According to a presentation in the Senate Education Committee on Feb. 29, the total statewide shortfall in special education funding is $423,209,878. Dr. Frank Harwood, Kansas Department of Education Deputy Commissioner of Fiscal and Administrative Services, briefed committee members with data showing the statewide shortfall alongside the shortfalls for each of Kansas’s 286 school districts. This figure far exceeds KASB’s estimates published in a Feb. 27 report on how much money Kansas districts are being forced to transfer from general funds to cover special education costs.
Harwood referred to this amount as “local effort,” which is calculated by taking a district’s total special education expenditures and subtracting the special education dollars the district receives through state and federal funding.
Based on the updated calculations from KSDE, 17 districts had to use $5M or more from their general funds (local effort) to cover significant shortages in special education funding. This adds up to $257M+ for these 17 districts alone, which serve 49% of Kansas public school students.
USD 259 Wichita $60,973,367
USD 233 Olathe $35,921,893
USD 229 Blue Valley $27,857,711
USD 512 Shawnee Mission $22,773,707
USD 501 Topeka $21,503,616
USD 500 Kansas City $13,584,885
USD 497 Lawrence $10,004,897
USD 475 Geary County $7,380,678
USD 266 Maize $7,108,506
USD 231 Gardner-Edgerton $6,864,760
USD 437 Auburn-Washburn $6,824,686
USD 232 De Soto $6,590,439
USD 383 Manhattan-Ogden $6,568,218
USD 261 Haysville $6,437,596
USD 265 Goddard $6,251,093
USD 305 Salina $5,483,068
USD 260 Derby $5,058,728
The remaining 269 Kansas school districts have a combined local effort of $166M+. On average, these districts enroll 911 students; the local effort to cover special education costs averages $617,182 per school district.
“We greatly appreciate Dr. Harwood’s presentation and the work of KSDE to prepare a more holistic and complete view of the way special education funding shortfalls at the state level affect both special education and regular education students,” said Dr. Brian Jordan, KASB executive director. “We look forward to continuing our work with lawmakers to find a responsible way to close this gap so that all Kansas kids have the best opportunities to thrive in school and in life.”
NOTE: The increases between KASB’s report on Feb. 27 and KSDE’s data presented on Feb. 29, may be attributed to two key factors. First, the KSDE report included the state’s special education interlocals and cooperatives, and KASB’s reporting focused only on local districts. Second, the KSDE data reports the amount of federal aid allocated to each school district. Federal dollars are “drawn down” to reimburse districts as the money is spent, so the timing of those reimbursements can cross over from one fiscal year to the next.
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