Special education funding model is failing California schools

After more than three decades in public education, including many years as a superintendent, I believe we have reached a point where something has to change in how we fund and deliver special education and student mental health services.

California has built a system in which school districts are legally and morally responsible for meeting increasingly complex student needs, while much of the financial and workforce burden falls on local districts. That system is no longer sustainable. 

We cannot continue promising children the services they need, requiring school districts to provide them, and then failing to adequately fund the people and programs necessary to fulfill that promise.

A recent EdSource article examining Fresno Unified’s budget challenges provides an example of a much larger structural problem confronting school districts throughout California. Fresno’s situation should concern every educator, parent, policymaker and taxpayer, not because Fresno is unique, but precisely because it is not.

The question is not whether students with disabilities deserve these services. They absolutely do. Every child deserves an education that recognizes individual needs, provides meaningful access to learning, and gives students the support necessary to succeed. Our responsibility under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) and our moral responsibility as educators cannot be treated as simply costs to be reduced. 

The problem is that districts are being asked to meet increasingly complex needs without consistently providing the funding or having the qualified workforce necessary to do so.

Fresno Unified is experiencing what districts large and small are seeing: growing special education, behavioral, and mental health needs, along with shortages of special education teachers, school psychologists, speech-language pathologists, behavioral specialists, nurses, social workers and instructional support staff.

An individualized education program (IEP) is a legal commitment. Districts cannot simply decide that revenues are declining and therefore reduce a student’s legally required services. When special education costs outpace dedicated funding, the difference must come from somewhere — often, the unrestricted general fund, putting pressure on programs and personnel serving every student.

That is not sustainable.

Fresno received an additional $21 million in dedicated special education funding, which is welcome. But the article also reports that special education costs added more than $10 million to the district’s deficit in 2025-26 alone, illustrating how quickly growing needs can consume new resources.

There also must be accountability. Additional funding should come with careful evaluation of outcomes, staffing models, caseloads, outside contracting costs, administrative structures, and whether dollars are actually reaching students. More money without thoughtful reform will not solve every problem. But expecting districts to provide increasingly intensive and legally mandated services without sufficient resources will not solve anything either.

Fresno Unified deserves credit for trying to preserve services through restructuring, collaboration, county partnerships, telehealth and other approaches. But creativity cannot indefinitely substitute for capacity.

This should not become a debate between fiscal responsibility and supporting children with disabilities. We must do both.

Special education is not somebody else’s program. As students’ needs are becoming more complex and the professionals required to serve them are increasingly difficult to find, the financial burden on local districts continues to grow.

At some point, policymakers must acknowledge that asking schools to simply “do more with less” is no longer a strategy.

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Helio Brasil retired in June as superintendent of Keyes Union School District in Stanislaus County after working as a teacher and administrator in California school districts for three decades. 

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This story was originally published by EdSource.