Legal Update for Special Education Law – Updates from the Pennsylvania Department of Education

PDE Publishes 2022–2023 Report of Expenditures Relating to Exceptional Pennsylvania Students

Act 16 of 2000, in part, amended Section 1372 of the Public School Code of 1949, and it requires the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) to compile information, annually, listing the number of students throughout the Commonwealth with disabilities and the expenditures related to each student. School districts and charter schools must report to PDE the number of students with disabilities for which expenditures fall in one of five categories:

PDE compiles this data—based on the prior fiscal (school) year’s costs—and reports annually.

In February 2024, PDE published its Report of Expenditures Relating to Exceptional Pennsylvania Students for fiscal year 2022–2023. PDE reported that all 500 school districts and 175 charter schools in Pennsylvania submitted expenditure data for 2022–2023. The compiled data below shows the student count per cost category, with comparison to counts for the prior fiscal year 2021–2022:

PDE also required each school district or charter school that showed an increase of 20% or greater from data reported for fiscal year 2022–23 to provide PDE’s Bureau of Special Education with documentation to substantiate the reported data and expenditures.

The overall takeaway from the above data is that school districts and charter schools across Pennsylvania saw an increase from the prior fiscal year, in total, of nearly 17,800 students who are receiving special education and related services and who require an expenditure of public funds to support them. And, significantly, there was an increase of nearly 1,000 students who required expenditures to support them of $82,605.52 or more.

The Report also stated that in fiscal year 2022–2023, the total public school and charter school student enrollment in Pennsylvania was 1,680,038, and the number of IDEA eligible children was 324,720, or 19.3% of the total student population. By comparison, for fiscal year 2021–2022, the total student enrollment was 1,684,754, and the number of IDEA eligible children was 313,446, or 18.6% of the total student population. Thus, Pennsylvania saw a slight increase in 2022–23 in the overall percentage of IDEA eligible students from the prior school year. 

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