The State Supreme Court in 2019 determined that the Legislature met the Court’s definition of adequate funding of schools, including increases in special education (SPED) funding. But that isn’t stopping education officials from threatening another lawsuit over special education funding, even though the Legislature has provided the special education funding increases it promised the Court.
Kansas state law currently requires the state to reimburse school districts for 92% of their special education (SPED) excess costs, which is defined as total costs less the amount provided for the general education of SPED students, federal SPED, Medicaid reimbursements, and state hospital administrative costs. That statute should have been repealed when the Court accepted fixed dollar amount increases in special education, but it wasn’t, and now education officials want more money, saying the state is funding less than 92% of excess costs.
However, a flaw in the formula is that it does not credit the state with all funding provided that is related to special education. Some, but not all, Local Option Budget funding is counted, and some, but not all, weightings are counted in determining the general education aid that is provided. If all funding is counted, the state provided 104% of excess costs last year.
HB 2738 proposes formula revisions to count all the special education funding, which prompted the threat of another lawsuit.
Kansas Policy Institute CEO Dave Trabert pointed out in a recent editorial on the Sentinel, that the Department of Education doesn’t know why some special education funding is excluded from the formula. The Sentinel is owned by KPI.
“The Kansas Department of Education cannot come up with any rationale for excluding some of the SPED funding,” Trabert wrote. “The exclusion may be an error that’s been on the books undetected for many years.”
The Special Education Task Force was charged with studying the exclusions in the formula and recommending changes, but the majority of task force members ignored their legal obligation and simply voted to spend more money.
In testimony in mid-February of this year, Trabert told the House Committee on K-12 Education Budget that — as the Sentinel reported — when the Special Education Task Force looked at the funding issues, they simply voted for more funding rather than take a close look at the current formula.
Indeed, under the current formula for distributing aid to districts, data from the Kansas State Department of Education shows that 135 of the state’s 286 school districts received more than 92% reimbursement; 89 of those districts received more than 100% reimbursement of their excess costs.
Kansas State Rep. Mari-Lynn Poskin, a Leawood Democrat, tried to suggest that SPED funding should increase according to inflation.
“When you do a simple calculation for inflation, that would bring that dollar amount today to $609,459,846 which is closely in alignment with the governor’s budget recommendation,” Poskin said. “So when we look at the fiscal note that the reviser gave to us, we See if we use the governor’s recommendation versus what would happen in this bill, we would be at $2 million short of simple inflation. And that doesn’t even account for the increase in SPED enrollment and services over that time. So you’re a proponent of calculations that would leave us at $3 million short of basic inflation.
Trabert explained that funding cannot simply be increased for inflation because it is a reimbursement of costs that have inflation baked in.
“You can’t simply increase special ed funding by inflation, because there’s a lot of other variables that can impact that enrollment could go up or down,” Trabert said. “Some students cost a little bit, some students cost a lot. Inflation isn’t a factor that can be used when you have variables that can swing dramatically, one way or the other.
Ranking Member Valdenia Winn (D-Kansas City) tried also to suggest the bill would cause districts to “lose money.”
Trabert stated that the formula would not cause any district to receive less, and Winn agreed. She suggested that if costs decreased however, a district would get less money.
“I’m saying however, if the opposite happened, it could go the other direction, not based on the formula, just on the cost of services,” she said.
Trabert noted this is true, but again, this is not as a result of the bill or the formula contained in the bill, but rather as a result of lower costs to be reimbursed.
Education officials gearing up for new SPED lawsuit
Predictably, the education establishment has come out against the bill full-force.
USD 383 Manhattan-Ogden Board of Education President Jayme Morris-Hardeman stated in written testimony “Fully funding special education services at the statutory amount of 92% of excess cost is good for all Kansas students. A dedicated special education budget funded by the state and federal government would allow our district to reduce class sizes, provide more intensive interventions for students in general education who are falling behind state standards, and increase staff retention, particularly of paraeducators who play a critical role in our students’ learning.”
Morris-Hardeman’s claim of additional services being provided is not dependent on additional special education funding, however. School districts could provide those services now instead of increasing their $1.2 billion in operating cash reserves, most of which is money provided to educate students in prior years that was not spent.
Mary Sinclair of Kansas PTA opined the bill “undermines the efficacy of the Gannon agreement and significantly increases the likelihood of another school finance lawsuit, (emphasis added.) along with any further delays in fully funding special education excess costs as currently written in state statute.”
The Kansas Association of School Boards likewise made it clear a potential lawsuit waits in the wings.
“The bill appears to merely manipulate the existing general education school finance formula to give the appearance that the state is indeed fully funding Special Education,” KASB Assistant Executive Director for Advocacy Leah Fliter wrote. “We ask the committee to reject HB 2738 and commit instead to a sincere and thorough examination of special education funding while upholding current law.” (emphasis added.)
