Special education funding tops IPS legislative priorities

• Public schools must provide special education services at no cost to children with disabilities.
• The price of services can vary widely depending on the severity of need and reach upwards of $50,000 annually for a single student.

State of play: Superintendent Aleesia Johnson says the district's special education services have been perennially underfunded to the tune of at least $20 million.

• It's become a bigger pinch, though, since property tax law changes have cut the dollars flowing into local governments, including school districts.
• "If we are funding special education at an appropriate level, then that frees up dollars we are currently using to support our students with disabilities to support in other areas," Johnson told Axios.

By the numbers: Nearly 1 in 5 IPS students receives special education services.

• Last year, the district's cost was nearly $60 million.
• Yet, it received just $9.4 million from the federal government and $26.4 million from the state.
• The gap is about $6,500 per special education student.

The latest: The district's legislative priorities will focus on school funding during the upcoming budget-writing session.

• It's asking to increase each of the special education funding bands, which are based on severity and need.
• It's also pushing for a change in the complexity index piece of the school funding formula to increase dollars for English language learning students and students living in poverty.
• Other priorities include lifting the cap on what IPS can charge charter schools for shared services, covering the cost of exams for advanced classes such as AP and IB and increasing pre-K funding.

The big picture: "We've just reached a point now where that funding pie has continued to shrink, has continued to be divided into many pieces," Johnson said.