Pennsylvania schools are set to see a $55 million bump in special education funding in the coming year, under the state budget adopted July 12.
With the added money, the state will be directing $1.58 billion to education services for children with disabilities and special needs, a large and growing population of students in the commonwealth.
Sherri Smith, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, said the educators she represents are grateful for the funding boost. At the same time, she said this revenue stream falls far short of the need faced by school districts, who are seeing their special education costs spike.
Transportation costs alone for special education students have increased by more than $400 million statewide over the last four years, she said.
“It’s unsustainable, the rates of what special education services are costing districts these days,” she said.
These programs are resource-heavy because meeting the complex needs of these students requires increased staffing levels, she said, and turnover is often high in these positions. Children might need speech therapy, physical therapy and occupational therapy, and schools might have to designate special education coaches to support classroom teachers, according to Smith.
On top of that, districts are seeing an influx of special education students through early intervention programs, she said.
Still, federal and state funding for special education only covers a fraction of these services, Smith noted, with districts forced to rely on local funding to pay for the rest.
One school district’s growing need
Marie Merkel, a former special education teacher and board member in the Scranton School District, said her district will have 67 autistic and emotional support classes in the next school year and plans to open a new building to accommodate some of these programs.
Furnishing this space with desks and chairs is expensive on its own, but the district must also invest in specialized classroom equipment, such as sensory items or iPads and other communication devices that nonverbal students can use, she explained.
The new center, she said, will accommodate children from kindergarten through second grade, a critical age for intervention and skills-building. The additional funding will help with the initiative, she said — but at the same time, the money is being spread across about 500 school districts.
“It definitely makes an improvement, but it’s still not closing the gap that we need,” she said.
How many special education students attend school in Pa.?
The number of special education students in Pennsylvania has surged in past decades, even amid overall enrollment declines.
About one in five students in the Keystone State received special education services in the 2022-2023 school year, roughly tying New York and Maine for the highest rate in the nation, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
In the 2022-23 school year, nearly 358,000 commonwealth children aged 3 to 21 were served under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, officials report. The total has jumped 47.5% since the turn of the millennium, according to federal data.
