Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Special Education topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Superintendent: Idaho schools face near-$100 million special‑education shortfall; department seeks one‑time high‑needs bridge and regional supports
Summary
State Superintendent Debbie Critchfield told JFAC that districts are covering roughly a $100 million special‑education gap and proposed one-time funding including a $5 million high‑needs fund (largely from interest transfers) and a $1 million regional pilot to pool specialized personnel for rural districts.
Debbie Critchfield, Idaho's superintendent of public instruction, framed the policy context behind the budget numbers and urged the committee to consider both immediate supports and longer-term distribution changes.
"As we look at all the trends...we are seeing a decrease overall in the numbers of students statewide," Critchfield said, explaining why support-unit forecasts and funding formulas must be understood alongside enrollment and demographic changes. She pointed to declining births and shifting family choices as drivers of enrollment variation across districts.
On special education, Critchfield told the committee there is a large funding gap that districts are absorbing. "There is a near $100,000,000 gap in what schools are expending," she said, noting that federal maintenance‑of‑effort rules and individualized education program (IEP) obligations require districts to meet services regardless of state funding shortfalls.
To address urgent needs, the department proposed two one‑time measures in its FY2027 request: a $5,000,000 "high needs" fund to reimburse LEAs for extraordinary special‑education costs (the request includes a proposed $4,000,000 transfer of interest from the Idaho Career Ready Students Fund and $1,000,000 from the driver training fund), and a $1,000,000 regional services pilot intended to pool staff (about six personnel and 1,000 contract hours per pilot) so rural LEAs can share speech pathologists, school psychologists and other hard-to-fill roles.
Why it matters: Districts reported that a small share of students can generate outsized costs—sometimes in excess of $100,000 per student per year—and local boards are currently financing many of those costs. The SDE warned that ad hoc district spending is not a long-term solution.
Committee members pressed for details (for example, how many coaches exist in the smart-literacy program and how remaining Career Ready Students Fund balances are obligated). Critchfield and analysts said they would provide more precise counts and clarified that much of the program money is distributed by reimbursement when coaches or projects are active.
Next steps: The department asked that policy language be attached to some requests and that members consider the one-time high‑needs bridge while a longer-term funding distribution review proceeds.
