100+ WA districts are starting school year without fully funded special ed. Here’s why
On the first day of school in 2019, Kristin Luippold sat in her parked car outside of Washington Elementary School, holding her breath.
She wasn’t sure who was more terrified – her or her son, Max.
That morning, Luippold stepped out of the car, unbuckled Max from his five-point harness car seat and began the block-long walk to school with him. As they passed through a black metal gate at the edge of the grounds and approached the field, Max squeezed her hand tighter, eyes wide as he looked up at the three-story brick building towering in front of him.
“I was pretty scared, because I knew this would be really hard for him,” Luippold said. “And I didn’t know what we would do if it didn’t work out, or if it got worse.”
For the Luippolds, Max’s first day of kindergarten wasn’t just any first day.
Max has developmental delays and behavioral needs that make it difficult for him to build trust and regulate emotions. As he approached the sea of children and parents filling the field next to the blacktop, their voices grew louder and more overstimulating. Luippold scanned the crowd, searching for Max’s new paraeducator.
Day one at Washington Elementary marked a new step in a now years-long journey navigating special education in Tacoma public schools.
At times, Luippold said, that journey has left them unsure of where to turn.
Max is one of thousands of students with disabilities returning to school this September. Many of those students aren’t being accounted for in the state’s special education budget.
Historically, Washington public schools have seen a shortfall in special education funding, according to data from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). Despite recent efforts to address that gap, an estimated 110 districts are still starting the school year without fully funded special education programs, leaving them to rely on local levies to meet the needs of their students. As district officials contend with the lack of funding, they’re faced with the challenge of doing more with less.
State Legislature updates funding formula
Over the past five years, the percentage of students in special education has increased statewide, but funding has lagged behind actual enrollment. Over the same time period, statewide special education expenditures have exceeded revenues.
According to an OSPI 2023-25 biennial budget request, state and federal special education funding fell short of district needs by more than $400 million during the 2021-22 school year, creating an 18% gap between available funds and district expenditures reported on end-of-year financial statements.
In light of the gap, the Washington State Legislature approved adjustments to the state’s special education funding formula.
The special education funding formula in Washington has multiple components, including a district’s basic education allocation (BEA) and tiered multipliers (set numbers that the state multiplies by student counts and BEAs, which vary based on students’ time spent in general education settings).
It also includes a funding cap.
Until recently, the state funded special education for up to 13.5% of a district’s student body. That meant if more than 13.5% of students in a district had an individualized educational plan (IEP), it didn’t receive full funding. The cap, which originally sat at 12.5%, was implemented by the state decades ago based on enrollment averages at the time and claims that parents would otherwise try to label their children as special education students to get more funding for their districts.
Last year, more than half of Washington’s 295 school districts exceeded the 13.5% cap, which does not apply to pre-K programs.
In April of this year, the Legislature passed HB 1436, adding an estimated $417 million to the state special education budget over the next biennium and nearly $1 billion over four years. The bill increased the multipliers used in the state’s funding formula and brought the funding cap up to 15%. That was less than state education officials requested.
OSPI’s biennial budget request called for more than twice what the Legislature provided and proposed a complete removal of the funding cap. It also requested new multipliers higher than the Legislature approved. This year, 110 school districts find themselves above the new funding cap, according to data provided by OSPI.
“I don’t think either of us believes that we fully funded special education,” Rep. Gerry Pollet, who introduced the bill, said in an interview with The News Tribune and Sen. Lisa Wellman, chair of early learning and K-12 education. “The obstacle, in my view, is [that] there are many things of great importance to spend money on in the state budget, and there’s a tug of war over education versus all those other things.”
Pollet added that shortfalls on the part of the federal government also contribute to the funding gap. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the federal government is supposed to pay up to 40% of a state’s excess costs for educating students with disabilities. As of February, it only pays about 13%, according to a Senate joint memorial.
Last school year, five Pierce County public school districts surpassed the 13.5% special education funding cap: Tacoma, Orting, Clover Park, Carbonado and Chief Leschi Tribal Compact. Despite the increased funding, two districts – Carbonado and Chief Leschi Tribal Compact – remain above the new 15% cap this year.
Without a cap, the Carbonado School District’s state special education allocation would be $330,778.37, based on budgeted enrollment data provided to OSPI by districts in September. With the cap, $34,735.68, or 10.5% of that allocation is subtracted.
The Chief Leschi Tribal Compact, on the other hand, will lose $729,555.28, or 42.1% of its state special education allocation.
While the current funding formula takes enrollment into account, it doesn’t look at the specific needs or costs outlined in students’ IEPs, said Tania May, OSPI assistant superintendent of special education. Every district will have unique funding needs based on its size, location and the students it serves.
Luippold can offer one perspective on the challenges that stem from a lack of special education resources.
After dropping Max off for his first day of kindergarten, Luippold recalls walking away from the building, cell phone clutched tightly in one hand. Later that morning she sat down with a friend, keeping her phone on the table in front of her in case she got a call from the school.
“A lot of parents have that kind of fun, ‘Yeah, back to school, I’m gonna go relax and my kids are back in routine.’ And I definitely experience some of that, but it’s always with an underlying fear that something is going wrong at school, and Max is scared and angry and we’re going to need to step in and do something different,” she said.
For Max, starting kindergarten was a massive transition. In the first few months, anxiety took the driver’s seat.
“His learning resource teacher would tell me that she would look at him and his eyes would be like, completely dilated because he was in a constant state of fight or flight,” Luippold said. “He would just take off running. He would run to other parts of the building. He would run to the fence and try to climb over the fence and leave the school building.”
Although school has gotten easier for Max in some ways, he still requires constant one-on-one support from a paraeducator, who walks with him to class, provides reassurance when starting assignments and steps in to help him regulate his emotions. Luippold said Max’s teachers, paraeducators and other school staff have gone above and beyond in supporting him – but in some instances, the system has fallen short of meeting his needs.
In Max’s first year, his parents fought to get him a permanent paraeducator after they discovered his IEP only provided for a temporary one. A few weeks ago, he started fourth grade in a similar position, working with a substitute paraeducator because the district hadn’t hired his permanent paraeducator early enough.
When Max’s paraeducator calls out sick, sometimes it means he gets a substitute. Sometimes it means he sits in the office for part of the day or works directly with the principal.
On one occasion, Luippold was asked whether she wanted to bring him to school at all.
“It’s a big deal for us how Tacoma treats their paras, because it’s a lifesaver for us,” she said. “Max wouldn’t be able to go to school if he didn’t have one-to-one support, and so when Tacoma doesn’t fund their paraeducators, when they don’t make sure that every school has one, and that every kiddo has one, it directly impacts us.”
Luippold said she believes there are many reasons for the challenges she’s seen in Max’s special education experience. Money is certainly part of the equation.
“I think it’s a culture of not valuing people who work with kids with disabilities, but I also think it’s a funding issue,” she said. “If the state didn’t have this funding cap, and if the federal government would step in, then the district wouldn’t be in such a tough position and be forced to make really hard decisions that often are to the detriment of kids with disabilities.”
Elise Friedrich-Nielsen, director of student services in the Tacoma School District, sees things similarly.
“For the district, we’re committed to [meeting] kids where they’re at and giving them what they need,” Friedrich-Nielsen said. “And so it’d be nice if there was a funding philosophy that followed that same philosophy so that we weren’t hindered in doing what’s right for kids based on the funding we’re able to receive or be reliant on having to go back out to the community and ask for more tax dollars in that way.”
Districts look to levies for support
When gaps exist between state and federal funding and district expenses, districts must rely on other funding sources.
“Any cap that’s there, there’s still needs above it,” said Jessie Sprouse, superintendent of the Carbonado School District. “You then have to be creative in your budget of how you’re going to meet the unique needs of the students that are in your buildings or district. That money is going to come from somewhere because you need to meet the kids’ needs and we want to meet their needs.”
More often than not, the source is local levies.
According to the 2012 McCleary Washington Supreme Court decision, the state has a constitutional obligation to fully fund basic education; hypothetically, levy dollars should only be used for educational enhancements. When funding falls short, the line between basic needs and enhancements can become blurred.
The Carbonado School District is the smallest district in the county, with fewer than 200 students. Sprouse said it collected about $130,795 in levy dollars last year, 28% of which went to special education. The levy currently taxes property owners at $2.24 per $1,000 of assessed value. For a $500,000 house, that works out to about $93 per month.
Thanks to the support of the community, Sprouse said, Carbonado has never had to make significant cuts to its programs. Without it, she’s not sure where they’d be.
“That would be a huge, huge deal if we didn’t pass a levy, where I think we would see cuts that would impact the education for all,” Sprouse said.
Carbonado doesn’t receive enough state and federal funding for a full-time counselor. Sprouse said they’ve used Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds – emergency funds set aside by Congress to address the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic – to bring them to full-time. Levy dollars have helped cover similar gaps.
The Tacoma School District has seen a similar story, on a much larger scale. This year, the district is receiving $79 million in levy dollars, about 8.5% of which is anticipated to go to special education.
Rosalind Medina, the district’s chief financial officer, said it uses the levy to fund mental health supports, nurses and security far beyond what the state provides. If special education isn’t covered, some priorities have to shift.
“If special education needs to take up a larger component of our levy dollars, that means that there’s less dollars to do these other things with if the levy isn’t growing,” Medina said.
Broadly speaking, a district that spends more of its levy dollars on special education might have to make up for it by cutting staff through attrition or by reducing hours. The special education gap is only part of the picture, though.
Medina said school districts face funding gaps across the board. Although the Tacoma School District is technically “fully funded” for special education this year, it is still coming up millions of dollars short in other areas.
“Being under the cap is great because we will be able to achieve full funding for the students, or the maximum amount of funding for the students that we’re serving,” Medina said. “But that doesn’t mean that we’re covered in any way.”
Districts can also apply for safety net funds – money set aside for districts with a high level of students with IEPs, and for individual students with IEPs that present a significantly higher cost to the district than the average student.
In order to be eligible, districts must be able to prove that they’re at capacity. Community-level applications require that a district be above the 15% cap, while individual applications require that a student’s IEP be two times costlier than average per-pupil expenditures for districts with less than 1,000 students, or 2.2 times costlier for districts with 1,000 or more students.
As the name suggests, that type of funding can provide a safety net for at-capacity districts, offering a workaround to the funding cap. But it can’t help everyone.
“There are situations where the districts are still spending quite a lot to support a student, but they haven’t been able to pass those two steps to be able to qualify for reimbursement,” May said.
Although OSPI continues to seek feedback for improving the safety net, other obstacles also exist, May said: a district must have services written in a way that can be calculated, and they’ll see a reduction of funds if an IEP is not fully compliant.
“What we find is districts have to do, basically, a lot of homework to be able to get to this reimbursement,” she said.
Envisioning an inclusive future
School administrators seem to agree that if they had more funding, they’d put it toward increasing staff, paraeducators and classroom supports.
Luippold wants that, too. More specifically, she wants to see staff that understand the complex behavioral needs of students like Max.
“We always tell his IEP team that we want everybody who works at the school to know about him,” Luippold said. “So the secretary, the lunch duty, the recess duty, the PE teacher – we want everybody to know what his needs are, because otherwise, they might see him and he might say some offhand comment, or he might behave in some scary or inappropriate way, and they won’t know how to respond because they’ll just think he’s some naughty child misbehaving.”
According to the OSPI 2023-25 biennial budget request, Washington was one of the 10 least inclusive states in the nation in 2019. When it comes to measuring inclusion, OSPI typically looks at the amount of time a student with an IEP spends in a general education classroom, May said.
Recently, they’ve also started looking more intentionally at what happens in that classroom.
“That metric just looks at where the student’s desk is seated – is the desk in special ed, or is it in general?” May said. “As we know, a student can be in a space and still need more, so the conversation Washington is having now is, ‘What does it mean and what does it look like when a student is meaningfully included, when they have a sense of belonging and when they’re learning?’”
In 2018 OSPI launched a statewide Inclusionary Practices Project (IPP). The project works with professional development providers, teachers’ unions and family-focused organizations to bring the whole “education ecosystem” into discussions about how to support students in special education.
Often, teachers in general education classrooms don’t have training or extensive experience working with students who have special needs. May said one goal of the IPP is to bring them into the conversation.
“We don’t want to concentrate this with our special education staff,” she said. “We want to make sure that our building leaders, our school board members, our district administration and our general education teachers are being able to benefit from this.”
Last year, OSPI reached more than 10,000 people through the IPP, about half of whom were general education teachers. The percentage of students who are fully included (spending 80-100% of their time in general education settings) has increased by seven points across the state since the launch of the program.
May said OSPI hopes to continue the help Washington improve by growing and scaling the IPP. This biennium, OSPI received $5 million to support professional development and job-embedded coaching – half of what it requested in its biennial budget request. Rep. Pollet and Sen. Wellman said they hope to continue discussions in the Legislature about how to support more robust teacher training.
As a school district gets closer to being fully funded, May said, it’s able to set aside more resources for training and development. In other words, the smaller a district’s funding gap, the better position it’s in to invest in services aimed at increasing inclusion.
While increased funding plays a role in inclusion efforts, Luippold said she thinks it needs to be coupled with a social shift.
“The government can step in and legislate funding, but the government can’t really legislate how people see those around them with disabilities, and unfortunately, the disability community is often invisible,” Luippold said. “We as a society have to decide that everybody has the same value, and everybody has the same human rights.”
To her, understanding state budgets and education policies isn’t a prerequisite for making a difference.
“You can say, ‘Well, I don’t know how the spending cap works’ and ‘I didn’t vote for that guy,’” Luippold said. “While that may be true, you can look around you and you can see people with disabilities, and you can see how they are living or trying to live in our society. You can notice the gaps … and everybody can do that, so everybody should.”
This story was originally published September 29, 2023 at 5:00 AM with the headline "100+ WA districts are starting school year without fully funded special ed. Here’s why."
