Dear Advocates,
Please write your Representatives immediately to ask them to co-sponsor Rep Pollet and Rep Couture’s bill HB 1310 before 2PM TODAY. Those of you in the 46th LD, as Representative Pollet is one of your Representatives, instead of writing to ask him to sign, you can send him a thank you.
Those of you in the 34th, please thank Representative Alvarado as she has confirmed that she is signing on as a sponsor, but please continue to reach out to Representative Fitzgibbon.
Not sure who your Representatives are? Use this District Finder
Please send a quick letter now!
You can copy and paste the following into an email to your Representative:
Dear Representative,
As a constituent and a parent in your district, I ask you to please sign on as a Sponsor to HB 1310 Concerning special education funding. This bipartisan bill works to address the fact that in our state we choose not to meet our constitutional duty to amply fund education for a subset of students solely because those students are disabled. Show your support for all of our students, and please sign on as a sponsor before 2PM today.
I am including more information below my signature, but you may have already received that information from Representatives Pollet and Couture.
Thank you,
(Insert Name and district)
__________________________________________________________________
HB 1310 is necessary to keep our School Districts From Large-Scale Layoffs, School Closures and “Binding Conditions” for the 2025-26 School Year:
Most of the deficits facing many of Washington’s school districts are due to the failure of the State to pay for Special Education. The Legislative Auditor found that school districts had to spend $590 million in levy funds to pay required costs of special education individual education plans (IEPs) for students with disabilities in the 2022-23 school year. Performance Audit of Special Education funding requested by the Legislature approved by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee on January 9, 2025. This past year, it is expected to have been larger.
To close the gap – with districts still paying 20% of the costs for special education services – the Legislature will need to adopt a special ed funding bill that addresses all 3 levers for funding special education as proposed in HB 1310 (Request of Superintendent of Public Instruction)
The 3 Failures for Special Education funding that drive the districts’ deficits:
- The inadequate multiplier formula that adds funding for each student with an IEP;
- An unconscionable cap on how many children with disabilities that the state will fund in a district; and,
- A “safety net” reimbursement threshold that is set so high that districts spent $197 million last school year on legally required services for students with costs above the multiplier that were not reimbursed.
In Seattle (SPS), last school year $74 million (or about ¾) of the school district’s deficit was directly due to the gap between required spending on Special Education to meet the Individual Education Plans (IEPs) of students with disabilities and State funding. Federal Way’s Special Education costs were 52% of its deficit from state funding over the past four years. This range of deficit is typical, as found by the Legislative Auditor.
Education funding – despite being our constitutional “paramount duty” – has decreased significantly as a percentage of our state’s budgets (down to 43%) since we adopted investments to end the State Supreme Court’s orders in the McCleary case.
The multiplier is an average or a mallet rather than a fine-tuned budget instrument. Thus, the best solution has 3 prongs; 1) an increased multiplier; 2) lower the special education “safety net” eligibility level; and 3) end the cap on # of students funded for IEPs in each district.
What is the Special Education Safety Net? Why do Thousands of Students Fall Through It?
The Special Education “safety net” is a reimbursement for unusually high costs for providing special education services to a student – up to a cap of 16% of students in a district – with an IEP, the State adds funding to the district via the multiplier.
When a student’s services cost approximately $39,000 per year, the district can submit a reimbursement request. This is the “safety net.”
Districts are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on services that cost more than the multiplier, but less than the safety net threshold of $39,000 per year. Some requests for reimbursement are turned down.
What is the Special Ed Cap?
Washington State will only provide special Education funding for a maximum of 16% of students in a district.
This is not based on science or the prevalence of disabilities. It’s arbitrary. And it’s Likely un constitutional.
Districts are required to evaluate and provide services students diagnosed with disabilities, regardless of the cap. Thus, districts are required to use their local funds to meet the needs of every student’s IEP above 16%.
This hurts small districts and those with higher percentages of students from populations that have a greater incidence of disabilities.
The percent of students with disabilities is growing as are the costs of services.
To largely fund the State’s obligation to pay for children’s special education Individual Education Plans (IEPs), HB 1310’s 3 major provisions follow the Legislative Auditor’s recommendations:
- Increase the multiplier starting in Fiscal Year 2026. Districts cannot wait a year without layoffs, school closures and possibly being forced into “binding conditions.”
- Eliminate the cap on the percent of students with disabilities that the State will provide funding for in each district – reflecting that the cap is an unconscionable violation of civil rights of students with disabilities.
- Eliminating the cap is a justice issue. The Legislative Auditor found that the cap disproportionately hurts districts with high poverty rates, more students suffering from poorer social determinants of health, lower property tax values and rural areas.
- Addressing the need to fund based on the cost of services by decreasing the safety net threshold from approximately $39,000-$40,000 to $27,000. When the cost of meeting a student’s IEP reaches $27,000, the district would be able to be reimbursed for the cost over $27,000 instead of eating the costs all the way up to $40,000. This would provide $69 million in funds to districts for the students who had costs over the existing threshold in 2023-24. (Data from OSPI Oct. 2024). Additional support would be generated for students whose costs would be newly qualified (the “donut hole”).
- HB 1310 also increases support for inclusion of students with disabilities in the general ed classrooms (including professional development support) and strong accountability measures ensuring funds go to meeting documented IEP required services.
