Task force reviews Kansas special-education funding formula, distribution and Medicaid role

The Special Education and Related Services Funding Task Force met May 20 in Topeka for a half-day briefing and discussion on how Kansas calculates, distributes and monitors special-education funding.

The meeting opened with a step-by-step explanation from Jennifer Light of the Kansas Legislative Research Department, who walked members through the statute-based “excess cost” reimbursement calculation that underpins special-education state aid in Kansas. Light told the task force that “the IDEA Act … requires states to provide special education services to children with disabilities between the ages of 3 and 21,” and that Kansas law (KSA 72‑34‑22) treats state aid as a reimbursement for excess costs above base funding and federal receipts.

Why it matters: The session clarified that Kansas’ approach treats special-education state aid as a reimbursement for costs that local districts cannot cover from base aid and federal funding. That structure produces a multistep calculation (general-education credit for special-education pupils, federal receipts including IDEA and Medicaid, and district expenditures rolled forward with an inflation factor) and a separate multi-bucket distribution of any appropriation the legislature provides. Several members said they want clearer district-level data to see whether the current distribution aligns with the calculated excess costs.

What the task force heard

How the calculation works — Jennifer Light (KLRD) and department staff laid out the state calculation in three broad parts: 1) estimate the general-education funding attributable to students who receive special education services; 2) subtract federal receipts (IDEA allocations, Medicaid reimbursements and other federal supplies) from total special-education expenditures; and 3) treat the remainder as excess cost and multiply that by the statutory reimbursement rate (92% under KSA 72‑34‑22), subject to prorating if the appropriation is insufficient. Light described the published green/pink/blue example sheets that KLRD and KSDE provided to the committee and walked members through the arithmetic used to move from student counts to dollar figures.

Federal receipts and Medicaid — The group probed how the state counts federal receipts. Dr. Harwood (KSDE staff) told the panel that “we actually use the actual receipts from that year” — meaning federal grant awards and KDHE-provided Medicaid reimbursement totals are used as prior-year receipts in the estimate. Committee members noted…