Idaho takes a $5 million step toward filling the special education funding gap

Becca Savransky, The Idaho Statesman on Apr 11, 2026

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BOISE, Idaho — Idaho school districts will soon have a little help to serve students with disabilities.

Gov. Brad Little on Friday signed legislation that finalizes a fund to provide money for school districts educating students with disabilities who need services that are costlier, like a nurse or an ASL interpreter. Under the bill, schools can tap into the fund when costs for educating a student exceed $30,000, and they have applied other resources, such as Medicaid.

State Superintendent Debbie Critchfield championed the legislation. The bill is similar to one that lawmakers narrowly rejected last year, but one of the bill’s sponsors said this year’s version included changes to ensure transparency and accountability.

The Legislature is appropriating $5 million in one-time funding to put toward the fund. Next year, legislators will have to decide whether to allocate additional money.

In committee hearings, school administrators, advocates and the parents of children with disabilities talked about the need for this money. Parents said their children had been able to excel in classrooms with necessary supports — but oftentimes, those can be expensive. Some students need multiple therapies per week. Others may need costlier resources, such as those that translate their lessons into braille.

Federal education law requires that all students with disabilities have access to a free and appropriate public education. Idaho has long struggled to adequately fund special education, and it faces a growing budget gap between what the state provides to educate students with disabilities and what schools spend. Critchfield has estimated the deficit to be $100 million.

This year, Idaho lawmakers passed a joint memorial calling on the federal government to better fund special education. The memorial said the shortfall in federal funding for special education has “placed a growing financial burden” on taxpayers, schools and families and limits resources available for students with disabilities. But states must provide education programs to all students.

Some of the debate about the bill centered around why this is an education issue, and whether these issues would fit better into health and welfare.

“Our schools are not medical centers. Our teachers are not nurses, doctors, counselors or any of those other things they are being asked to be more and more of,” Rep. Dale Hawkins, a Republican and the chairman of the House Education committee, said in a committee hearing. “We seem to be losing our grip on what schools were intended to be.”

Parents and advocates pushed back against these statements, saying special education includes supports that allow students to access the education they’re entitled to — and education doesn’t look the same for every student.

Critchfield previously told The Idaho Statesman she would be advocating for more federal funding for special education. But all students have a constitutional right to an education, she said, and those services are “not optional or outside the scope of education.”

“With that comes both a legal and a moral obligation to ensure schools have the resources to serve them,” she said in a statement to the Statesman. “The spectrum of need in special education is wide, and our responsibility is to meet students where they are — not to draw lines around who is worth the investment.”

Lawmakers opted to advance the policy bill and the appropriations bill that allocates the $5 million in existing funding from other accounts to the governor’s desk, acknowledging that school districts have an obligation to educate all students.

Although officials and school administrators have said this won’t solve the problem, they have acknowledged it is a good step toward addressing some of these challenges in a difficult budget year.