Idaho’s special education budget crisis will almost certainly be worse in 2026.
Because of what the 2025 Legislature did — and didn’t do.
Lawmakers weren’t going to fix this problem overnight. But instead of addressing it, they neglected it, kicking an $82.2 million can down the road for one more year.
And what’s more, lawmakers had the kind of hard numbers and solid evidence they say they look for — in the form of a detailed report from their own oversight group.
The Office of Performance Evaluations report delivered a strong indictment of the state’s K-12 funding formula — which, for all of its complexities, essentially delivers money based on student attendance.
“The state’s funding formula does little to adapt to the specific challenges districts face,” the report said. “As a result, some districts, regardless of size, may struggle to secure resources to meet their students’ educational needs.”
And with special education, part of the problem comes back to a false assumption and a lowball estimate.
The funding formula assumes about 6% of Idaho students are in special education, and boosts funding to match. But in truth, about 11% of Idaho students are in special education, nearly 33,000 students.
So Idaho does spend more per special education student, about 20% more, but neighboring states spend much more. Oregon spends 73% more per special education student, the OPE report says. Washington spends 106% more. Utah spends 143% more.
And it isn’t just that Idaho isn’t keeping up with its neighbors. It isn’t keeping up with its needs.
In 2023, Idaho’s $336 million in special education spending came from a patchwork of sources — including federal funding and the state’s funding formula. But the feds and the state don’t cover everything, leaving local schools to use voter-passed supplemental property tax levies and other sources to cover the rest. That gap, according to the OPE report, comes in at $82.2 million.
The OPE’s report had been in the works for almost a year. But the timing of its March 7 release seemed fortuitous, at least at first.
At the time, the House was poised to take an incremental step on special education. House Bill 291 proposed a $3 million fund to reimburse schools with “high-needs” students — students that need a full-time ASL interpreter or aide, for example. Schools could receive a maximum of $100,000, for costs they are scrambling to cover.
On March 12, five days after the release of the OPE report, the House passed HB 291. The margin couldn’t be closer. The bill passed, 36-34, over the objections of all four members of GOP leadership.
But on March 25, the Senate rejected the high-needs fund, on a 17-18 vote. Six of the eight Senate Republicans on the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee voted no.
Some opponents actually used the OPE report as an argument against HB 291, saying the $3 million program would inevitably swell to $82 million. That argument fundamentally misinterpreted the purpose of the high-needs fund — a narrow plan to reimburse costs of at least $15,000.
The high-needs fund — one of state superintendent Debbie Critchfield’s top priorities, endorsed by Gov. Brad Little — might have been a new concept to Idaho legislators. But lawmakers had no such excuse when it came to revamping Idaho’s aging, 1994 vintage K-12 funding formula.
This year’s stabs at addressing the formula were in play when the OPE report came out. Senate Bill 1096, Critchfield’s preferred version, would have moved about $400 million of school funding into a weighted formula to address student needs. (Special education students would have qualified for the biggest of the weights, a 150% per-student increase.) House Bill 279 — a slow-rolling competing bill from Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, contained no weights. Instead, it offered a pledge to address the idea in a future legislative session.
Still, nothing new here. Education leaders and elected officials — including but by no means limited to Critchfield and Horman — have been talking about rewriting the formula for nine years. All to no avail.
On March 18, the Senate actually passed SB 1096. This 20-15 vote was no small breakthrough, marking the first time either house has passed a funding formula rewrite. But the House never heard SB 1096 or HB 279.
“I was disappointed again,” said Senate Education Committee Chairman Dave Lent, R-Idaho Falls, a veteran of the funding formula fight, and a supporter of SB 1096. “I thought this year we had a good piece of legislation. … My disappointment is we couldn’t get it through the House.”
Lent believes that the long-term answer to the special education crisis is a new funding formula, and he might be right. But Lent also floated and dropped a short-term fix. Pushing his own version of a private school bill, Lent proposed putting a separate $30 million into special education. He yanked this language from the bill — and the idea never surfaced again.
But when it comes to the funding formula, the OPE report should have given lawmakers a call to action. The report pointed out that there’s nothing new about spending some additional money to support special education students — as well as English language learners, low-income students and other high-need demographic groups. “In comparison to neighboring states, Idaho’s school funding formula contains fewer or weaker adjustments for district and student characteristics.”
Rough translation: Do better.
The needs cut across several demographic groups. But the situation is all the more urgent for special education — funded, to no small degree, by Uncle Sam. State officials, including Critchfield, hope the second Donald Trump administration will provide states full federal funding, in no-strings-attached block grants. And Trump has pledged to continue to fund special education. But, as the Hechinger Report covered in detail this week, Trump’s pledge to dismantle the federal Education Department casts even more uncertainty over special education.
What happens on Capitol Hill is beyond the Legislature’s control. But the Legislature had their own chances to address special education this year, and didn’t.
Unwittingly, the Legislature might have even made matters worse.
House Bill 93, Idaho’s controversial private school choice law, offers tax credits of up to $5,000 per student or $7,500 per special needs student. Rep. Monica Church — a Boise public school teacher — says she’s already hearing from her district. More parents are asking their neighborhood schools to run special education screenings on their kids.
It’s too early to say whether HB 93, and the $7,500 credit, is a factor in this increase, Church said. But in the long run,Church worries that more students will qualify for special education, when legislators seem determined to cut special education spending in public schools that are mandated to serve all students. In the short run, the school districts are incurring the cost of special education screenings.
“It is an unintended consequence,” said Church, D-Boise. “The cost on the front end, we’re bearing right now.”
Another consequence in a session of consequences.
Kevin Richert writes a weekly analysis on education policy and education politics. Look for his stories each Thursday.
