.

The Department of Education representatives confirmed the state collects considerable special‑education data for federal reporting, but committee members and witnesses observed that assembling, standardizing and publishing a user‑friendly district‑level summary would require time and clearer guidance on suppressing or aggregating small‑cell data to avoid identifiability.

The committee did not vote. Witnesses were divided along predictable lines: taxpayers and parents seeking transparency and school‑system and disability advocates warning of privacy and misuse risks. Sponsors said they would consider refinements — specifying non‑identifying aggregates, clarifying definitions (for example, what constitutes “adequate progress”), and building suppression rules for small counts — if the committee asks for amendments.

Ending: Committee members signaled they would seek additional detail and technical options for reporting formats and privacy protections before deciding whether to recommend the bill.